For Romney and Republican Committee, a Waiting Game On the afternoon of March 5, 2008, John McCain did what Mitt Romney is still unable to do - he officially took hold of the Republican Party's political apparatus as he shifted to the battle against an as-yet unknown Democratic opponent for president. Having collected the delegates required to clinch the nomination the night before, Mr. McCain received a brief Rose Garden endorsement by the then-unpopular President George W. Bush. Then, Mr. McCain and his top campaign aides huddled for more than two hours inside the headquarters of the Republican National Committee on 1st Street in Washington. When the meeting was over, several of Mr. McCain's top aides were installed at the senior levels of the committee, including Frank Donatelli, a McCain friend, who became the deputy chairman, and Carly Fiorina, who helped supervise fund-raising. "We are committed to working very closely together," Mr. McCain said that day. Our people, on a daily basis, will be integrated with the R.N.C. We have a lot of work to do, ranging from raising money to organizing to re-energizing our base to identifying voter groups and leaders in various communities and states throughout America. Mr. Romney is already a month behind Mr. McCain's schedule. As he resumes campaigning after a brief Easter break, he has all but shifted to a general election message and is preparing to raise money for the battle against President Obama. And the Republican National Committee has begun to prepare for the general election campaign, thanks in part to a financial turnaround. As Nicholas Confessore reported last week in The Times, the committee is already using its cash to begin opening the network of state offices the party - and its eventual nominee - will need. But Mr. Romney still can't officially claim to be the party's nominee. And as a result, the officials at the committee, including its chairman, Reince R. Priebus, are bound by tradition to remain neutral. The question is: How long can that situation continue? Because of new primary rules that were meant to give more states a say in picking the party's nominee, it could be weeks - if not months - before Mr. Romney crosses the threshold of 1,144 delegates and officially clinches the nomination. Can the party - and Mr. Romney - really afford to wait until May, or even June, to merge their operations? For now, Mr. Romney's high command in Boston can only make educated guesses about the resources that Mr. Priebus and his aides have at his disposal. The specifics won't come until staffs of the two operations can work openly together. Likewise, there are limits to how far Mr. Priebus can go in setting up a general election operation because he knows that Mr. Romney's team will have ideas of its own about how best to go about trying to defeat Mr. Obama in the fall. The key date to watch may be that of the Pennsylvania primary, on April 24. Rick Santorum, Mr. Romney's chief rival, has pretty much said he must win the state he once represented in Congress to have a realistic hope of continuing his challenge to Mr. Romney's claim to the nomination. Officials at the Republican National Committee are watching carefully, and the outcome could shape how the relationship between the committee and Mr. Romney proceeds. Here are three possible scenarios for the post-Pennsylvania period: If Mr. Santorum wins the Pennsylvania primary, giving his campaign a new reason to keep going, it could mean that the committee remains neutral until Mr. Romney locks up the nomination. Mr. Priebus and other top committee officials have to be careful not to seem cavalier about the primary process, especially when some of the most conservative elements of the party's base are already suspicious of the Washington establishment. Many of Mr. Santorum's supporters (and, to a lesser degree, those backing Newt Gingrich and Ron Paul) could get very angry at the committee if it is seen as moving too quickly to declare the race over. That could affect turnout and fund-raising - two things that Mr. Priebus has to watch carefully. If Mr. Santorum loses Pennsylvania narrowly and vows to stay in the race, it is possible that committee officials will find a way to begin coordinating with Mr. Romney without the kind of formal ceremony that they offered Mr. McCain four years ago. One possibility is that Mr. Priebus could publicly declare that he's ready to start working with Mr. Romney's campaign to plan for the fall campaign, but also offer the same opportunities to Mr. Santorum and the other candidates. That would give the party committee's staff and Mr. Romney's Boston operation the cover they need to begin discussing logistics without completely alienating Mr. Santorum's supporters. In such a scenario, the committee would not fully recognize Mr. Romney as the party's nominee until he accumulated 1,144 delegates - enough to secure the nomination at the party's national convention in Tampa this summer. But the planning could begin in the meantime. If Mr. Santorum loses the Pennsylvania primary badly - or if he should drop out before the primary takes place - the Republican National Committee could decide to ignore the delegate math and simply treat Mr. Romney as the nominee. There is no legal requirement that the party wait for Mr. Romney to accumulate more than half of the delegates. And if Mr. Priebus and the other committee officials see the campaign clock ticking down, they may decide it's worth the risk of angering some conservatives. How Mr. Romney and Mr. Priebus decide to work together will be as important as when the merger happens. In some years, the Republican presidential nominee has all but taken over the committee. Other times, the committee and the campaigns have worked together - for better or worse - in an uneasy partnership. But however the Romney campaign and the Republican National Committee work it out, the merger has to happen eventually. And from the perspective of veteran Republicans who have watched the process unfold in the past, the sooner the better. Follow Michael D. Shear on Twitter at @shearm.