US News

Only ‘act of God’ can stop Mitt: aide

WASHINGTON — Mitt Romney’s camp says it would take an “act of God” for any of Romney’s opponents to win the GOP nomination, after Romney’s Super Tuesday victories padded his delegate total.

After winning six states and eking out a victory in battleground Ohio Tuesday, Romney finds himself in the odd position of being the only candidate with a clear path to victory, even as he faces the possibility of suffering more embarrassing setbacks in upcoming contests.

With Romney up by more than 200 delegates, his camp calculates that either Rick Santorum or Newt Gingrich would have to win more than two-thirds of the remaining delegates to surpass him.

“There are no more opportunities on this calendar for big delegate pickups,” a confident Romney official told reporters in Boston. “The nomination is an impossibility for Rick Santorum or Newt Gingrich.”

“As you can tell, all we have to do is keep doing what we’re doing and we can get to the nomination,” the official said. “For those guys it’s going to take some sort of act of God to get to where they need to be on the nomination front.”

Romney now holds 419 delegates, to 178 for Santorum, 107 for Gingrich and 47 for Ron Paul, with 1,144 needed to wrap up the nomination, according to the Associated Press count.

The next state to hold a caucus is Kansas, where Santorum is the favorite, followed by contests in Alabama and Mississippi, where Gingrich is staking his southern claim.