House Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-Va.) said the GOP presidential fight would not hurt Mitt Romney's ability to rally independent voters and that he was still the only candidate with a “clear path toward the nomination.”
Cantor, who endorsed Romney over the weekend, compared the Republican presidential primary to the 2008 Democratic contest between then-Sen. Barack Obama (Ill.) and then-Sen. Hillary Clinton (N.Y.).
"I think, again, if you look at what was going on on the Democratic side of the aisle, you have the same issue going on between Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton and there was a debate that went forward," Cantor said Wednesday on “CBS This Morning.”
"The parties are supposed to engage in a debate of ideas, but once the nomination occurs — and Mitt Romney's the only one with a clear path toward the nomination — we will have a clear choice in this country,” he added.
In 2008, Obama and Clinton vied for the nomination past a number of early and key primary contests, into May. But after gaining Clinton’s endorsement in June of that year, Obama was able to rally her supporters ahead of the general election.
Cantor predicted that Republican voters and independents would rally behind Romney after the primary fight and that the former Massachusetts governor would prove a strong challenger to Obama in the general election.
“The American people are going to elect an individual like Mitt Romney who stands starkly against the kind of policies that this president has put in place that frankly have not helped this economy come back the way the American people would like to see it," Cantor said.
Cantor's comments came after GOP voters delivered a split decision in the Super Tuesday nominating contests. Romney won in six states, Alaska, Idaho, Massachusetts, Virginia, Vermont and Ohio. But in Ohio, he barely eked out a victory over Rick Santorum, by 1 percentage point, a margin that could further prolong the GOP contest.
Santorum and the rest of the field showed little sign of dropping out of the race because of the results of Super Tuesday. Newt Gingrich tallied a victory Tuesday in his home state of Georgia, which he represented in Congress for two decades, and has said he intends to campaign to the convention.
Cantor, though, said that Santorum and Gingrich had “not demonstrated the ability to do what needs to be done” to win the race.
