Nominee

BROOMALL, PENN. -- With a trio of decisive primary wins vaulting him from frontrunner to a nearly secure place at the top of the GOP presidential ticket, Mitt Romney campaigned like a presumptive nominee on Wednesday. And well he might. It's no longer simply wishful thinking on the part of the former Massachusetts governor to portray himself as the Republican who will face President Obama in November. With decisive wins in Wisconsin, Maryland and the District of Columbia on Tuesday, his stance is as mathematically defensible as it is logical.

WASHINGTON - Deputy Solicitor Gen. Sri Srinivasan, a rising star in legal circles, won an easy and unanimous Senate confirmation Thursday to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, giving President Obama his first appointee to a conservative-leaning court that decides major regulatory disputes. Srinivasan, 46, who was born in India and grew up in Lawrence, Kan., was praised as being exceptionally smart, highly qualified and even-tempered. Republicans said they had no hesitance in approving Srinivasan, unlike other Obama nominees.

The Republican National Committee officially declared Mitt Romney the party's presumptive nominee Wednesday and announced steps toward a full merger of the two entities' campaign infrastructure. The move comes after a night in which Romney won all five Northeast states that held primaries, giving him another major delegate boost even though he's still shy of the 1,144 he needs to formally clinch the nomination. The party already has taken steps to help its eventual nominee prepare for the general election, and said Wednesday it is clear Romney will be their candidate.

WASHINGTON - Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid said Tuesday that he will delay votes on several of President Obama's nominees for key posts until July, a decision raising the prospect that he'll seek further changes to Senate rules that would allow executive appointments to be confirmed by a simple majority. Senate leaders had considered holding a vote this week to confirm Richard Cordray as head of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, a nomination Republicans have maintained they would filibuster unless the Obama administration agreed to overhaul the agency.

A Rick Santorum fundraising mailer that hit Iowa households Monday -- nearly a week after he dropped his presidential bid -- is raising eyebrows because it harshly attacks the presumptive GOP nominee, Mitt Romney. The mailer, first reported by the Des Moines Register , contains a letter signed by Santorum that says, "It truly frightens me to think what'll happen if Mitt Romney is the nominee. " "My friend, Republicans and conservatives will be crippled by a nominee who presents zero contrast with Barack Obama on the major issues of this election," the letter says, repeating an attack on Romney that Santorum made constantly on the campaign trail.

Rick Santorum has a litany of reasons Republicans shouldn't elect Mitt Romney as their nominee. But if it came down to it, Santorum would support him. At least that's what Santorum's top strategist, John Brabender, said Tuesday during a phone interview about Republican fracturing ahead of the Deep South dual primaries. At the end of the day, Brabender said, "they'll rally behind us and we'll rally behind them" to beat President Obama . "No one can unify [Republicans]

George S. McGovern, a three-term U.S. senator from South Dakota who was the Democratic Party's nominee in the 1972 presidential contest, died today at age 90, the Associated Press reported. McGovern's campaign against President Nixon and the war in Southeast Asia attracted millions of angry, anti-establishment voters. But his bid for the White House was hurt by two factors: Nixon's effort to sabotage the Democrats, which became known as the Watergate affair, and McGovern's choice of Sen. Thomas Eagleton of Missouri as his running mate.

WASHINGTON -- The White House is again coming to the defense of a possible Cabinet nominee, even before President Obama makes up his mind on the post. White House spokesman Jay Carney backed up former Nebraska Sen. Chuck Hagel on Thursday, saying the possible pick for secretary of Defense has been a "remarkable servant to this country. " "What I can tell you is that Sen. Hagel fought and bled for his country. He served his country well. He was an excellent senator," Carney told reporters.

In a tent revival-like warm-up before the 16th Republican presidential debate, Newt Gingrich, arriving about the time the event was scheduled to end, made the most pointed argument to a conservative gathering for why he, not Mitt Romney, should be the nominee. "I want to be very direct for a couple minutes," he said, as the inside of the white tent darkened in the dusk, leaving the former speaker of the House standing in a halo of light. "Unless a conservative wins on Saturday, we're going to end up with a moderate nominee who in my judgment will have a very, very hard time defeating Barack Obama.

When the GOP primaries finally do come to a close, the RNC will have a nice wrap-up gift on hand for the eventual nominee: an extra $21 million to spend. The RNC announced yesterday that it has fully funded its Presidential Trust, a fund that can be spent in direct coordination with the eventual Republican nominee's campaign. Those coordinated expenditures are capped by the Federal Election Commission at $21 million for the 2012 cycle “With a fully-funded trust, we stand ready on day one once we have a presumptive nominee.

WASHINGTON - President Obama's nominee to lead the Energy Department won unanimous confirmation by the Senate on Thursday while two other Cabinet choices narrowly advanced out of committee, amid complaints from Democrats over Republican delaying tactics. Ernest J. Moniz, an MIT physics professor who becomes the new Energy secretary, is the fifth Cabinet appointment confirmed since Obama won a second term, and the first without any Republican dissent. By comparison, all but one of President George W. Bush's 11 initial second-term appointments were confirmed by the end of April, even though his party held no more Senate seats than Democrats control now. Republicans had delayed consideration of Thomas E. Perez, Obama's choice to lead the Labor Department, and Environmental Protection Agency nominee Gina McCarthy before Thursday's party-line committee votes to recommend them to the full Senate.

In requiring the U.S. Senate to confirm presidential appointments, the Constitution aims to ensure a second level of scrutiny of the qualifications of government officials. But Senate Republicans have hijacked the confirmation process, not only to thwart individual nominees but to undermine laws they don't agree with. If they continue in their obstructionism, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) should revisit the possibility of doing away with the filibuster for nominations. The most immediate test case involves the National Labor Relations Board, the federal agency that moderates disputes between labor and management.

WASHINGTON - Senate Republicans boycotted a committee vote Thursday on President Obama's nomination of Gina McCarthy to head the Environmental Protection Agency, drawing accusations of obstructionism from Democrats. Republicans on the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee said McCarthy had not adequately responded to their requests for information, so they didn't show up for the scheduled vote. They want more information on how the EPA makes decisions on new regulations, how it has used private email to conduct public business, and other transparency issues.

President Obama has nominated venture capitalist Tom Wheeler, a former lobbyist for the cable and the wireless industries, to serve as head of the Federal Communications Commission. "Tom knows this stuff inside and out," Obama said. If that's true, I can only assume that high on Wheeler's to-do list will be a dismantling of the antiquated business model that forces cable and satellite subscribers to pay for dozens of channels they will never watch. It's also a system that can result in a favorite channel disappearing not because it didn't have an audience but because it didn't generate enough profit for a cable or a satellite provider.

WASHINGTON - President Obama's pick for Labor secretary, Thomas E. Perez, emerged unscathed Thursday from a Senate confirmation hearing that was more perfunctory than contentious. Conservatives have been critical of Perez, the administration's top civil rights enforcer, portraying him as a dangerous liberal who would be an overly assertive regulator at the Labor Department. But despite predictions that his confirmation could be acrimonious, there was very little of the tough questioning that Republican adversaries said he deserved.

WASHINGTON - President Obama's pick to lead the Environmental Protection Agency, Gina McCarthy, faced tough questioning from Senate Republicans at her confirmation hearing Thursday, in a clear signal to the White House that they will continue fighting environmental regulations as vigorously as they did in the first term. Obama's reelection, the gradual revival of the economy and the effects of climate change have not altered the viewpoint of some Republicans that climate change is suspect and environmental rules kill jobs.

The late Les Richter, an ex-Los Angeles Ram who twice helped establish big-league auto racing in Southern California, again was nominated for NASCAR's Hall of Fame. Richter, who died in 2010 at age 79, was among 25 nominees announced Wednesday for enshrinement in the 2014 class. Five will be selected later this year. Other nominees include team owners Rick Hendrick and Richard Childress, three-time Daytona 500 winner Dale Jarrett, track operator O. Bruton Smith and the late Wendell Scott, the only African American to win a race in what is now NASCAR's premier Sprint Cup Series.

WASHINGTON - President Obama, who has seen court nominees run into Republican roadblocks, may have found a winning strategy for putting a judge on the powerful U.S. appeals court here: He chose a highly regarded corporate lawyer whose resume suggests he could have been a Republican nominee. Sri Srinivasan, 46, was a law clerk for two Republican-appointed judges after graduating from Stanford University, and he worked in the George W. Bush Justice Department for five years before joining the Obama team as deputy U.S. solicitor general.