|
US Republican front-runner Mitt Romney cruised to an easy victory in Nevada on Saturday, crushing his three remaining rivals and taking firm command of the party's volatile presidential nominating race. With 10 percent of the vote counted, Romney had 48 percent, more than double that of each of his closest rivals, former US house speaker Newt Gingrich and US Representative Ron Paul. The victory was Romney's second in a row and his third in the first five contests in the state-by-state battle to find a Republican challenger to President Barack Obama in November's general election. It propels him into the next contests - in Minnesota, Colorado and Missouri on Tuesday - with a big wave of momentum. Romney, a former Massachusetts governor, took control of the Nevada contest early after recapturing his front-runner status with a convincing win over Gingrich in Florida last Tuesday. He benefited from a huge financial and organizational edge in Nevada, which he won with 51 percent of the vote during his failed 2008 presidential bid. With a faltering economy and a bigbloc of Mormon voters, the state was friendly terrain for Romney, a Mormon and former head of a private equity firm. Romney stressed his business background as a cure for the state's ailing economy, which suffers from the country's highest state unemployment rate, 12.6 percent in December, and the highest home foreclosure rate. | 
