Santorum Easily Wins Caucuses in Kansas Mike Hutmacher/The Wichita Eagle, via Associated Press Santorum supporters hold up campaign posters during the GOP presidential caucus at Century II in downtown Wichita on Saturday. WICHITA, Kan. - Showing his strength among conservative voters in the heartland, Rick Santorum decisively won the Kansas caucuses on Saturday. Mr. Santorum, the former senator from Pennsylvania had won a majority of the votes, was easily outpacing his rivals Newt Gingrich, Mitt Romney and Ron Paul. Clayton Barker, executive director of the Kansas Republican Party, called the state for Mr. Santorum. But the victory comes with an asterisk: his rivals, Mitt Romney and Newt Gingrich, largely bypassed the state, focusing on the greater stakes in Alabama and Mississippi, which hold primaries on Tuesday. Still, Mr. Santorum extended his winning streak of Midwestern and Southern states with the help of evangelical Christians and other voters calling themselves "very conservative," a streak that began in Iowa and included Tennessee and Oklahoma on Super Tuesday. He is expected to garner many of Kansas's 40 delegates. But other candidates may also claim some, including Mr. Romney, who may end up faring well in Kansas City and its suburbs, the more socially moderate parts of the state. After primaries or caucuses in 26 states and territories, Mr. Romney holds a commanding lead in the delegate count. His strategists argue that it is all but impossible for an opponent to capture the 1,144 delegates needed to become the nominee. Mr. Romney, who had 431 delegates going into Saturday's caucuses, more than all three of his rivals combined, added to his total by winning all nine delegates in Guam on Saturday by a unanimous show of hands among all 215 people eligible to vote at the convention. He also won nine delegates from the caucus in the Northern Mariana Islands. The Virgin Islands was also scheduled to caucus on Saturday, and Wyoming, where caucus voting began earlier in the week, wrapped up on Saturday. In early voting, Mr. Romney held the lead there. For Mr. Santorum to overtake Mr. Romney, the Romney campaign has argued that he would need to win 65 percent of remaining delegates, a very long shot. But Mr. Santorum has disputed the math. He has demanded delegates awarded to Mr. Romney in the winner-take-all primaries in Florida and Arizona, 79 in all, be split among the candidates, based on rules of the Republican National Committee. "The R.N.C. is going to be forced to play by the rules whether or not Arizona and Florida want to," Mr. Santorum said on Friday, according to news accounts. Unfortunately for Mr. Santorum, the Republican National Committee has indicated it will not force Florida and Arizona to award their delegates proportionally. Santorum supporters are pressing Mr. Gingrich, whose lone victory on Super Tuesday was in Georgia, to drop out to unite conservatives and stop Mr. Romney. But Mr. Gingrich, whose campaign indicated earlier that he would withdraw if he did not win Alabama and Mississippi, now vows to slog his way to the August convention. "I just want to set this to rest once and for all," Mr. Gingrich told The Associated Press on Friday. We're going to Tampa. Polls in Alabama and Mississippi showed that those races were wide open. Mr. Paul has also vowed to remain in the race up to the convention, even though he has yet to win a state. He aggressively pursued voters in Kansas, where the caucus process favors grass-roots activism. Speaking to nearly 2,000 people at the University of Kansas on Friday evening, Mr. Paul repeated his calls to end to the war in Afghanistan and the Federal Reserve. He was the only candidate in the state on Saturday and hopscotched between several caucus sites to speak. In Wichita, where thousands gathered for what was called the state's largest caucus, Karen Santorum spoke on behalf of her husband, who was campaigning in Missouri. Mrs. Santorum emphasized her husband's dedication to limited government and to being "a greater fighter for life." But the speech was most notable for how personal it was, with Mrs. Santorum offering embarrassed "thank you's" when the crowd applauded and choking up while describing the couple's daughter born with severe birth defects. She said she had not wanted her husband to run for president. "Eventually Rick said, "Honey, can you pray about this? I believe God is calling me." " "What did it for us was two things," she said. 1, believing this was God's will for our family. And No. 2, Obamacare. She used a biblical reference to describe his campaign, calling him the David facing off against many Goliaths. "He's not blown and tossed by the wind of political correctness," she said. He is who he is.