From Mobile, Alabama -
The southern states of Alabama and Mississippi have unexpectedly become a big battleground in the Republican race for the White House, as Mitt Romney, Newt Gingrich and Rick Santorum elbow their way for advantage in two primaries that were afterthoughts just a few weeks ago.
After winning his home state of Georgia on Super Tuesday, Gingrich has been doing one thing and one thing only for the past week - traveling the roads of the Yellowhammer and Magnolia states, looking for victories to keep him in the Republican race for the White House.
Gingrich has played to the South in Alabama and Mississippi, sprinkling his stump speeches with red meat lines that show he knows his audience.
"No judge, no bureaucrat, no politician can come between you and God," he said at one stop, as he took aim squarely at the current administration and President Obama, calling him a "genuine radical."
"I will run a campaign in which people will get to choose between the radical writing of Saul Alinsky, and the Constitution and Declaration of Independence," Gingrich said to even bigger cheers in Mississippi.
As he did in Georgia last week, Gingrich has crisscrossed these two southern states like a guy who is running for state Agriculture Commissioner, focusing for the most part on his call for more energy exploration as a way to bring down gasoline prices.
"Newt equals $2.50 a gallon of gas," Gingrich says with a big smile.
Polls have shown a variety of different outcomes, but all of them have Gingrich in the mix, which is just what he wants, as he tries to prevent Rick Santorum making this a two man race.
As for Mitt Romney, he spent his birthday weekend off the campaign trail, watching his delegate count go up and wondering if he could possibly grab a victory in the Deep South, something that might bring calls for his main opponents to get out of the race.
Meanwhile, Santorum split his time the past four days with visits to Mississippi, Alabama, Missouri and Kansas, registering a big win in Kansas on Saturday, taking 33 of the 40 delegates up for grabs in the Sunflower State.
One note on how that happened is a reminder of why the rules of each state are at times different and so important to understand - Santorum had over 50% of the vote, but there was no "winner take all" provision in the Kansas Caucus like in other states.
Instead, if only one candidate had over 20% of the vote, then all of the players would get delegates handed out proportionately according to how much of the vote they received.
But when Mitt Romney barely edged above that 20% threshold, two candidates were now above 20%, and so that meant Santorum and Romney divided up the delegates under a different formula.
In other words, because Romney surged a bit in the more urban areas outside of Kansas City, that gave Santorum 9 more delegates and stripped away any delegates from Ron Paul and Newt Gingrich.
If you think that sounds odd, then consider the Virgin Islands GOP Caucus.
The initial results from the Virgin Islands had the straw poll going 29% to Ron Paul and 26% to Mitt Romney in what would be Paul's first victory of the 2012 race.
But, because of the peculiar delegate selection rules which allowed each person voting to cast votes for six different delegate candidates, Romney then went on to win 7 of the delegates, with one going to Paul and one staying uncommitted.
Paul's backers howled in disbelief on the internet, sending me angry missives about how I wasn't properly reporting the results which had been sent out by the Associated Press and the Virgin Islands GOP.
But that's what the numbers were, another example that left Paul forces frustrated in this year's race for the White House.
Overall, Romney was able to offset Santorum's big day in Kansas by winning the 9 delegates from Guam and the 9 delegates from the Northern Mariana Islands; he had dispatched his oldest son Matt there to do some in person politicking - and it paid off.
Note that Matt Romney is also going to stop in Hawaii, which has its caucuses on Tuesday; Ron Paul was also sending family members and Rick Santorum flew his daughter Elizabeth to Hawaii to stump for votes as well.
Every delegate does count when you are trying to get 1,144.
The latest delegate count from the AP is Romney454, Santorum 217, Gingrich 107 and Paul 47.
We'll see how things change on Tuesday.
