After Super Tuesday, Gingrich still stands in Santorum’s way

Reporting from Washington —  For the last several weeks, Rick Santorum has treated Mitt Romney as his greatest adversary, but along the winding path to the Republican nomination another man has always stood in the way: Newt Gingrich.

The battle now shifts to the Deep South, where Gingrich has laid the groundwork to make his last stand. While Santorum battled Romney in Michigan and then Ohio, the former speaker of the House had the lower Southern states almost to himself.

Santorum punched his ticket out of Super Tuesday with wins in Tennessee, Oklahoma and North Dakota. But Gingrich also got one with a win in his home state of Georgia.

The next two contests are in Alabama and Mississippi, the heart of the Bible Belt. It’s those states where Santorum’s religious undertones, social conservative resume and his “I’m not Romney” stump speeches would be wholeheartedly embraced if not for one handicap: He still doesn’t have the monopoly on far right voters.

With his win in Georgia, Gingrich will try to parlay that into a sweep in Alabama and Mississippi. If he does, suddenly the weeks-long contention that Santorum had narrowed the race to a two-man contest would carry less weight and Gingrich could once again be viewed as a Romney alternative.

That’s how fluid the Republican primary is this cycle.

“The next few days will see another turn in the ever twisting and turning world of Republican primary politics this year,” said Charlie Gerow, a Republican consultant running Gingrich’s campaign in Pennsylvania. “I think Rick may have made a strategic error in believing it was a two-person race when it really was not.”

For a time, Santorum was the front-runner, leading the pack nationally and in many states. He went head to head with Romney. Gingrich made little to no effort to compete in states beyond the South.

Santorum had a stronger than expected night, holding Romney to a near draw in battleground Ohio.

Speaking about 9:30 p.m. in Ohio, the day’s marquee state still too close to call at the time, Santorum still focused his attack lines on Romney, getting some of his loudest applause when, referring to Romney’s Massachusetts healthcare law, he said, “I’ve never been for an individual mandate, at a state or federal level.”

Santorum maintained the populist tone he’d adopted in recent days, focusing on the economy, boasting of the Greatest Generation and owning his upstart, underdog role.

In the approaching Southern contests, not unlike the one Jan. 21 in South Carolina (the only state Gingrich had won before Super Tuesday), social and moral issues will be preeminent.

Romney’s fragile record on those issues, his New England roots and his personal wealth will not play well in the South, said Richard C. Fording, chairman of the political science department at the University of Alabama.

Santorum has the right bona fides to win big there, but Gingrich has the Southern roots.

“Gingrich comes across as someone white Southern males can more identify with. He’s scrappy, he speaks his mind,” Fording said, predicting Gingrich will do well there next week.

Earlier in the day, Santorum’s chief strategist, veteran consultant John Brabender, said Gingrich is a limited candidate who has had success only in one region of the country while Santorum has won or come in a close second in many different parts of the nation.

Brabender spun Gingrich’s decent Super Tuesday showing as good news for Santorum because it pushes back on the prediction that Romney would soon wrap up the nomination, he said.

“I’m sure Romney’s New England Patriots wish they could have [called it over] in the middle of the Super Bowl when they were winning but you have to play the rest of the game?. We’re not even at halftime,” Brabender said.

But what was once a battle for momentum is now a scramble for delegates. With each passing primary election night, it’s become all but impossible for Santorum or Gingrich to catch Romney in the delegate race. Instead their unwavering presence ensures it will take Romney much longer, if he can do it at all, to reach the 1,144 delegates needed to secure the nomination.

Over the next week, with deeply conservative states on deck, Santorum and maybe Gingrich will hold the cards. But in April, the map will be more favorable to the former Massachusetts governor as moderate states like Maryland and Wisconsin, and later Connecticut, New York and Pennsylvania, hold their primaries.

citkowitz@mcall.com