Romney Will Skip Bed In Favor Of Airline Seat Tonight
LONG BEACH, CALIF. -- As he continues his final cross-country odyssey before polls open in 21 states tomorrow morning, time may be Mitt Romney's biggest enemy. As an underdog in many of Tuesday's biggest contests, Romney has a lot of ground to make up and not a lot of hours in which to do it.
When he touched down in Oklahoma City this evening, the former Massachusetts governor made the most of the short time he had available by holding an event that was part rally and part press conference.
After delivering an abbreviated stump speech in front of a small crowd of over 100 people, Romney opened the floor to reporters' questions without leaving the stage.
Romney said that his campaign has seen signs of a groundswell of conservative support across the country, due in part to conservative talk-radio hosts like Rush Limbaugh and Sean Hannity, who seem to be coalescing around his candidacy in order to try to prevent John McCain from getting the nomination.
"So I think I got a good shot of picking up even the majority of delegates in California, or the majority of votes there," Romney said. "And I was just in Georgia, a few minutes ago it seems like, and that was a race where people didn't give me much of a shot, but right now it looks like a virtual dead heat in Georgia. And there are other states that I was behind in and now I'm surging in. One of them I hope is Oklahoma."
Reporters waited for the crowd's cheers to die down before asking the next question.
Romney will host a rally in Long Beach, California, tonight before taking an overnight flight to West Virginia, where he'll speak at the delegate convention in Charleston Tuesday morning.
When staffers and members of the media boarded the campaign plane in Oklahoma City tonight, we were greeted with pillows and blankets. With stops in four states in three time zones today and an overnight flight to look forward to, it was a welcome sight, indeed.
It's another long day in what has already been a long campaign, but Romney hopes his quest for the GOP nomination won't end anytime soon.
"We're not going to be much more than halfway through as of Tuesday night," he said. "I want to keep battling, and I believe that conservative in this path that make up the bulk of our party they are going to rally to my campaign. By the time this is finished, I'm going to have enjoyed a great campaign against Senator McCain, but I'm going to beat him."