The conventional wisdom as polls opened in Alabama and Mississippi was that Santorum would likely be the big loser by failing to beat Romney or snuff Gingrich. That scenario made sense: Santorum was not only flagging in the polls, but had a decided financial disadvantage in these two states. (His super PAC trailed Team Romney in media buys by a seven-to-one ratio in Alabama and a five-to-one margin in Mississippi; it also had fewer ads than Gingrich ‘s super PAC). But now Gingrich is toast, whether he immediately accepts it or not, and Romney has failed to seal the deal. It seems the long-awaited two-candidate race has finally arrived. 
 
 To be sure, Romney has probably won a majority of the night’s delegates (thanks to proportional systems in Alabama and Mississippi, and likely victories in the late-night caucuses in Hawaii and American Samoa). But as on Super Tuesday, Mitt’s big problem was his failure to meet rising expectations. He managed to finish third in both Mississippi and Alabama, despite his advantages in money and endorsements—and his apparent momentum (leading several late polls in both states, and appearing to win Mississippi even tonight in early exit polls). 
 
 Romney’s night isn’t quite so discouraging if you look at demographics. Romney did relatively well among evangelical voters (who made up 80 percent of Mississippi voters and 74 percent of Alabama’s), and very well in terms of voters’ estimates of his superior electability (50 percent in Alabama and 49 percent in Mississippi said he was most likely to beat Obama). As in virtually every state so far, Mitt won in urban-suburban strongholds, carrying Jackson, Gulfport, and Biloxi in Mississippi and Birmingham, Montgomery, and Mobile in Alabama. 
 
 But Santorum outpaced both his rivals in rural parts of these states, carrying the pineywoods regions of North Alabama and Mississippi, while Gingrich did relatively well, as expected, in rural black belt counties—just not well enough. And Santorum very narrowly led Newt among “very conservative” and evangelical voters in both states, which helped put him over the top. In a distant fourth place, Ron Paul performed in the single digits in both states. 
 
 All in all, the results were within a few percentage points of virtually every projection. But the variations—giving Santorum two wins where he wasn’t supposed to excel, Gingrich two losses in his “base,” and Romney a pair of third-place finishes—provided a big feast for spinmeisters, particularly those hungering and thirsting for an extended contest. 
 
 The path ahead includes caucuses in Missouri next Saturday, where Santorum built high expectations with his virtually unopposed win in a non-binding “beauty contest” primary on Feb. 7, and in Puerto Rico on Sunday, where Romney should clean up. But the big high-publicity contest will be next Tuesday in the Illinois primary, where the argument that Romney is weak in Midwestern “Rust Belt” states will be put to one more test. If he survives until then, Louisiana on March 24 could provide Santorum with another belt of Southern comfort. 
 
 But the parallel battle, which has been raging since Romney’s victories in Florida and Nevada back in January (if not earlier), will be among Republican elites. By this point, GOP opinion leaders are either frantic to bring the contest to a close to let the “inevitable” and “electable” Romney marshal resources for November—or want to give Santorum one last chance to prove that the palpable anti-Romney sentiment of conservative activists can lift him to an unlikely nomination or convention bid. 
 
 Romney has now lost four opportunities (after wins in New Hampshire, Florida/Nevada, Michigan, and Ohio) to nail down the nomination, a record that should at some point begin to make his elite backers really take stock of his attractiveness as a candidate. And, having won the long-standing contest to become the “conservative alternative to Romney,” Santorum has his own decision to make: whether to double down on his culture-war-heavy, ideological true-believer message or begin trying to convince elites he can actually beat Obama. ||||| With back-to-back losses in the Deep South Tuesday night, Newt Gingrich suffered a third defeat: He lost any of the remaining logic behind his candidacy for the Republican presidential nomination. 
 
 His claims to primacy in the South after winning the South Carolina and Georgia primaries evaporated with losses in both Mississippi and Alabama. 
 
 Adding to the sting? The former House speaker who used to represent the Atlanta suburbs in Congress lost both to Rick Santorum, a former senator from the North - Pennsylvania. 
 
 In addition, the fig leaf Gingrich has claimed as the target of relentless and excessive negative advertising from rival Mitt Romney dissolved as Santorum started to win contests and he himself became the target of the former Massachusetts governor’s wrath. 
 
 Santorum has shown an ability to win in spite of it, not lose because of it. 
 
 That leaves the final argument Gingrich has made: that he is the conservative alternative to the “Massachusetts moderate” he has branded Romney. 
 
 A string of wins not just in the South but also the Midwest has lent credence to Santorum’s claim that, rather, he is the true right-wing alternative to Romney. 
 
 It also buttresses his argument that he could fare even better in his quest for the nomination if Gingrich quit the race so he could go head-to-head with frontrunner. 
 
 Even before the polls closed, Gingrich was portending primary disaster, with his staff issuing a memorandum offering a preemptive justification for him remaining a candidate should he lose both of the evening’s contests. 
 
 Senior Adviser Randy Evans and Political Director Martin Baker argued that “Gingrich is well positioned to win the GOP nomination.” 
 
 They noted that heading into Louisiana, only states with a total of 1,141 possible delegates will have voted - short itself of the 1,144 needed for the nomination. 
 
 “The sequencing and pace of the second half favors Newt. When this process started, Newt’s team had two goals: block an early Romney nomination; and plan for a sequenced and paced second half. Newt stopped Romney in South Carolina and subsequently weathered a multi-million dollar barrage of attacks in Florida, surviving to win in Georgia on Super Tuesday,” wrote Evans and Baker. 
 
 “Here is the bottom-line reality: this nomination will not be decided until the fourth quarter – and that is not until June. It also means that the candidate who closes strongest in this race is going to win,” they added. “So buckle up. This race is not going to be won or lost over backroom deals or endless and mind-numbing discussions in the media over delegate counts.” 
 
 The campaign also tried to dispel the ongoing speculation about his candidacy ending by issuing a schedule with seven stops in Illinois between today and Thursday. 
 
 Gingrich himself told his supporters in a non-concession speech: “If you’re the frontrunner and you keep coming in third, you’re not much of a frontrunner.” 
 
 The Gingrich campaign wasn’t the only one with overly optimistic expectations for Tuesday. 
 
 Tim Pawlenty, the former Minnesota governor and onetime GOP candidate who now supports Romney, told CNN: “The resilience of Mitt Romney is starting to show through. When he was way behind in Florida, he came back and beat Newt Gingrich. When he was behind in Ohio, he came back and beat Rick Santorum. The same in Michigan and some other places.” 
 
 He added: “I mean if Mitt Romney does well in those Southern states tonight, the script gets rewritten. I mean that’s a breakthrough moment.” 
 
 The candidate himself was strident. 
 
 “Senator Santorum is at the desperate end of his campaign,” Romney told CNN. “I mean, he’s far behind in the delegate count. He’s far behind in the popular vote count. If you look at the math of how many delegates he’d have to win to become the nominee, it’s a very difficult road for him.” 
 
 In a statement after the results were in, Romney said: “I am pleased that we will be increasing our delegate count in a very substantial way after tonight. Ann and I made a lot of new friends in Alabama and Mississippi and we look forward to campaigning in those states in the general election.” 
 
 Senior adviser Eric Fehrnstrom told CNN that Romney’s goal was not to win an “away game” in the South, but to secure one-third of the delegates up for grabs Tuesday. 
 
 Doing so, he argued, would maintain a status quo in the overall campaign standings. 
 
 “Look, this is a delegate contest,” said Fehrnstrom. “Once the dust clears, you’ll be able to look and see that there really will be no ground that our opponents have made up against Mitt Romney.” 
 
 Santorum scoffed at that assessment through the day and during his victory remarks Tuesday night in Lafayette, La., where he had pre-positioned in anticipation of that state’s primary next week. 
 
 “Well, for someone who thinks this race is inevitable, he spent a whole lot of money against me for being inevitable,” Santorum said in a shot at Romney. 
 
 He added that he would “compete everywhere,” and said: “The time is now for conservatives to pull together.” 
 
 The former senator argues that he is the conservative of choice because he can compete against President Obama on all issues, including health care, where he says Romney will falter because he signed a universal health care law in Massachusetts that was the model for Obama’s federal plan. 
 
 The fourth and final candidate in the race, Representative Ron Paul of Texas, exceeds even Gingrich in being a longshot for the nomination. 
 
 Through Tuesday night, he continues to be the only candidate who has not won either a primary or a caucus. 
 
 He largely skipped the South, despite being a Texan, and instead is concentrating on the Illinois primary next week. 
 
 His campaign touted a rally he is holding today with over 1,000 voters at the University of Illinois in Champaign, Ill. 
 
 As impressive as that number may be, though, if it doesn’t translate into votes, it won’t help him advance toward the goal he, Gingrich, and the others share: being elected president of the United States. 
 
 Glen Johnson can be reached at johnson@globe.com. Follow him on Twitter @globeglen. ||||| The Atlanta Journal-Constitution 
 
 BIRMINGHAM, Ala. – A final Deep South stand could be at hand for the Newt Gingrich campaign, as it said victories in Tuesday’s primaries in Alabama and Mississippi are crucial to remaining in the Republican presidential race. 
 
 Gingrich resisted cries that he ditch his campaign Wednesday after winning just one state – his old home of Georgia – on Super Tuesday, and he scrapped plans to visit the Kansas caucuses to focus on the pair of states he thinks he can win next week. 
 
 “We are staying in this race because I believe it is going to be impossible for a moderate to win in the general election,” Gingrich said at a rally in Montgomery, Ala., one of three he held in the state Wednesday, greeted by hundreds of enthusiastic supporters at each turn. 
 
 His rivals and others turned up the pressure to get him to leave, starting with allies of former Pennsylvania Sen. Rick Santorum who argue that Santorum – who has much better standing in national polls, more state wins and more delegates – is the best candidate for conservatives to rally around against former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney. 
 
 If Gingrich remains in the race “it’s only a hindrance to a conservative alternative to Romney,” said Stuart Roy, an adviser to a Santorum-aligned Super PAC, the Red, White and Blue Fund. 
 
 Longtime conservative activist Richard Viguerie argued that Gingrich should endorse Santorum and at this point Gingrich "can either be a kingmaker or a spoiler" in a statement on a conservative website. 
 
 The talk put Gingrich on the defensive during his appearance on Bill Bennett’s “Morning in America” radio show Wednesday. 
 
 The former Georgia congressman credited Santorum with having a “terrific” month. But he highlighted how the former Pennsylvania senator lost -- by a wide margin -- his 2006 election bid to keep his U.S. Senate seat. 
 
 “If I thought he was a slam dunk to beat Romney and to beat Obama, I would really consider getting out. I don’t,” Gingrich said. “I think each of the three candidates has strengths and weaknesses and that this is a very healthy vetting process.” 
 
 The former U.S. House speaker then pointed to past Democratic and Republican presidential candidates who stuck it out for months on the campaign trail and went on to win their party’s nomination. Bennett, who served as President Ronald Reagan’s secretary of education, asked Gingrich if the Republican Party was “bleeding” from the protracted battle for the nomination. Gingrich responded that some people said Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton “were bleeding [in the 2008 primaries] except John McCain didn’t use that four-month period very well. The fact is he lost the presidency.” 
 
 Bennett pressed Gingrich: “Can you say: ‘If I can’t break out of the South, I can’t win one state outside the South, or if I continue to trail the numbers of Santorum that I am trailing now, then I am not going to go forever.’” 
 
 Gingrich didn’t budge. 
 
 “No, because if you asked Rick Santorum that question immediately after Nevada, what would we have said?” Gingrich responded. “He had been running fourth for a month and – including me – people were saying maybe he should drop out. He ignored all those. He now has had a terrific month. I think you have to wait and see how the race goes on.” 
 
 The Romney campaign argued that it is already too late to stop him. It distributed a memo from political director Rich Beeson laying out the delegate race and concluding: “As Governor Romney’s opponents attempt to ignore the basic principles of math, the only person’s odds of winning they are increasing are President Obama’s.” 
 
 According to the Associated Press, after Super Tuesday Romney leads with 415 convention delegates, followed by Santorum with 176, Gingrich with 105 and Texas Rep. Ron Paul with 47. 
 
 The Gingrich campaign circulated math of its own from Atlanta attorney and campaign adviser Randy Evans, who argues that the huge delegate prizes in Texas and California in late May and early June make it worth staying in. 
 
 The argument hinges on winning big in Alabama and Mississippi. Spokesman R.C. Hammond said Gingrich territory is a swath from Spartanburg, S.C., to West Texas that is “the heart and soul of the Republican Party.” 
 
 Those states “all need to go to Gingrich,” he said. 
 
 Hammond said the campaign, perpetually low on funding, plans to purchase advertising in the two states touting Gingrich’s promise to reduce gas prices to $2.50 a gallon. He appeared at a Texaco station in Pell City, Ala., and posed in front of a gas pump to emphasize the point. 
 
 The Gingrich argument for remaining in the race hinges both on hopeful math and faith that there is time left for another dramatic turn in a race that has seen plenty of them. 
 
 “If we win both Alabama and Mississippi next Tuesday night this is a whole new race,” Gingrich said at a rally in Pell City, “for, I think, the ninth time.” 
 
 The Associated Press contributed to this article.
– Newt Gingrich lost both Mississippi and Alabama last night, and the calls for him to drop out have risen to a deafening roar. Here's what pundits are saying: "If Newt Gingrich can't win Alabama and Mississippi, where can he win?" asks CNN. The states are "virtual home turf" for the ex-speaker. Dig deeper, and the numbers keep looking bad; Gingrich saw sharp declines among key groups like very conservative voters and evangelicals. Gingrich "lost any of the remaining logic behind his candidacy for the Republican presidential nomination," writes Glen Johnson of the Boston Globe. He can't even claim he was derailed by Mitt Romney's attack machine—Rick Santorum "has shown an ability to win in spite of it." NPR notes that it's now impossible for Gingrich to get the 1,144 delegates needed to beat Romney. "Gingrich has long been an advocate for thinking 'outside the box,' but lately he has moved outside the box where one finds the calculator, abacus, and the times table." "It is time for Santorum vs. Romney and let the chips fall where they may," agrees Erick Erickson of Red State. A one-on-one contest will give Romney "a run for his money he needs to become a candidate conservatives can potentially rally around." But don't hold your breath. Gingrich's advisers tell the Wall Street Journal that he's staying in—purely to make sure Romney doesn't get enough delegates to clinch the nomination.