Mitt Romney tries to break Southern losing streak



Mitt Romney speaks at a campaign rally. | AP Photo

Romney strategists are reluctant to admit that he will never be a Southern kind of guy. | AP Photo
By ALEXANDER BURNS | 3/8/12 4:28 AM EST

Mitt Romney and his super PAC are pouring energy, money and manpower into next week’s Alabama and Mississippi primaries, attempting to gain a firmer upper hand over his challengers and perhaps finally clock a victory in a competitive Southern contest.

To win either of those deepest of Deep South locales would be to reverse what has become, for Romney supporters, one of the most dismaying and embarrassing trends of the 2012 primaries: that Romney could become the GOP nominee, but only after being roundly and repeatedly rejected in the party’s geographic core.

Even as his campaign argues that Romney has amassed a decisive delegate lead over his GOP opponents, his weakness across the South remains a glaring deficiency. The only Southern state Romney has taken so far is Virginia, where Newt Gingrich and Rick Santorum failed to qualify for the ballot. Everywhere else — from South Carolina in January to Tennessee and Georgia this week — Romney has lost by significant margins, getting routed with voters who call themselves “very conservative” and among the white evangelicals who make up much of the GOP base, according to exit polls.

Team Romney could well counter, “So what?” Both Alabama and Mississippi distribute delegates proportionally and it’s unlikely that either Gingrich or Santorum can make a serious dent in Romney’s delegate lead. In these states, as well as the others Romney has already lost, there’s no doubt that he would win them as the nominee.

Even if the delegate math doesn’t add up, a Santorum win in these states — or the Kansas caucuses this weekend — would further underscore Romney’s problems among conservatives and give the former Pennsylvania senator additional energy as the primary drags onward.

There are plenty of signs that Romney strategists are reluctant to accept that their candidate will never be a Southern kind of guy. Advisers have been eyeing areas where his establishment-businessman profile might have appeal as the super PAC Restore Our Future has softened up both states by pummeling Romney’s opponents on the air.

In other words, they’re doing what it would take to win there — if winning is even an option.

“We’re an underdog. But we are an organized underdog who’s got a base that’s excited here in Mississippi, so we have a shot,” said Austin Barbour, the Mississippi Republican strategist supporting Romney.

Though the March 13 states look like more hospitable terrain for Santorum and Gingrich, Barbour suggested that a full airing of Romney’s record — focused on his electability, private-sector background and fiscal management in Massachusetts — could win over voters in urban and suburban areas, along the Gulf Coast and in the fast-growing Memphis suburbs in the northern part of the state.

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