WAUKESHA, Wis. — To hear Mitt Romney and his team tell it, Mr. Romney will undoubtedly be the Republican Party’s presidential nominee.
From Stuart Stevens, one of his top strategists: “Mitt Romney is going to be the nominee of the party.”
And from Mr. Romney himself on Sunday: The nominee “will probably be me.”
The question is when. Campaign aides say Mr. Romney’s sweep of primaries on Tuesday in Maryland, the District of Columbia and Wisconsin could buoy him in the next step of the nominating contest — the April 24 contests in Connecticut, Delaware, New York, Pennsylvania and Rhode Island — and help him effectively shut down his chief rival, Rick Santorum, before May.
“The choice is going to be between Mitt Romney and Barack Obama,” Mr. Stevens said.
“The overall dynamic of this race is it’s going to be an M.R.I. of Barack Obama’s record — it’s not an M.R.I. of the soul,” he added, referring to the comment by David Axelrod, the Obama campaign’s chief strategist, that presidential campaigns are M.R.I.’s of the soul.
“This isn’t going to be about dogs or children’s toys or birth control pills,” Mr. Stevens said. “It’s going to be about the overall direction of the country.”
Mr. Santorum represented Pennsylvania in the House and Senate for 16 years, and he has said he needs to win there. A new Quinnipiac University poll of likely Republican primary voters in the state gave him a six-point edge over Mr. Romney, and Mr. Romney’s aides will not publicly predict that he can beat Mr. Santorum there. But the Romney campaign believes that the result in Wisconsin can help propel Mr. Romney to victory in the popular vote in Pennsylvania, delivering a crushing blow to the Santorum campaign. Even without a victory in Pennsylvania’s primary, Mr. Romney’s aides believe he can win more than half of its 72 delegates. The state’s system for awarding them is complicated, but in every district the Romney campaign recruited slates of delegate candidates — with strong name recognition and the support of the state and local party —who either currently support Mr. Romney or are most likely to support him as the party’s nominee at the national convention.
The campaign already has four paid staffers in the state, based in Harrisburg, and others are headed to Pennsylvania as well. Mr. Romney will spend part of Wednesday and Thursday campaigning there.
Though his aides do not expect to let up for the next three weeks, they also plan to use the break to tweak their operation. Until late March, when Mr. Romney spent the weekend at home in La Jolla, Calif., he had spent nearly every day since Christmas on the road, a breakneck pace his aides hope to scale back; Mr. Romney will take three days off for Easter, and try to work slightly shorter days. He will use the extra time, they said, to read and prepare for the general election.
Mr. Romney will also continue to hold more town-hall-style meetings, with their intimate voter interaction, and add more spontaneous stops at restaurants and local establishments. In Wisconsin, for instance, he and Representative Paul D. Ryan stopped by a diner where Mr. Romney picked up four slices of cherry pie, and two days later they popped into a fast-food restaurant famous for its ButterBurgers.
Mr. Romney already seems to have moved past Mr. Santorum and turned his attention to President Obama. In a speech on Friday in Appleton, Wis., he delivered a lyrical, forceful attack on Mr. Obama’s presidency, and on Tuesday he called on Mr. Obama to take responsibility for the nation’s problems.
“He gets full credit or blame for what’s happened in this economy, and what’s happened to gasoline prices under his watch, and what’s happened to our schools, and what’s happened to our military forces,” Mr. Romney said. “All these things are his responsibility while he’s president.”
He added: “It’s time to have someone who will take responsibility, and if I’m president I will not only get things right again, I’ll take responsibility for my errors and make sure that people understand we will have a president in the White House again where the buck will stop at his desk.”
