Why isn't the GOP race over?

If you’re Mitt Romney, you have to feel pretty frustrated. Political observers (including your authors here) told him he had to win his native state of Michigan, and he won Michigan. They told him he had to win Ohio, and he won there, too. And they set the bar at him obtaining a majority or a near-majority of delegates on Super Tuesday, and he achieved that as well. So why isn’t this race over? One possible answer: He’s getting penalized in the media and among Republicans for the competition he’s facing. It would be one thing if Romney were eking out narrow victories against Rick Perry or Tim Pawlenty, candidates with (at the time they were running) a serious campaign infrastructure and money or the potential for it. But it’s another thing to narrowly win against candidates who don’t have a true organization, who aren’t well funded, and who don’t have a bustling campaign headquarters. Romney, of course, doesn’t get to pick his opposition, and all he can do is continue to win. But he is certainly losing style points by barely beating Santorum in states like Michigan and Ohio — akin, as we’ve said before, to a top-ranked college football team winning a squeaker against an unranked opponent…

Here’s another reason why the race isn’t over: the South. There is no other region in the country that better represents today’s Republican Party than the South, with its deep conservatism, its ardent belief in states’ rights, and all of its evangelical voters. And there’s no other region in the country where Mitt Romney has struggled more — in 2012 and also in 2008 — than there. He has failed to win over his party’s nerve center and frankly, it’s logical that Republican pooh-bahs are sitting on the sidelines until Romney proves he can win over some of these folks. That said, this deep-red region won’t be a problem for him in a general election (with the exception of New South states like North Carolina and Virginia). And after next week’s primaries in Alabama and Mississippi — where all the candidates, including Romney, are campaigning today — the GOP contest moves elsewhere. But there are still plenty of southern primaries after March 13, where Santorum (or Gingrich) might be favored: Louisiana (March 24), North Carolina (May 8), West Virginia (May 8), Arkansas (May 22), Kentucky (May 22), and Texas (May 29).