New School Politics

Romney To Drop Out of GOP Race

Ryan | 7 02 2008

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Just a couple of hours ago, sources (here and here) began to report that Mitt Romney will withdraw from the Republican presidential race after his poor showing on Super Tuesday. The story was supposedly confirmed by GOP officials, including two of Romney’s advisors.

He is expected to make the announcement at the big Conservative Political Action Conference in D.C. this afternoon. Assuming it is true, the move would leave just three candidates in the race: John McCain way out in front, Huckabee, and Ron Paul pulling up the rear. His withdrawal makes apparent that he feels McCain’s lead is too substantial to overcome at this point, and that he believes he will become the GOP nominee.

Gov. Romney had emerged as the conservative alternative to the moderately-perceived McCain, and was the popular candidate among prominent conservative sources like in talk radio (Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, et al) and National Review magazine.

More to come.

UPDATE: Video of Romney speaking at CPAC can be seen here, LIVE.

UPDATE 2: Romney officially announced that he will drop out of the race in his CPAC speech. He cited that despite enormous differences with McCain, he agrees that Iraq is the transformative issue facing America and that if he continued fighting McCain it would only disable him in a general election and make the election of a Democrat more likely.

As he announced his withdrawal, loud jeers could be heard in the crowd deriding the decision to drop and John McCain who has come under much fire from conservatives.

McCain is to speak at 3 pm EST.