Republican Rick Santorum won a pair of crucial Deep South primaries yesterday to take control of the party's conservative wing in the presidential race and dealing a severe setback to rival Newt Gingrich.
Mr Santorum narrowly defeated Mr Gingrich and front-runner Mitt Romney to take the Alabama and Mississippi Republican primaries in tight three-way battles that shook up an already volatile Republican presidential race.
With nearly all the votes counted, Mr Santorum won 33 per cent in Mississippi to 31 per cent for Mr Gingrich and 30 per cent for Mr Romney. In Alabama, Mr Santorum had 35 per cent to Mr Gingrich and Mr Romney's 29 per cent. Mr Gingrich was slightly ahead of Romney in Alabama for second place.
"We did it again," Mr Santorum told supporters at a victory rally in Lafayette, Louisiana, the next southern state with a primary, on March 24th.
"We will compete everywhere," said the former Pennsylvania senator who was heavily outspent in both states by Mr Romney. "The time is now for conservatives to pull together. If we nominate a conservative we will beat Barack Obama."
The Republican showdowns in the Deep South, a party stronghold in the general election, had been a crucial test of strength in the battle for conservative supremacy between Mr Santorum and Mr Gingrich.
Mr Gingrich, who represented Georgia in Congress, desperately needed a win in one of the Deep South states to validate his southern-based comeback strategy and keep his struggling campaign afloat.
Pressure will now mount on the former House of Representatives speaker to drop out so Mr Santorum can consolidate conservatives in challenging Romney. But Mr Gingrich repeated his pledge to push on with his campaign to the convention in Tampa.
"The fact that I want to talk about substance is what makes this campaign different from other campaigns and is a reason we're going to go all the way to Tampa to compete for the nomination," he told supporters in a Birmingham hotel ballroom.
Mr Romney has opened a big lead in delegates in the Republican race to pick a challenger to President Barack Obama in the November 6th election, but he has been unable to capture the hearts of conservatives who distrust him for moderate stances he took as governor of liberal Massachusetts.
The results were a setback for Mr Romney, the shaky front-runner who was hoping a breakthrough win in the South would prove his ability to appeal to the party's core conservatives.
The two third-place finishes by the former Massachusetts governor ensured the often shifting race will continue into April or beyond. They also are likely to increase talk that none of the contenders will win the 1,144 delegates needed to clinch the nomination before the contests end in June.
"If you're a front-runner and you keep coming in third, you're not much of a front-runner," Mr Gingrich said. "The elite media's effort to convince the nation that Mitt Romney is inevitable just collapsed."
Reuters