BOSTON — Republican presidential hopeful Mitt Romney walked away from Super Tuesday with a lot of convention delegates, but he failed in the equally crucial mission of closing the enthusiasm gap among voters as he heads into a string of hotly contested Southern primaries that could further underscore his weaknesses among conservatives.
Far from clearing a path to the nomination by Super Tuesday as many had once predicted, Romney, the GOP establishment favorite, is still struggling to win over the conservative voters without whom no Republican is going to win the White House.
Romney barely won in the critical swing state of Ohio, eking out a 1 percent victory over the more conservative Rick Santorum, who also won Tennessee, Oklahoma and North Dakota. Newt Gingrich easily beat Romney in Georgia and while Romney won Virginia, his sole opponent there was Rep. Ron Paul. Neither Santorum nor Gingrich were even on the ballot.
The four Republicans over the next two weeks will face off in the conservative bastions of Kansas, Alabama, Mississippi and Missouri. With the exception of contests in Hawaii and U.S. territories in Puerto Rico, Guam and the Virgin Islands, it could be a tough few weeks for Romney, who for two months has been unable to seal the deal with conservative voters, particularly in the South.
“I do not expect Gov. Romney is going to do all that well in Mississippi,” Rob Mellen, of Mississippi State University, told The Washington Examiner.
Santorum is likely to do much better in each of the Southern contests, he said.
Romney’s problem with conservatives is compounded in the South, Mellen said, because voters feel uncomfortable with his Mormon faith despite Romney’s efforts to defend it as a branch of Christianity.
“I think it’s a stickler for a lot of Southern evangelicals,” Mellen said. “This becomes a really big problem for him in the South because many evangelicals do not see Mormonism as a Christian denomination.”
Santorum, on the other hand, is a devout Catholic whose unabashed conservative message resonates with evangelical voters, as he demonstrated in Tennessee and Oklahoma Tuesday.
“It’s more conservative voters, more evangelical voters,” David Kimball, a political science professor at the University of Missouri-St. Louis, told The Examiner. “And those are the groups that have gone more for Santorum.”
Despite his ongoing problems among conservatives, Romney insists he’s on the surest path to the nomination and said a string of Super Tuesday victories help bolster his standing in the fied.
“Tonight, we are counting up the delegates for the convention,” Romney told the Boston crowd Tuesday night.
Romney, who began Super Tuesday with 185 delegates, claimed victory in Ohio, Massachusetts, Vermont, Idaho, Virginia and Alaska, earning him an additional 176 delegates, more than half of all delegates allotted so far in the race for the nomination. He won more Super Tuesday states — six out of 10– including his home state of Massachusetts and neighboring Vermont.
Santorum has only 161 delegates, Gingrich as 105 and Rep. Ron Paul, who has yet to win a single contest, has 61.
