While Texas’s delayed primaries meant it did not become a fiercely fought battleground for GOP presidential candidates, the state does now enjoy the distinction of handing Mitt Romney those final delegates he needed to strip the words “presumptive nominee” from in front of his name.

Romney scooped up a full 71 percent of the vote in Texas, trailed by Ron Paul, our native son, who won ten percent of the vote.”I am humbled to have won enough delegates to become the Republican Party’s 2012 presidential nominee,” Romney said in a statement.

Daily Intel‘s Noreen Malone paused for a moment Tuesday afternoon to mark the retirement of the “presumptive nominee” title:

At some point this evening, under a Texas moon, Mitt Romney will finally have enough delegates to officially clinch the Republican nomination for president. This means lots of things, but most importantly for those of us making our living writing things about the news, it means no longer having to come up with synonyms for the word unofficial. Assumed nominee, soon-to-be nominee, all-but-guaranteed nominee, nominee apparent — we can put all of these tortured phrases to rest. Good riddance to overhyphenated rubbish.

But we’ll pour one out for the phrase “presumptive nominee,” which, in addition to being more elegant than the aforementioned versions, took on its own particular poetry when applied to Mitt Romney. … There’s also something slightly brattier about the word “presumptive” than the other options; it makes it sound almost as if a charmless Eloise were demanding the stage in Tampa Bay this August and stamping her foot until she got it. Or, perhaps, the wealthy dauphin of a famous political family demanding his civic inheritance be paid out already.

Texas’s GOP presidential primary was also decisive last election cycle, as Richard Dunham pointed out at the Houston Chronicle. “Romney became the second consecutive Republican standard-bearer to clinch the nomination in Texas. Arizona Sen. John McCain’s Texas victory over former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee ensured his victory in 2008,” Dunham wrote. That primary, however, was held much earlier in the primary season, on March 4, 2008.