The top three Republicans running for president closed their Mississippi and Alabama campaigns Monday with distinctly different appeals in the staunchly conservative Southern states, whose verdicts in Tuesday's primaries could alter the course of the party's nominating season.In Biloxi, Mobile, Birmingham, Tuscaloosa and Montgomery, the White House hopefuls jockeyed for favor among the evangelical Christians who hold sway in the region, but also among a smaller group of more secular Republicans who could prove crucial in what is shaping up as a tight race.
Mitt Romney added a dash of Southern flavor to his otherwise staid, and familiar, pitch on the economy, raving about Mississippi catfish at a morning stopover in Alabama on his way to Florida to raise campaign money.
"That's a fine Alabama good mornin'," Romney said with a twang to the few dozen supporters who braved a drenching downpour to sing "Happy Birthday" to him outside the Whistle Stop diner in Mobile.
The former Massachusetts governor described rivals Newt Gingrich and Rick Santorum as a pair of Washington old-timers unsuited to fix a bloated government that needs the know-how of a successful businessman.
"If you think that just having the same people go to the same place, but just in different chairs, is going to make things different, why, you can vote for them," Romney told the crowd.
Santorum, who hopes that wins in the Deep South will establish him as Romney's lone viable challenger for the nomination, sought to persuade conservatives that only he would uphold their values. At an energy conference in Biloxi, he also hammered Romney and Gingrich for supporting, years ago, steps against what he called the hoax of "man-made global warming."
And in Tuscaloosa, Santorum — wearing cowboy boots — dropped by the legendary Dreamland Bar-B-Que to sample the pork ribs, which he proclaimed "absolutely awesome." The former Pennsylvania senator used the occasion to swat down concerns by would-be supporters that he can't survive the convoluted delegate accumulation process that Romney, so far, is winning.
"This map is looking better and better," he said, naming Illinois, Louisiana, Texas and, not surprisingly, Pennsylvania as states where he expects to do well.
But it's Gingrich who has the most to gain — or lose — in Tuesday's voting. Like the others, he took pains to bond with the South's culturally conservative voters, but with the advantage of having long represented a Georgia congressional district that once reached from the Atlanta suburbs to the Alabama border.
At the Biloxi energy conference, the former House speaker poked fun at tax breaks for the Chevrolet Volt, a hybrid electric car.
"All the guys who buy pickups are now subsidizing the rich guy who's buying the Volt," Gingrich said. "But it's not going to be a popular car, because you can't put a gun rack in it."
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