The ‘regional’ GOP is being won outside the South

So much for the Republican Party being the party of the South and nowhere else.

Just when social issues returned to the fore of the national debate, with both the Obama administration’s health insurance mandate for contraception and the Susan G. Komen/Planned Parenthood funding flap in recent weeks, the Bible Belt is taking a back seat. Instead, this GOP presidential campaign is shaping up for the real action to be everywhere except Dixie.

Ours is the region that, you may recall, overly giddy liberals less than four years ago labeled the last bastion of a dying conservatism. But the sudden demise Thursday of CNN’s Super Tuesday debate, to have been broadcast March 1 from right here in Atlanta, was another primary blow against the region. Consider:

• A pair of Southern favorite sons — Herman Cain (born in Memphis, raised in Georgia) and Rick Perry (a Texan born and bred) — are long since gone from the race.

• A passel of Southern governors or ex-guvs — Mississippi’s Haley Barbour, Florida’s Jeb Bush, Arkansas’ Mike Huckabee, Louisiana’s Bobby Jindal — never even joined the race despite much speculation. At least Bush gets mentioned as a possible deus ex machina for the party, should the primary fight remain unresolved all the way to the convention. And Sen. Marco Rubio of Florida and Virginia Gov. Bob McDonnell merit vice presidential buzz.

• Still, the closest things we Southerners have now to a possible home-grown nominee are a pair of Pennsylvania natives: Ron Paul, now of Texas, and Newt Gingrich, once of Georgia. Well, those two and a Pennsylvanian born in Virginia, Rick Santorum. (If you pegged Santorum as the “Southerner” most likely to win the GOP nomination, please email your favorite lottery numbers to me.)

• The future GOP nominee has won South Carolina eight straight times. But that streak will end if Gingrich can’t stage a third Lazarus act of this race — a possibility which, given events so far, one cannot yet rule out.

• If Santorum keeps up his surprising national lead and captures the nomination, but does not beat Gingrich here, the GOP could have a nominee who not only failed to win the Palmetto State but three of the South’s biggest primary prizes: Florida, Georgia and Virginia, where neither he nor Gingrich qualified for the ballot.

The candidate’s name you haven’t read until now is that of Mitt Romney, whose withdrawal from the March 1 debate prompted CNN to pull the plug on it. The former Massachusetts governor has raised a lot of money in Atlanta, but he may have decided he wasn’t going to fall too far or rise too high in Georgia — and might as well deny his rivals free national air time. We’ll soon find out if that was worth the risk of alienating supporters here.

Instead of a Southern route, the path to the GOP nomination this year appears to run through the Midwest.

Santorum won the Iowa caucuses to keep his hopes alive, then got a boost from wins in (non-binding) contests in Missouri and Minnesota. Suddenly, he’s strongly challenging Romney in the latter’s birth state, Michigan. If he does so, Ohio just might steal Georgia’s thunder on Super Tuesday.

And if that happens? Southern Republicans ought to sit back and smile: Better to be along for the ride in a big party than driving solo in a small one.

– By Kyle Wingfield