SAN JUAN, Puerto Rico (AP) — The Republican presidential nomination fight is heading toward Puerto Rico as a two-man race, with Rick Santorum ascendant and Mitt Romney vanquished in the Deep South.
Santorum urged conservatives to “pull together” to defeat Romney after winning Tuesday’s primaries in Alabama and Mississippi.
Romney salvaged a win in the Hawaii caucuses and won the support of all nine delegates at GOP caucuses in American Samoa.
Newt Gingrich, the former Georgia lawmaker whose Southern strategy stalled, was all but relegated to an asterisk in the contest even as he vowed to stay in it.
Tuesday night’s results marked the continuation of a long, hard-fought Republican nomination fight — and underscored Romney’s persistent weakness with conservatives, particularly in the GOP’s regional stronghold of the Deep South.
