It's Romney at the fore, but challengers still can sting

Perhaps it was appropriate that Newt Gingrich campaigned on the eve of Saturday's Nevada caucuses at Stoney's Rockin' Country nightclub in Las Vegas, next to a mechanical bull, a contraption designed to shake-and-bake wannabe cowboys and fling them into the sawdust.

After blowout losses to Mitt Romney in the Florida primary last Tuesday and again in Nevada on Saturday, Gingrich will have to hang on tight for the next several weeks to keep his insurgent Republican presidential campaign going.

While Romney on Saturday night kept his criticism targeted on President Obama, Gingrich again vowed to continue fighting all the way to the Republican National Convention this August. "I'm not going to withdraw," the former House speaker declared in a late-night news conference, asserting that the contrast between him and Romney would grow "wider and wider and clearer and clearer in the next few weeks."

But beyond Nevada and Maine, where caucuses also began Saturday, five states hold contests this month, and none of them is tailor-made for Gingrich, who had to lighten his campaign schedule in the Silver State to make fund-raising calls for the road ahead. Romney in 2008 won Colorado and Minnesota, which vote Tuesday. Missouri has a nonbinding primary that day as well. On Feb. 28 come primaries in Arizona and Michigan, Romney's home state, where his father was governor in the 1960s.

In addition, there won't be another candidates' debate until Feb. 22, denying Gingrich the chance for free airtime in a forum that has been his strength in the campaign.

Gingrich's strategy is to try to score a victory on Super Tuesday, March 6, when three Southern states vote - his native Georgia, plus Oklahoma and Tennessee - and to continue picking up delegates all through March under the proportional representation rules that the GOP adopted to try to slow down the nomination contest and give more states a chance for meaningful votes.

"There'll be some breakthrough moments, but this is all about delegates, the blocking and tackling of presidential campaigns," said Charlie Gerow, a Harrisburg-based GOP consultant who is organizing slates of delegates for Gingrich ahead of the April 24 Pennsylvania primary.