Newt Gingrich

Today is a relatively big day in the GOP nomination battle -- with caucuses in American Samoa and Hawaii and primaries in Alabama and Mississippi. The main story is in the South, though. And although this Southern Super Tuesday has relatively few delegates at stake – just 84 are up for grabs between the Alabama and Mississippi primaries – it will likely attract a good deal of attention. It will also offer something we have not yet seen: a roughly equal three-way battle between Newt Gingrich, Mitt Romney, and Rick Santorum.

Two new post-Super Tuesday polls show Mitt Romney and Rick Santorum running neck-and-neck for the lead in the Republican presidential race.

On Super Tuesday, Mitt Romney won six of the ten contests, a majority of delegates allocated, and more security in his march to victory at the Republican convention in Tampa.

Rasmussen reports on its latest Alabama presidential primary poll of likely Republican voters:

Are conservatives ready to coalesce around a presidential candidate? A new poll commissioned by the Committee for Work Families PAC finds that a vast majority of grassroots conservatives want the Republican party to unite around one particular candidate: Rick Santorum.

Ricochet: "Newt Explains the Facts to David Gregory"

Marist Poll: "Santorum and Romney Neck and Neck in Ohio"

Kirsten Powers: "Rush Limbaugh Isn’t the Only Media Misogynist"

Kim Strassel had an excellent piece in Friday’s Wall Street Journal about another issue — in addition to Obamacare — that President Obama has gift-wrapped for the Republican party and for the wider cause of limited government.  She writes,

National Journal reports that a fundraiser for Mitt Romney, Christopher Jenny, is inviting donors opposed to "social arch conservative" Rick Santorum to a reception in support of a "Massachusetts moderate" for president:

An email sent Saturday by Christopher Jenny, president of the Boston-based Parthenon Group business consultancy, inviting potential donors to a Boston fundraiser, entreats them to help fight “social arch conservative Rick Santorum.”

The New York Times reports that the pro-Mitt Romney super PAC, Restore Our Future, is spending almost $500,000 on new television ads in Michigan. The ads will focus on Romney's GOP rival Newt Gingrich, even though Rick Santorum looks to be a bigger threat to Romney in Michigan's February 28 primary. Here's more from the Times:

The results are in from the CPAC straw poll: Mitt Romney has won. Here's the tally:

Mitt Romney: 38 percent

Yesterday I pointed out that "February 7 could prove to have been Super Tuesday if it turns out to be a key inflection point in the campaign."  Two indications, I wrote, of such an inflection point would be "if Santorum now passes Newt Gingrich in national Republican surveys" and if he "continues to do better than Gingrich (and than Romney?) in poll match-ups against President Obama."

A new Reuters/Ipsos poll of national Republicans suggests a continuing lack of consensus in the GOP primary more than a month after the Iowa caucuses.