Mitt Romney Secures Republican Nomination with Texas Delegates

Mitt Romney has finally sealed the deal by clinching the 1,144 delegates required to win the Republican party's presidential nomination, after Tuesday's Texas primary.

The former Massachusetts governor won 68.97 percent of the vote, or a total of 992,288 votes and 105 delegates, according to Texas' state website. Texas Congressman Ron Paul garnered 11.94 percent, or 171,830 votes.

We did it! Romney's campaign wrote in an e-mail to supporters. Now all Republicans can move forward toward our convention in Tampa. There, we will stand united as a party with a winning ticket for America. Ours will be a campaign to unite every American who knows in his or her heart we can do better.

The predictable victory comes after a long journey -- a brief surge by Newt Gingrich, as well as Rick Santorum's victories on Super Tuesday and in other states, held Romney back as the overwhelming front-runner for some time.

Still, his steadily growing count of delegates made him the most likely winner. The GOP hopeful has been treated like his party's nominee by both President Obama and GOP leaders for the past couple of months, so the moment marks a much-anticipated milestone.

Races can (and have) been won and lost during this period, as the two candidates battle to define themselves and one another, wrote the Washington Post's Chris Cillizza and Aaron Black.

It will be interesting to watch Romney define himself, as his campaign continues to battle accusations of flip-flopping while trying to appeal to both moderates and more extreme Republicans. For one, his Tuesday victory was overshadowed by a circus led by real estate magnate Donald Trump, who continued to argue on network television that President Barack Obama was not born in the United States. Romney was faced with distancing himself from Trump's extreme views while embracing his endorsement during a Las Vegas fund-raiser Tuesday night.

Financially, it may have been worth it. In addition to meeting with Trump, Romney met, while in Las Vegas, with deep-pocketed casino mogul Sheldon Adelson, who single-handedly kept Gingrich's campaign alive with multimillion-dollar donations, CBS News reported.