Republican frontrunner Mitt Romney squared off with US President Barak Obama on Wednesday – and the economy was front and center as November looms.
Romney’s new focus came after he trounced his main rival Rick Santorum in Maryland and the US capital Washington – and won a tighter but more important race in Wisconsin – on Tuesday.
"We won them all! This really has been quite a night," Romney told supporters in Wisconsin, where he won by nearly five percentage points.
"We've won a great victory tonight in our campaign to restore the promise of America," he said.
The triple victory gave Romney enough confidence to shift his attention away from his GOP rivals to challenging US President Obama in November.
Analysts say he is already acting like the nominee, training his political fire on Obama's "government-centered society" and no longer mentioning his Republican rivals on the campaign trail.
Obama also appeared to step into campaign mode on Tuesday, rebuking Romney in a speech and calling him to account for supporting a "radical" budget and "championing social Darwinism."
Romney fired back, signaling his eagerness to preemptively move past the primaries and square off with Obama.
"There's no question that under this president, this recovery has been the most tepid, the most weak, the most painful since the beginning of our recorded economic history," Romney said on the Sean Hannity radio show.
Romney must still overcome skepticism from conservatives, who fear that the ex-governor of liberal Massachusetts will tack to the left once he wins the nomination in order to appeal to independents.
But the Tuesday trifecta put Romney more than halfway to the magic number of 1144 delegates needed to be crowned the Republican flag-bearer at the party's national convention in Tampa, Florida in August.
And exit poll data from Maryland suggested Romney is turning a corner with lower-income Americans and the most conservative of voters, who his chief rival Santorum has counted on throughout the campaign.
Romney has now won 24 out of 37 contests and amassed some 625 delegates of the 1144 needed.
Santorum has racked up 11 victories, but has well under half Romney's delegate count.
Prominent Romney supporter Tim Pawlenty, a former Minnesota governor, told reporters the nominations race "for all practical purposes is over."
"Let's face it. Mitt Romney is going to be the nominee," he said.