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McCain promoted free trade today on a visit to Colombia
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March 05, 2008, 05:30
John McCain clinched the Republican presidential nomination yesterday with four big victories that drove his last major rival, former Arkansas Governor Mike Huckabee, out of the race. The wins in Vermont, Ohio, Texas and Rhode Island gave McCain more than the 1 191 delegates needed to win the nomination, according to media delegate counts. President George W Bush will endorse the Arizona senator at the White House today.
"The contest begins tonight," he said, looking ahead to a match-up with either Obama or Clinton in the November presidential election. In the Democratic race, Barack Obama scored an easy win in Vermont and rival Hillary Clinton won Rhode Island as she battled to save her presidential candidacy yesterday in their big-state showdowns in Ohio and Texas. Clinton's Rhode Island victory broke Obama's string of 12 straight wins in their hard-fought duel to be the Democrat who squares off against McCain.
Clinton was under pressure to win the two biggest states, Ohio and Texas, to keep her White House hopes alive and prolong the hotly contested Democratic campaign with Obama. Turnout was heavy in all four states, and the Democratic campaigns of Obama, an Illinois senator, and Clinton traded accusations of irregularities at the polls in both Ohio and Texas. An Ohio judge granted a request from the Obama campaign to extend voting in some Cleveland-area precincts.
Clinton had a sizable 58% to 40% lead with slightly more than one-quarter of precincts reporting in Ohio, and Obama had a slim 51% to 48% lead with about 10% of precincts counted in Texas. For Clinton, a New York senator, wins in both Ohio and Texas would rejuvenate her campaign and send the race on toward the next major contest -- Pennsylvania on April 22.
Losses in both, or possibly even one, could set off a stampede of party support for Obama, raise pressure on Clinton to drop out and make it even tougher for her to cut Obama's lead in the pledged delegates who will choose the Democratic nominee to contest November's presidential election. In his victory speech, McCain took aim at both of his likely Democratic opponents and criticized their pledges to revisit US trade treaties, punish companies that send jobs overseas and withdraw US troops from Iraq.
Swift conclusion
"The next president must explain how he or she intends to bring that war to the swiftest possible conclusion without exacerbating a sectarian conflict that could quickly descend into genocide, destabilizing the entire Middle East," said McCain, who received a call of congratulations from Obama. Huckabee also said he called McCain to congratulate him and promised to actively support his candidacy.
"I will do everything possible to unite our party," Huckabee told supporters in Irving, Texas. In the Democratic showdowns, a cautious Obama told reporters he thought the races in Ohio and Texas would be "very, very tight." Asked if the race would continue to Pennsylvania, Obama said: "What my head tells me is we've got a very sizable delegate lead that is going to be hard to overcome." Under Democratic rules allowing the losers in each state to win a proportional amount of delegates, Clinton cannot close the gap on Obama among pledged delegates unless she wins in Ohio and Texas by big margins.
The comeback kid
An MSNBC count gave Obama 1 194 delegates to Clinton's 1 037 before yesterday's showdowns, well short of the 2 025 needed to win the nomination. Clinton's aides have been tamping down expectations, easing away from talk that she needed to win both Ohio and Texas, with their combined 334 delegates.
Like her husband, former President Bill Clinton, who nicknamed himself "The Comeback Kid" for his improbable rise to the White House in 1992, Clinton has dodged disaster before. In January, Obama appeared ready to deal her a knockout blow in New Hampshire after his big win in Iowa, but she defied opinion polls and won.
After a landslide loss in South Carolina, Clinton battled Obama to a draw in Super Tuesday contests around the country on February 5, winning some of the biggest prizes of the night in California, New York and New Jersey. - Reuters
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