The battle for the Republican presidential nomination heads into a potentially decisive phase over the next two weeks with contests in 13 states that could finally answer some of the questions that have defined the race.
Starting in Michigan on Tuesday, and in several of the Super Tuesday contests a week later, the long-presumed front-runner, Mitt Romney, and the surging Rick Santorum will face each other in what will amount to one-on-one matchups, with only limited engagement from the other remaining candidates, former House Speaker Newt Gingrich and Texas Rep. Ron Paul.
Those races give Romney a chance to finally put to rest the question of whether he can defeat a concerted conservative challenge and solidify his claim that he is the party’s inevitable nominee. So far, Romney has a mixed record of winning over the most conservative elements of the party but has been able to win in states where those voters have splintered their support among multiple candidates.
The upcoming races offer Santorum, a former senator from Pennsylvania, a chance to show what he and other conservatives have long claimed: that a moderate like the former Massachusetts governor cannot beat one of them in a head-to-head matchup. They point to Santorum’s sweep of three contests Feb. 7, which has propelled his surge since.
“Next Tuesday’s election is pivotal for Mitt Romney,” said GOP consultant Mike Dennehy. “Michigan is really the battleground for the future of the nomination.”
Paul will also get a clean matchup with Romney on Super Tuesday in Virginia, where only those two candidates met the stringent qualifications for a place on the ballot.
The coming calendar poses the biggest problem to Gingrich, the one-time conservative alternative to Romney who has dropped in the polls and has not been able to raise enough money to run a national campaign.
Gingrich is largely looking past contests in Arizona, Michigan and Washington state and instead focusing his efforts on Super Tuesday contests in Ohio, Oklahoma, Tennessee and Georgia, his home state. He will find competition in all of them from Santorum and Romney.
GOP pollster Jon McHenry said two of those states appear to be particularly important.
“Ohio and Georgia strike me as the most important Super Tuesday states,” McHenry said. “They’re large states; one is a Deep South, appeal-to-the-base state, and the other is the quintessential swing state. And the timing means you can’t just camp out there and win by showing up.”
Romney has been building organizations in all the Super Tuesday states, announcing slates of elected officials, key party activists and local business leaders backing him, and he hopes to take advantage of their political networks on the ground.
