Mitt Romney came in third in Mississippi and Alabama Tuesday, an embarrassing finish after having campaigned hard and spent harder in both states.
But Team Romney doesn’t seem to think that matters — they note their guy is still leading in the delegate fight, which is all that counts in the end.
These dueling assessments of the battle for Dixie will define the race as it takes a pivotal turn to Illinois.
Democrats gleefully taunted Romney Wednesday morning over his “Dixie Debacle,” and pointed to a slew of outside assessments to back up their point.
“Mitt Romney’s losses in Alabama and Mississippi underscore a stark reality: The core of his party does not want him,” wrote the AP. “And that lingering conservative dissatisfaction — on display Tuesday night — threatens to follow Romney into a general election matchup against a Democratic president whose ability to inspire his base is not in question.”
No matter how his campaign frames his delegate gains, there is certainly a lot of egg on Romney’s face Wednesday: His super PAC spent big money to make him competitive in Mississippi and Alabama, and Romney himself barnstormed both states, and even predicted a win in Alabama at one point.
Coming in third — and losing among some of the rich, older voters that had been his base — is a stumbling block he could have done without heading into Illinois.
But the fact that the DNC is still eager to point out his struggles, instead of knocking the supposedly ascendant Rick Santorum (or the listing Newt Gingrich for that matter) proves Romney’s point to some degree: He is still the frontrunner for his party’s presidential nomination, and it’s incredibly difficult to envision Santorum catching him.
“While Rick Santorum is taking a victory lap after Alabama and Mississippi, the fact remains that nothing has changed or advanced his chances of getting the Republican nomination,” Rick Beeson, Romney’s political director, said in a statement. “Tuesday’s results actually increased Governor Romney’s delegate lead, while his opponents only moved closer to their date of mathematical elimination.”
Beeson noted that Romney leads his opponents in the delegate count “by a two-to-one margin.” Santorum has made his case that the math isn’t as important as Romney says it is, but even his campaign has admitted that a Santorum nomination would require a brokered convention.
Brad Todd, a GOP consultant with extensive experience in Mississippi, Alabama and the rest of the South, cautioned that Southerners will turn out for Romney against Obama, and his failure to rally them in the primaries won’t impact that at all. Todd worked with the Romney campaign in 2008 but is unaligned this year.
“The spring is about a beauty contest and the fall is about putting out a fire,” Todd said. “And so, you know, the paradigm will shift and there is no doubt that everybody who voted last night in Mississippi and Alabama will vote for the Republican nominee, no matter who it is. Even if it’s kooky Ron Paul.”
