US Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney eked out a narrow win in Ohio and was victorious in four other Super Tuesday states.
As expected, Mitt Romney cruised to victory in his home state of Massachusetts, as well as Idaho, Vermont and Virginia.
Mitt Romney also won in Alaska, which Ron Paul was pinning his hopes on for his only win of the nomination campaign.
Rick Santorum won a hat-trick of contests, while Newt Gingrich took his home state of Georgia.
Mitt Romney now leads the field with 415 delegates committed to backing him at the national Republican convention in August. A candidate needs 1,144 delegates to win the party’s nomination and go on to challenge Barack Obama in November’s election.
But Super Tuesday did not deliver a sufficiently convincing victory to end the race and convince Mitt Romney’s rivals to pull out.
After Tuesday’s 10-state voting marathon, Mitt Romney defended his position as the front-runner.
“I’m going to get this nomination,” Mitt Romney told supporters in Boston.
Mitt Romney and his wife Ann at their Super Tuesday primary rally in Boston
Mitt Romney easily won Massachusetts, where he was governor, as well as liberal-leaning Vermont and Idaho, where his fellow Mormons make up a chunk of the electorate.
He also won resoundingly in Virginia, where Rick Santorum and Newt Gingrich failed to qualify for the ballot.
Rick Santorum, a former US senator from Pennsylvania, said his victories in Tennessee, Oklahoma and North Dakota proved he was the bona fide conservative alternative to Mitt Romney.
“This was a big night tonight,” Rick Santorum told supporters in Steubenville, Ohio. “We have won in the West, the Midwest and the South, and we’re ready to win across this country.”
After a cliffhanger count, Mitt Romney narrowly edged out Rick Santorum in Ohio, the night’s most coveted prize.
Ohio was important because no Republican nominee has taken the White House without winning the Midwestern bellwether state in the general election.
Of the 66 delegates on offer, Mitt Romney took home 35 compared to Rick Santorum’s 21, the Associated Press reports.
Rick Santorum began the race in Ohio with a big lead in the opinion polls, but Mitt Romney’s well-funded political machine overcame him in part through a heavy campaign of attack adverts.
Rick Santorum has attracted the support of religious conservatives with his opposition to gay marriage and abortion.
However, his outspoken remarks on birth control and the role of religion may have turned off moderate-leaning voters.
Exit polls showed Ohio voters thought Mitt Romney stood the best chance of beating Barack Obama; however, Rick Santorum appealed more to blue-collar voters.
Super Tuesday Guide
Newt Gingrich, the former House speaker, did not achieve the sweep of Southern states he hoped for.
But he vowed to stay in the race after his Georgia win.
“There are lots of bunny rabbits to run through, I am the tortoise. I just take one step at a time,” Newt Gingrich said.
With 96% of votes counted in Alaska, Mitt Romney was winning with 33% of the vote, ahead of Rick Santorum with 29%. Texas Congressman Ron Paul – who had been hoping to make the state his only win of the campaign – was trailing with 22% while Newt Gingrich held 14%.
Of the 1,144 delegates needed to secure the Republican presidential nomination, 419 were up for grabs on Tuesday.
Overall, Mitt Romney won at least 212 of Super Tuesday’s delegates, taking his total to 415, while Rick Santorum added 84, taking his count to 176, AP reports.
The race is not over yet as the next crop of primaries and caucuses will not do Mitt Romney any favors.
Kansas, Alabama, Mississippi and Hawaii hold their contests over the next 10 days.
Rick Santorum and Newt Gingrich will be hoping to halt Mitt Romney’s momentum and keep their challenges alive.
The drawn-out nomination fight, which has been waged in large part through negative television adverts, may have taken its toll on the Republican Party.
A Washington Post/ABC News poll showed only 35% of Americans looked upon Mitt Romney favorably, compared to 32% for Ron Paul, 23% for Newt Gingrich, and 32% for Rick Santorum.
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Doug Wead on Fox Business tells Neil Cavuto that Ron Paul may be the economic Winston Churchill for America. Doug refers to Ron Paul’s Sept. 10, 2003 detail prediction of the coming crisis. 8-10-11
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Quotes from the official documents at the committee meeting
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THE TREASURY DEPARTMENT’S
VIEWS ON THE REGULATION OF
GOVERNMENT SPONSORED ENTERPRISES
Wednesday, September 10, 2003
U.S. House of Representatives,
Committee on Financial Services,
Washington, D.C.
The committee met, pursuant to call, at 10:06 a.m., in Room 2128, Rayburn House Office Building, Hon. Michael G. Oxley [chairman of the committee] presiding.
Present: Representatives Oxley, Leach, Baker, Bachus, Castle, Royce, Lucas, Ney, Kelly, Paul, Gillmor, Manzullo, Ose, Biggert, Toomey, Shays, Shadegg, Miller, Hart, Capito, Tiberi, Kennedy, Feeney, Hensarling, Garrett, Murphy, Brown-Waite, Barrett, Harris, Renzi, Frank, Kanjorski, Waters, Sanders, Maloney, Gutierrez, Velázquez, Watt, Hooley, Carson, Sherman, Meeks, Lee, Inslee, Moore, Gonzalez, Ford, Hinojosa, Lucas, Crowley, Israel, Ross, McCarthy, Baca, Matheson, Miller, and Scott.
Mr. PAUL. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
I first want to compliment Mr. Baker for having pursued this issue. He has been looking at it for quite a few years and has kept it alive, trying to point out some of the problems that the GSEs face with the excess of debt and some of the problems that we face. But I think that, from the conversation I have heard today, the consensus is that we just do not have enough regulations and all we need is a world-class regulator and everything is going to be okay.
I think we are failing to look at the real problem and the cause of our crisis we face. I am concerned that we are going to have a world-class adjustment to the distortions that we, the Congress, the Fed, and the Treasury have created over these last several decades; and it seems like there is essentially no concern about that.
These programs were originally set up to help poor people get affordable housing; today we have a program that helps people buy a house for over $300,000 and get subsidy for their mortgage payment. At the same time, the administrators of these programs make millions of dollars. So I think we have lost our way on this.
But the biggest concern I have is that Congress is not looking at the real problem, and to me it has been this implied credit and implied guarantee of this credit, are we going to get rid of this line of credit? Not likely, because that would cause a bit of chaos. But that is what has really blown these markets up, and they are distorted.
Also, we have the Fed very much involved in this. They probably wouldn’t admit it, but the Fed on occasion will buy GSE securities. Foreign central banks buy these securities because it is implied that the Fed is going to come to the rescue.
Right now, overseas foreigners are buying less of these securities, and the dollar is a little weaker, and what is going to happen when they quit buying them or selling them and what is going to happen to our investors who buy Ginnie Mae and Freddie Mac? When the dollar weakens, interest rates go up. Already the interest rates are rising long term. Could a world class regulator deal with that? Not likely. I mean, I am concerned that there is going to be a panic out of these things. As the dollar goes down, interest rates go up. And we still haven’t looked at the problem and that is this allocation of credit, taking money out of the market, excess of credit to begin with because the Fed is pumping it up just like they pumped up the credit into the NASDAQ and you had to have a burst in that bubble.
Some people think there could be a bubble here. Who knows, though? It might be a great bit of distortion, but there will be a correction.
I am concerned, and I would like Secretary Snow to comment on this. Do you have a concern yourself about what could happen here? This is a huge amount of debt, a lot of investors, a lot at stake. What happens if mortgage rates go up three points in the next year and the dollar keeps weakening? We have a huge current account deficit, and the currency always goes down when you run an account deficit like this.
So I would say that we are missing the whole point here thinking that all we need to do is come up with a new agency and a world-class regulator and we are going to do some good if we don’t address the subject of the dollar and interest rates.
Secretary SNOW.
Congressman, as you know, the dollar and the interest rates are largely a function of monetary policy, right? And, no, we are not proposing to put the Fed under this new regulator. What we are proposing to do is to put these housing entities that have such impact on financial markets under this new regulator and give that new regulator the complete authority that would be needed to deal with the soundness and safety of the financial system that it oversees. That would be helpful.
Some of the issues you deal with are properly approached through a sophisticated, risk-based set of capital standards with a sophisticated regulator applying those risk-based capital standards and adjusting the capital requirements to the risks; and those risks include the ones you have outlined, the risks of interest rates going up 300 basis points or falling 300 basis points. That is what that sophisticated new regulator would be required to look at.
We are saying, remove the current statutory restrictions on how you look at risk-based capital. Let the regulator free to apply the most sophisticated and current and modern approaches to the question of appropriate capital structure for these entities.
So, no, we do not go the whole way here in dealing with some of the external factors that drive these markets, but taking those external factors is something we cannot control through this entity. We give the entity the ability to set the capital standards in a way to take those factors into account.
The CHAIRMAN. [Presiding.] The gentleman’s time has expired.
Source:http://commdocs.house.gov/committees/bank/hba92231.000/hba92231_0f.htm
