Sen. Jim DeMint (R-S.C.) said Sunday that he would not endorse a presidential candidate before his state’s primary on Saturday, saying he would instead concentrate his efforts on electing a more conservative Senate.



DeMint said he was comfortable with all of the Republican candidates, and that he expected the party and its voters to unite behind whoever was selected to face President Obama this fall.



“The best thing I can do for the next president is to help deliver a conservative Senate. Because it’s the Congress that does the legislation, that does the budgets,” DeMint said on CBS’s “Face the Nation.”



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“And if we send good legislation over to any of these candidates, I think they’ll sign it."

DeMint’s Senate Conservatives Fund came under some criticism from Republicans for its work in 2010, when it backed more conservative candidates in primaries who ended up falling to Democrats in the general election.

The South Carolina senator also said Sunday that he was not concerned that conservative voters in his state, and around the country, did not seem to be coalescing behind a single candidate yet.

And he seemed to dismiss the charge made by Newt Gingrich and Rick Santorum that Mitt Romney, the current front-runner for the nomination, would not be able to articulate a clear distinction between himself and Obama.

“I think Republicans are going to be very united,” DeMint said.



“What I hope is that our eventual nominee will recognize the strengths of the other candidates and take a lot of those ideas and incorporate it into a platform that will unite us,” he later added. “And I think they will.”