BIRMINGHAM — Rick Santorum scored a pair of Deep South Republican primary triumphs Tuesday night, delivering a crippling blow to the presidential hopes of Newt Gingrich.
In Alabama and Mississippi, two states where Gingrich had campaigned heavily as a grits-eating, God-fearing Southerner, Santorum triumphed in tight three-way races, defying polls and positioning himself firmly as the chief conservative alternative to former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney.
“We did it again,” Santorum told cheering supporters in Lafayette, La.
“The time is now for conservatives to pull together,” he said. “The time is now to make sure — to make sure — that we have the best chance to win this election. And the best chance to win this election is to nominate a conservative. We are going to win this nomination before that convention.”
He urged conservatives to unite to defeat Romney, the former Massachusetts governor who leads in the competition for delegates.
“I don’t think there was a single poll that had me close to winning Mississippi,” Santorum said.
Romney, en route from Missouri to New York for a series of fundraisers today, did not plan to appear in public Tuesday evening.
His campaign downplayed Santorum’s wins and Romney’s finish.
The outcome does not change much in the delegate race as the three candidates will come away with nearly equivalent slices of the two states’ 90-delegate pie.
Santorum’s performance could help shove Gingrich out of the race as it denied him his best opportunity for a rallying point, but Gingrich maintains his presence — even if he continues to lose — will keep Romney from the required 1,144 guaranteed delegates before the August Republican convention in Tampa.
In a suburban Birmingham hotel ballroom, Gingrich appeared shaken but defiant as he congratulated Santorum and insisted the real loser Tuesday was Romney.
“I emphasize going to Tampa because one of the things tonight proved is that the elite media’s effort to convince the nation that Mitt Romney is inevitable just collapsed,” Gingrich said. “The fact is in both states the conservative candidates got nearly 70 percent of the vote, and if you’re the front-runner and you keep coming in third you’re not much of a front-runner.”
Gingrich, whose only wins have come in Georgia and South Carolina, devised a Deep South strategy, hoping he could regain momentum in a race that slipped away from him in February as Santorum picked up victories. Heading into Tuesday’s contests, Gingrich was a distant third in delegates, according to an Associated Press tally.
All three major candidates spent significant time and money in both Southern states.
Texas Rep. Ron Paul did not compete in either and finished a distant fourth.
Hawaii and American Samoa also held caucuses Tuesday, but the results were not available as of press time.
Gingrich was the only candidate to stick around either one of the Deep South neighbors to await results. Santorum gave a speech from Louisiana – which votes March 24 – and Romney campaigned in Missouri ahead of Saturday’s caucuses there.
“The sun comes up tomorrow and we go to Chicago,” Gingrich spokesman R.C. Hammond said. Hammond last week had said Gingrich needed to win both to remain a credible candidate. He changed his tune Tuesday night as results were coming in, offering a tongue-in-cheek assessment of his own remarks: “Whoever said that should be flogged.”
Romney spokesman Eric Fehrnstrom said on CNN Tuesday that the campaign’s goal always was to win one-third of all delegates, including those in Hawaii, and “I think we will exceed that goal.”
He said, “I don’t think anyone expected Mitt to win Alabama or Mississippi. As Mitt said early on, this was an away game. I think that was true.”
Fehrnstrom added that the delegate math remains impossible for Santorum. If anyone knows a way for Santorum to reach 1,144 delegates, “I’m all ears,” he said.
The Gingrich campaign, emphasizing his plan to press on, released a schedule for a two-day visit to Illinois, a state that votes March 20, and said Gingrich will campaign in Louisiana on Friday. Romney is expected to perform well in Illinois, though, and Hammond said the trip will focus on raising money. The campaign plans to compete hard in the Louisiana primary.
The Gingrich campaign insists the race is still evolving. A memo to reporters from senior adviser Randy Evans and political director Martin Baker declared Louisiana to be “halftime” in the nomination process, as that is the point when half of the Republican convention delegates will have been firmly pledged to one of the candidates.
“The sequencing and pace of the second half favors Newt,” the Gingrich advisers wrote. “When this process started, Newt’s team had two goals: block an early Romney nomination; and plan for a sequenced and paced second half.”
The “second half” includes larger gaps between contests, which Evans and Baker argue allow for more retail campaigning and less reliance on an expensive advertising strategy that favors Romney.
The Gingrich advisers argued that the campaign would compete in places like the District of Columbia — where Santorum is not on the ballot — Maryland and Callista Gingrich’s home state of Wisconsin, even though Gingrich has fared poorly outside the South.
More demographically favorable states do not vote until the end of May, though: Arkansas, Kentucky and Texas — a 155-delegate bonanza.
“This race is not going to be won or lost over backroom deals or endless and mind-numbing discussions in the media over delegate counts,” the advisers conclude.
“This race is going to be decided by a big debate — a big choice — among GOP primary voters about the future of the Republican Party; what it stands for, and which candidate has the most compelling vision and most credibility to carry forward a conservative governing agenda. That is the debate Newt is going to win, and with it, the nomination and the election,” they said.
Gingrich acknowledged in his speech that there would be more calls for him to drop out and “the biggest challenge will be raising money” in the coming days. But he said small-dollar supporters continue to inspire him and that once people realize Romney’s flaws “we’ll be in a whole new conversation.”
The Associated Press and Washington Post contributed to this article.
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