BIRMINGHAM, Ala. — With losses in Alabama and Mississippi, Newt Gingrich’s presidential campaign has changed. In the past, the campaign was about winning, or trying to win, or at least claiming to be trying to win. Now, it’s about keeping Mitt Romney from winning.

Gingrich no longer says he can capture the 1,144 delegates required to wrap up the Republican nomination.  Instead, he now speaks frankly about a new plan: Keep Romney from getting to 1,144 by the end of the GOP primary season in June, and then start what Gingrich calls a “conversation” about who should be the Republican nominee.  That conversation, the plan goes, would lead to a brokered GOP convention at which Gingrich would emerge as the eventual nominee.