Voters in two of the states composing the heart of the modern Republican Party are casting their ballots Tuesday in yet another high-stakes GOP primary battle. Both Rick Santorum and Newt Gingrich are looking to contests in Alabama and Mississippi to finally conclude the argument over who should carry the banner in a one-on-one race with Mitt Romney.
And Romney, the frontrunner, is hoping a win in either state — an "away game" for his campaign, he's acknowledged — that would not only further his advantage in the delegate race, but also quiet about his ability to win over the party's conservatives.
All three candidates have spent the bulk of their time since last week's Super Tuesday contests in Mississippi and Alabama, while Texas Rep. Ron Paul — who's yet to win any nominating contest — has sat out them out.
Few reliable polls have been released from either state, though most of the data has pointed to a race closely divided between the three men competing in the two states.
Santorum and Gingrich have campaigned the most aggressively, and the former Pennsylvania senator is hoping that wins in both states would essentially force the former House speaker out of the campaign.
"People of Mississippi and Alabama want a conservative, for sure; they want to elect a conservative nominee," Santorum said Monday in Biloxi, Miss., "But if they want a conservative nominee for sure, they can do that by lining up behind us and making this race clearly a two-person race outside of the South, which it already is, but it can make it even more demonstrative."
Gingrich has been absolutely defiant about the possibility of folding his campaign if he were to lose Mississippi or Alabama — two states his campaign called "must-win" contests if he's to remain a viable candidate.
"I just want to set this to rest once and for all. We’re going to Tampa," Gingrich told The Associated Press, referring to the August Republican National Convention in Florida.
Gingrich has refocused his campaign around a pledge to bring the price of gasoline back to $2.50 a gallon if he's elected, a response to soaring prices at the pump. He's also leaned on his Southern roots after having won Georgia, the state where he had been elected to Congress, ahead of Super Tuesday.
Through it all, Romney has campaigned tentatively in both states in an apparent bid to pick up delegates, if not an all-out win in either Mississippi or Alabama.
"We're closing the deal, state by state, delegate by delegate," Romney said on Monday morning, his 65th birthday, on FOX News.
The former Massachusetts governor maintained a limited schedule in both states so as to avoid raising expectations as to how he might finish. Both states are bastions of the downscale, evangelical Christian voters with whom Romney has tended to struggle with this campaign cycle.
Related: First Thoughts: Why Romney could lose (and also win)
That's why a Romney victory in either state would go lengths toward helping him actually close the deal within all corners of the GOP. While the former governor might be the beneficiary of Santorum and Gingrich splitting the vote, the primary electorate in both Mississippi and Alabama are so deeply conservative that it would add a new imprimatur to Romney's candidacy. (Moreover, Gingrich asserted on Sunday that Romney wouldn't finish above third in either state, setting a low bar for the campaign's frontrunner to clear.)
A pro-Romney super PAC has also spent millions in both states to boost Romney, whose campaign has sought to project a degree of inevitability about his candidacy related to his advantage, so far, in tabulations of how many delegates he and the other candidates have won so far.
Both Gingrich and Santorum have protested Romney's delegate math, and have released their own tabulations in recent days. But those scenarios tend to rely more on outcomes in which Romney fails to secure the necessary 1,144 delegates — thus leading to a contested convention in August where, presumably, one of Romney's conservative challengers might be able to wrest away the nomination.
But Alabama and Mississippi could prove to be the gateway to either Romney's nomination, or, more likely, add certainty as to whether Santorum or Gingrich is destined to become his chief alternative.
Each of the three candidates have turned to cultural cues in their bid for votes in both states.
Gingrich emerged over the weekend in a shirt bearing the logo of Bassmaster, the fishing company whose founder endorsed the former speaker this weekend. He also chided Romney's reference on Friday to having eaten grits — an unofficial delicacy in the South.
"Unlike one of my competitors, I have had grits before,” Gingrich joked before a crowd in Birmingham, Ala., “That may explain as much as anything why everybody in Alabama and Mississippi ought to vote for me.”
Santorum, meanwhile, brought members of the Duggar Family — an evangelical Christian clan who stars in a TLC reality show — to campaign for him in Alabama, as they had done in other primary states. He also won the endorsement of NFL quarterback Philip Rivers, an Alabama native.
Not to be outdone, Romney spent his birthday morning with comedian Jeff Foxworthy, the creator of the "You might be a redneck if ... " line of jokes, at a rain-soaked stop in Mobile, Ala.
"Got a guy here, I think you all know pretty darn well. He's got this comedy show, blue collar comedy, that show, 'Are You Smarter Than a Fifth Grader?' Any fifth graders? We are going to have a test here. If you spend more money than every year than you take in, is that good for the economy?" Romney asked the crowd to a chorus of noes. "Even the fifth graders could figure that one out."
