Rick Santorum projected to win in Alabama, holding on to narrow lead in Mississippi

Rick San­to­rum is on a roll. Less than one hun­dred hours after deci­sive­ly win­ning the Kansas Repub­li­can cau­cus­es, he appears to have swept tonight’s con­tests in the Deep South, despite hav­ing to share the con­ser­v­a­tive vote with Newt Gingrich:

Rick San­to­rum scored a pair of pri­ma­ry vic­to­ries in Alaba­ma and Mis­sis­sip­pi, accord­ing to net­work pro­jec­tions, bol­ster­ing his cred­i­bil­i­ty as Mitt Romney’s top chal­lenger and deny­ing the for­mer Mass­a­chu­setts gov­er­nor an oppor­tu­ni­ty to solid­i­fy his sta­tus as inevitable nominee.

“We did it again,” San­to­rum declared at an elec­tion night ral­ly in Louisiana, say­ing his under­dog cam­paign was about “ordi­nary peo­ple doing extra­or­di­nary things.”

The races were among the first high pro­file con­tests in which both Newt Gin­grich and San­to­rum, who have alter­nat­ed wild­ly between surges and col­laps­es, were com­pet­i­tive at once.

San­to­rum’s twin vic­to­ries tonight will unques­tion­ably bol­ster his cam­paign in a big way. Up until just a few hours ago, San­to­rum has only been able to win in states from one region — the Mid­west. (He gave Mitt Rom­ney a run for his mon­ey in Michi­gan and Ohio, but could­n’t quite close with vot­ers in either state). By win­ning in Mis­sis­sip­pi and Alaba­ma, he has man­aged to strength­en his own can­di­da­cy whilst simul­ta­ne­ous­ly ruin­ing Newt Gin­grich’s plans for a comeback.

Gin­grich need­ed to win in both Alaba­ma and Mis­sis­sip­pi tonight to keep his cam­paign alive. He did­n’t. He can choose to stay in the race if he likes, but he won’t be able to com­pete with Mitt Rom­ney and Rick San­to­rum. He might be able to cause enough trou­ble for Rick San­to­rum to ensure that Rom­ney ends up get­ting the nom­i­na­tion, but he him­self isn’t going to end up as the nominee.

As of around 8:30 PM Pacif­ic; here were the results in Alaba­ma’s Repub­li­can pri­ma­ry (twen­ty-two of six­ty-sev­en coun­ties com­plete­ly reporting):

And in Mis­sisip­pi, as of 8:30 PM Pacif­ic, with 1,800 of 1,889 precincts reporting:

Inci­den­tal­ly, in Mis­sis­sip­pi, the polit­i­cal par­ties them­selves run the pri­maries — mean­ing that Demo­c­ra­t­ic and Repub­li­can activists serve as poll work­ers and elec­tion super­vi­sors. How­ev­er, the Mag­no­lia State’s pri­maries are open, so vot­ers may par­tic­i­pate with­out hav­ing to reg­is­ter in advance as a mem­ber of a par­tic­u­lar polit­i­cal par­ty. Alaba­ma also has an open primary.

Over at FreeRe­pub­lic, one of the Inter­net’s best-known right wing mes­sage boards, the mood seems to be cel­e­bra­to­ry. Here’s a sam­pling of the com­ments left in response to the news that San­to­rum is pro­ject­ed to win Alaba­ma and Mississippi:

I’m a Newt sup­port­er, but if this pans out, I real­ly think Newt ought to put his sup­port behind San­to­rum and we sup­port­ers can hope/expect Newt to get a good cab­i­net posi­tion to effect change once elected.

— risen_feenix

Newt looks like an dolt stand­ing next to his wife while she talks. No WAY can he win no mat­ter what! He should endorse Santorum.

— Right­La­dy

Con­ven­tion­al wis­dom had Rick show­ing up 2nd or 3rd tonight. Not any­thing like this. The D.C. Belt­way types are very unhap­py tonight.

— Lazloin­PA

Newt REALLY needs to pick par­ty over ego. He’s not polling well in any state that’s left. I am sure he feels he can win a bro­kered con­ven­tion, and the chance of that is unlike­ly. Very unlike­ly as the GOP sup­ports Mit­tens, and writes the rules. Newt knows this…

— JohnD9207

Con­grats Rick.

Looks like the two races wasn’t quite close enough for Rove, Boss Hogg and the GOPe [sic] to steal, like they did in Ohio.

It also appears that Newt’s South­ern Strat­e­gy has failed. Even though he had tons of mon­ey from that Casi­no Owner.

— ten­n­moun­tain­man

Judg­ing by the com­ments excerpt­ed above, it seems Rick San­to­rum has solid­i­fied his base of sup­port and is start­ing to win over Newt Gin­grich’s fans as well. San­to­rum real­ly needs Gin­grich to quit the race so that he can go head to head with Rom­ney in the states that haven’t held their nom­i­nat­ing events yet.

But Gin­grich has giv­en no indi­ca­tion that he is think­ing about quit­ting. At least not yet. Maybe if his sug­ar dad­dy Shel­don Adel­son decides to turn off Gin­grich’s cash spig­ot, Gin­grich will decide to throw in the tow­el. We’ll see.