Texas puts Romney over the top

>>> old days -- by menan

>>> let's get to the first reads, four months, texas was going to be mitt romney 's alamo, his rivals looked to the lone star state and its mammoth amount of 155 delegates as the place that they were going to turn this race around.

>> we're going to be able to go compete in south carolina and florida and nevada and obviously in texas and --

>> i'm very proud that rick perry is campaigning for me and he believes we'll get 155 delegates in texas at the end of may. governor perry who's supporting me thinks that eventually when texas votes it will be 155-0 in texas delegates.

>> ronald reagan didn't get out of the race. he was able to stand tall in may and win the state of texas which we have every intention of doing.

>> i thought that little trip down memory lane was worth it since last night it was texas that put romney officially over the top . at this hour romney has 1,183 delegates in his column and so we can call him now the projected republican nominee.

>>> also in texas last night, the bigger race was the senate race, lut governor david dewhurst who got stamped with the establishment label by a boatload of national conservatives from washington. he failed to avoid a runoff and he's now focused on a race at the end of july. he won just 45% of the republican primary vote to succeed senator kay bailey hutchison making him frankly the underdog which will likely be a very low turnout runoff against ted cruz , the favorite of tea party and conservatives. a runoff in the dead of summer with two months instead of one month, that's an establishment candidate's worst nightmare. cruz declared victory and challenged dewhurst to five debates in the next two months.

>> this race is ground zero in the battle between the moderate establishment and the conservative tea party tidal wave that is sweeping this country. and if he wants to make the case to the people of texas that he thinks i'm an amnesty-supporting, china-loving, pinko liberal, then i encourage him to do so. in person.

>> all right. well, we're going to be watching that closely, by the way. one member of congress did lose, sell vester reyes, but in democratic primary . there weren't a lot of upsets, a few congressional runoffs. we'll get into that later in the show.

>>> mitt romney didn't have a victory speech last night but he was trumped by trump, romney said, quote, i'm humble to have won enough delegates to become the republican party 's 2012 presidential nominee . but it's indicative of the way things have been for romney that the message he clinched 1144 was delivered at a closed fund-raiser and it was by donald trump .

>> 1144 , you know, what that is? in about an hour or so, that number will be superceded and we will have effectively our nominee. he will be the man.

>> when romney arrived in las vegas , he did it in the shadow of the giant trump plane and all day trump doubled down on birther talk on every possible platform that donald trump could find.

>> a lot of people are questioning his birth certificate . they're questioning the authenticity of his birth certificate . there are many people that don't agree with that birth certificate . they don't think it's authentic, wolf.

>> i don't know when you say many people who don't agree --

>> many people.

>> like who?

>> many people.

>> give me a name of an authority --

>> there's many people --

>> give me names.

>> i don't give names. there's many questions about the authenticity of the birth certificate . you can believe it or you don't have to believe it. certainly there are many, many questions. i actually think it's a great issue for mitt romney .

>> whoever this "many people" is, move over deep throat, right? well, with the obama campaign running a video comparing romney unfavorably to john mccain , trump seemed to taunt the obama campaign . he twitted, barack obama is practically begging mitt romney to disavow the birth certificate crowd. mccain lost the election, don't let it happen again. the obama campaign gleefully fired off a statement, quote, if mitt romney lacks the backbone to stand up to a charlatan like donald trump because he's so concerned about lining his campaign's pockets, what does that say about the kind of president he would be? this trump fiasco was entirely preventable, you could have seen it happening from miles away and in the end it was newt gingrich of all people that ended up having to clean up the romney campaign's mess.

>> governor romney 's not distracted. the republican party 's not distracted. we believe that this is an american-born, job-killing president. other people may believe that he's born somewhere else and still kills jobs. but that's an argument over background.

>> we'll be talking with both the romney and obama campaigns in a few minutes.

>>> and finally the ad wars. this week team obama is spending more than $8 million on advertising and they're outspending team romney 4-1. anyone can claim they know which states are the true battleground but let's let the money tell the story. still think north carolina 's no a battleground? the romney campaign sure thinks so. they're spending half a million on advertising there this week. that's just one of four states where the romney campaign is putting its money. they're also spending in iowa, ohio , virginia , those are the only four states they have money up. they're getting an assist from the superpac crossroads in those states plus six more as you see pop up on the map there. in other superpac spending the pro- obama superpack is shelling out money in florida , ohio , and virginia . the campaign is spending in those states plus four more as you see, colorado , florida , ohio , as you see there, north carolina , iowa, nevada, and new hampshire. if you want to see where this presidential election fight is playing out look no further than virginia and north carolina . look at this little thing we've crunched. six of the top ten hottest ad markets right now are in just those two states . the norfolk area, roanoke, richmond, greensboro, raleigh-durham and charlotte, those are five of the six. columbus, ohio , sits at four, rounding out the top ten most saturated media markets are cities in colorado and ohio . they are being fought on gop turf. these are all states that george w. bush carried in 2004 . and they are that john kerry never contested, colorado , virginia , and north carolina .