A week after ending his own presidential bid, former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney yesterday endorsed John McCain, his onetime bitter rival, all but assuring the Arizona senator will have the delegates he needs to secure the Republican nomination.
The former adversaries were all smiles at Romney's former campaign headquarters in the North End, where Romney gave McCain his blessing in front of a giant American flag. It made for an odd tableau, for they spent much of the past 18 months at each other's throats - McCain had likened Romney to a pig and called him a flip-flopper; Romney dubbed McCain a dishonest liberal as recently as 10 days ago.
Both sought to paper over that acrimony yesterday, saying their shared fear of Islamic terrorism and of the Democrats winning the White House dwarfed even major disagreements on immigration and other issues.
"It's time for us to put aside our differences and focus on the places where we think we have common ground, and to select our nominee and to go forward on a unified basis," Romney said at a brief news conference. "Right now the Democrats are fighting. Let's come together and make progress while they're fighting."
McCain acknowledged that it had been a "hard campaign," but he said that jousting with Romney had made him tougher.
"There's always strong disagreement, but it was always characterized by respect and appreciation for Governor Romney, and I will always hold that," McCain said. "I respect him enormously."
Romney and McCain took only two questions and then walked off as reporters yelled "Is this the ticket?" - a reference to whether McCain would consider Romney as his running mate. They did not answer.
In endorsing McCain, Romney asked the approximately 280 delegates he collected from primaries and caucuses to back the senator, a tally that would put McCain very close to the 1,191 delegate threshold he needs to cross to officially win the nomination.
McCain, whose willingness to buck GOP orthodoxy has cost him support from the party's base, is still struggling to win over skeptical conservatives, many of whom remain unwilling to embrace his candidacy. Romney had many of those voters in his corner, but he was never able to fully align the right behind him, either, so it is unclear how much political weight his endorsement will carry.
Former Arkansas governor Mike Huckabee, who trailed McCain by 600 delegates even before Romney's endorsement, said yesterday that he is not convinced all of Romney's delegates will support McCain. Many of them, he suggested, will support him instead.
As long as his supporters want him to stay in the race and promote conservative principles, Huckabee told CNN, he plans to do so until someone officially reaches the delegate threshold.
"It's not just out of stubbornness," he said.
Huckabee also said he did not actively seek Romney's endorsement, and downplayed its significance.
"There's a lot of, 'Me, too,' going on now in the Republican Party," he said. "There's still a lot of Republicans around the country who have yet to vote."
Romney halted his campaign last week after an underwhelming performance on Super Tuesday, Feb. 5, all but put the nomination out of his reach. He told a gathering of conservatives in Washington on Feb. 7 that it was time for him to "stand aside" and let McCain begin to build a general election campaign focused on defeating the Democrats this fall.
That expression of magnanimity - along with each Republican's glowing words for the other yesterday - stands in stark contrast to nearly everything they have uttered about each other since the beginning of the campaign.
Romney repeatedly attempted to derail McCain's campaign by casting him as a pariah in his own party, attacking McCain's support for campaign finance reform and measures offering illegal immigrants a path to legal status, and his early votes against President Bush's tax cuts.
"On issue after issue, he is out of the mainstream of the Republican Party," Romney told reporters in Nashville on Feb. 4, arguing that McCain was little different than Hillary Clinton or Barack Obama, the Democratic presidential front-runners.
Later the same day in Long Beach, Calif., Romney cited a litany of issues - from drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge to tax cuts to campaign finance - on which he said McCain was dead wrong.
"He's going to be rejected by the American people," he said.
McCain frequently dismissed Romney as a flagrant opportunist, often delivering stinging one-liners about Romney's shifts on major issues. "Ronald Reagan would not approve of someone who changes their positions depending on what the year is," McCain said during a Jan. 30 debate in Simi Valley, Calif.
But yesterday was a different day, even as both acknowledged they still held many differing views.
Romney said that McCain is quite different from Clinton or Obama, saying he understands the importance of keeping American troops in Iraq and would nobly lead the war on terror.
"This is a man capable of leading our country at a dangerous hour," Romney said. "With their rhetoric, our Democratic opponents are very skilled at striking heroic poses. But with our Republican nominee, we're going to offer America the real thing."
McCain said he looks forward to campaigning with Romney in the months ahead, and that Romney has a bright future in the Republican Party. Aides to the two, after having spent many months trying to put one another out of work, hugged and chatted amiably.
Michael Levenson of the Globe staff contributed to this report. Scott Helman can be reached at shelman@globe.com.
