It's about as official as it gets, without actually being official. Former Mass. Gov. Mitt Romney likely secured the Republican nomination and will face President Barack Obama in the November general election after winning yesterday's Texas primary, according to multiple media outlets.
The victory pushed Romney over the 1,144 delegate mark needed to claim the GOP nomination. Romney, the frontrunner and only legitimate candidate still campaigning on the GOP side, will look to shore up support from his party's base and choose his vice president in the coming weeks.
“I am honored that Americans across the country have given their support to my candidacy and I am humbled to have won enough delegates to become the Republican Party's 2012 presidential nominee,” Romney said in a statement released after last night's Texas primary.
The field of GOP presidential hopefuls became a little less crowded today as Texas Gov. Rick Perry announced that he would cease his campaign to become his party's nominee for the 2012 election.
Perry joins Atlanta businessman Herman Cain, former Minnesota Gov. Tim Pawlenty, Congresswoman Michele Bachmann (R-Minn.) and former Ambassador Jon Huntsman as GOP candidates to drop out of the race.
Perry finished the Iowa caucuses fifth and received less than one percent of the total vote cast in New Hampshire to claim sixth.
Perry made waves when he first entered the campaign, but a series of missteps, including a particularly embarrassing moment during a Nov. 9 debate where he could only remember two of the three federal agencies he proposed to eliminate, derailed his campaign before the first ballot was cast.
A Georgia drama teacher who was fired last year for showing a scene from the gay-themed film “The Reckoning” to his class is planning a protest in support of a Texas high school student who has tried unsuccessfully to establish a gay/straight alliance at her school.
Nikki Peet of Corpus Christi first approached Flour Bluff school officials in November with the idea of establishing a GSA, only to be told by officials, including school principal James Crenshaw, that such a club would not be approved, according to Corpus Christi NBC affiliate KRIS.
The school has since canceled all extra-curricular activities rather than allow the GSA to form. Calls to the school's principal and public information coordinator went unreturned.