Alabama and Mississippi on March 13.

[DCBob]

AL & MS are the next two big ones which might determine which anti-Romney candidate should drop out. It could get ugly between Gingrich and Santorum which would be lovely to watch. Santorum will say Gingrich is draining votes away from him giving the nomination to Romney. Gingrich will say he has more delegates and is the stronger candidate.

Meanwhile Romney will be focusing on Illinois which is a week later because he has no chance in those deep south bible-belt states. I dont see this ending anytime soon. They all have incentives to stay in. The GOPer establishment must be tearing their hair out. Fun stuff!

[Scuba]

1. Gingrich will drop soon. He doesn't want to be President (too lazy), and even more, he doesn't....

... want to lose, which would severely damage his ego.

[customerserviceguy]

2. I started looking at the rest of the calendar, too

Other than Hawaii (and the territories which elect delegates) Romney hasn't got a lot to look forward to for the next several weeks. He did finally shatter that 50% barrier, not only in Massachusetts (where he was expected to do quite well) but in Idaho, as well. Of course, if this whole thing comes down to the final state, that's Utah, and it's in the bag for him as well.

Santorum's next challenge is to make sure Noot drops out (or is considered a joke candidate, like Paul) by the time NY and NJ come up. Those are closed primaries, no monkey business allowed to help him, and he can play the Italian Catholic thing in both states. If he can totally humiliate Noot in AL and MS, he's got a good shot at marginalizing the Grinch.

[DCBob]

3. Yeah, Mittens is likely to have a tough next couple of weeks.

and if Gingrich drops out it could get interesting. This thing is not over.

[customerserviceguy]

5. Indeed

Not by a long shot.

Ricky would do well to say, "Noot, next week we have Mississippi and Alabama, which we both know are not Romney country. What say we do the following: If one of the two of of us wins both contests, the other one drops out. If we split them, we both keep on keeping on."

How can Noot respond to that? "No, I'm going to continue to be an asshole and help Romney by sucking votes off of you to let Romney win a few more states" or, "Hell, yeah, I can whup your ass in both places because I'm a real Southerner (even though we're both from Pennsylvania) and having you leave the race would be worth it to me. Besides, all I have to do is win either MS or AL, and I can still do what I want to do,"

Seems like a winning strategy for Ricky.

[cash__whatiwant]

4. Gingrich doesn't have more delegates though. I think MSNBC's delegate count is off...nt