Appearing on Fox News Monday afternoon, Mitt Romney sounded the alarm -- a bit louder than before -- about the prospects of a brokered convention and the damage that he thinks it would cause his candidacy.
"I mean, everybody has a scenario where they can become the nominee. That is fine. But that is why we have a primary process," Romney told Neil Cavuto. "And, so far, we have got, I don't know, two, two-and-a-half times as many delegates as [Rick Santorum] has and millions of more votes than he has. And, you know, that is the nature of political process. If he is able to pull off a miracle, so be it, he will be the nominee."
"But we have a selection process," Romney added. "We are in the middle of it. I am leading it strongly. I'm going to continue to lead it. And you are going to see me getting the delegates I need to become the nominee. And we sure as heck are not going to go to a convention, all the way to the end of August, to select a nominee and have campaign working during a convention. Why, can you imagine anything that would be a bigger gift to Barack Obama than us not having a nominee until the end of August? That is just not going to happen."
Not withstanding former RNC Chairman Michael Steele's belief that a contested convention would be good for the party, this argument by Romney is the widely held viewpoint of most of the GOP establishment.
Prior to Super Tuesday, the former Massachusetts governor treated the idea of Rick Santorum staying in the race through August as a far-fetched, if not mild, nuisance -- certainly something that was unlikely to materialize. The tone of the Fox News interview suggests that he and his advisers aren't finding the idea so immaterial anymore.