Romney is the only one with a sophisticated ground game in Alabama and Mississippi. Romney could seal deal in Dixie

RICHLAND, Miss. — In a topsy-turvy GOP primary, where the unexpected has been the norm, such a final plot twist may be altogether fitting: The Mormon Yankee who thinks cheese grits are a revelation effectively seals the nomination in Alabama and Mississippi.

Mitt Romney has a shot to win both states — polls show him leading or effectively tied in each. But even if the former Massachusetts governor doesn’t take them outright, the apparent resurgence of Newt Gingrich in the Deep South has once again muddled the primary-within-a-primary so that Rick Santorum is going to be denied his wish to get a clean shot at the front-runner.


It’s Gingrich, his candidacy on life support after carrying only his home state among the 10 Super Tuesday states, who is combining regional appeal, his characteristic pugnacity and an aggressive push on gas prices to give Romney the stiffest competition in Mississippi and Alabama.

More important, he’s depriving Santorum of market dominance when it comes to the anybody-but-Mitt crowd and presenting Romney with an opportunity to answer critics who say he can’t appeal to the beating heart of the conservative movement and in the epicenter of the resistance to President Barack Obama.

“I think it’s over if he wins here,” said Mississippi Gov. Phil Bryant of Romney after a Monday rally with comedian Jeff Foxworthy at a trucking company outside Jackson. “At that point how do you go and say, ‘I’m the most conservative candidate’ if you can’t win the most conservative state in the country?”

Bryant is a Romney backer, but such sentiment isn’t difficult to pick up across the two deep red states. If one of the two conservative alternatives can’t decisively defeat the establishment favorite in Mississippi and Alabama, which have veered even more sharply to the right in the Obama era, it’s difficult to imagine either of them constructing an electoral firewall that can halt Romney’s march to Tampa.

“If Newt wins them, he’s still in the race but he doesn’t eliminate Santorum,” said Alabama GOP Chairman Bill Armistead, explaining the two most likely outcomes following a candidate forum at the historic Alabama Theater in Birmingham Monday night. “If [Romney] wins both of them, he’d be very hard to beat — he’ll be on track at that point.”

So, much like the end-game of the college football season, there is more than one scenario here in pigskin-crazy SEC country under which Romney can reach his own equivalent of the BCS title game: He can win out on Tuesday or get some help from the rival of his rival.

Competitive college football is an annual rite of fall here, at least on the Alabama side of the state line, but a pivotal spring primary is something entirely new for Republicans in these parts.

Conversations with party veterans in the two states elicit something close to glee that they are playing such a crucial role in a hotly contested primary at a moment when the GOP has reached its historical zenith in Jackson and Montgomery.

Pete Perry, chairman of the Hinds County GOP in Jackson, said there hadn’t been such a heated Republican primary in Mississippi since July of 1976, when President Gerald Ford and Ronald Reagan both descended on the state’s capital to personally woo the Magnolia State’s 30 delegates to the Kansas City convention.

But then as now, there are gaping fissures here and in Alabama between the November-focused establishment wing of the party and the more ideological-minded grass roots.

Despite his painfully evident lack of comfort in the South (see “cheesy grits”), every Republican statewide official in Jackson is behind Romney, and in Alabama the front-runner enjoys support from such party pillars as House Speaker and former GOP Chairman Mike Hubbard and former Gov. Bob Riley.

Further, Romney is the only candidate who has a sophisticated operation on the ground in the two states — the sort of operatives smart enough to have him call into Birmingham-based Paul Finebaum’s popular sports talk radio show on election eve.

Along with a divided right, the sense of inevitability generated by Romney’s growing delegate lead and the fervent desire among Republicans here to get to the business of unseating Obama — a mere mention of doing so brought hollering Alabama Republicans to their feet Monday night at the candidate’s forum — it all may be enough to propel Romney to a narrow pair of victories.

But the fall-in-line pitch is no easier to make in the tea party era than it was at the dawn of the New Right 35 years ago.

“The average primary voter in Mississippi goes to work and takes their kids to school every day, and I’m not sure the delegate count is very high on their list,” said Mississippi Lt. Gov Tate Reeves. “Frankly, I’m not even sure they care that much. Primary voters in Mississippi tend to vote on issues.”

Outsiders may scoff at the idea that either of these two Republican bulwarks could find any room on the right to grow more conservative, but they have since 2008 and it’s important to view the primary here in that context.

The 2010 midterms saw Republicans in both states make historic gains. They captured state House majorities, unseated every white congressional Democrat in their delegations and prompted a slew of Democratic state legislators to switch parties. 2011 brought forth the largest Republican primary turnout in Mississippi history. Now, emboldened GOP activists expect nothing but conservative fealty from their officeholders.

“Obama has polarized the state; you’re either strongly for him or strongly against him,” said new Mississippi House Speaker Phillip Gunn, the first Republican speaker since Reconstruction. “And that has more solidified our party. The line is drawn much brighter now.”

In practical terms, that means sitting members of Congress in two states that are legendary for valuing incumbency are facing primaries, including a pair of freshman Mississippi House Republicans who rode in on the 2010 wave and knocked off incumbent Democrats. Even Sen. Roger Wicker (R-Miss.), a popular, low-key conservative, is airing TV ads encouraging Republicans to support him in the primary.

Few expect any of the House Republicans in either state to actually lose, but that they’re facing primaries at all speaks to the mind-set of conservative activists picking the GOP presidential favorite.

“There’s such whiplash to Obama that nobody can be too conservative,” said John Ross, a former Alabama GOP executive director. “While some people believe that Romney is going to be the nominee, they also see an opportunity to send a message nationally that we want to go as conservative as we can go. And hes’ still perceived by folks in Alabama as the more moderate of the three.”

Ross, who worked at the state party for the 2010 crimson tidal wave, said “the momentum from 2010 is carrying forward in this race.”

Matthew McDonald, a Mobile lawyer and veteran Republican strategist, noted that among conservatives there are “a lot of doubts about Romney’s core. “They’re not willing to beat Obama with just anybody. The hate Obama, but they also hate the idea of electing a squishy Republican.”

But Hubbard, the House speaker, said that was changing in the campaign’s final days and that voters were now, as the old saying goes, looking not to send a message but rather to send them a president.

“I think people are turning toward Romney because they really feel like he is our best chance to win in November,” said Hubbard, recalling a University of South Alabama alumni event he attended in Mobile where individuals were approaching him to say they were growing weary of the party’s in-fighting. “I’ve had people say, ‘What in the world are we doing? We’re going to screw it up in November.’ ”

It’s places such as Mobile where Romney will have to perform strongly if he is to pull out a victory Tuesday. His formula in both states is remarkably similar: run well along the less socially conservative Gulf Coast, clean up in the largest city and its heavily GOP suburbs (Birmingham and Jefferson County in Alabama, Jackson and Hinds, Madison and Rankin counties in Mississippi) and pull votes out of the educated population hubs in the northern part of the state (Huntsville in Alabama and DeSoto County, just south of Memphis, in Mississippi).

Old Mississippi hands note that GOP primaries in their state can be won by candidates who win only a handful of counties, provided they’re in vote-rich areas, and point to Sen. Thad Cochran’s initial primary in 1978.

“It’s going to be very difficult for us to win the state on Tuesday,” said Reeves, lowering expectations. “But I feel a lot better about our chances than I did two or three weeks ago.”

Bryant acknowledged that they were “on the edge” and had an “outside chance at winning.”

But the caution establishment figures are taking in trying to balance in nudging voters toward Romney without pushing them was on display in his remarks at the Foxworthy event.

“We have a chance to make history,” the governor said, noting that he believes Romney is going to be the nominee and the next president.

But, he quickly added, “I’m not telling you what to do, I’m telling you what I’m gonna do.”