Rick Santorum wins on Tuesday but None of the Above still leads

The primaries in Alabama and Mississippi rattled the race for the Republican presidential nomination, giving Rick Santorum two new notches on his gun while leaving Newt Gingrich and Mitt Romney as this week’s political roadkill.

Strangely, though, at this point in the campaign all the candidates look more like losers than winners – and that includes Barack Obama .

Tuesday night’s victor, Santorum, still does not have the organization or money he needs to run an imposing national campaign. Each of his wins is a triumph of personal fervor over the Romney attack machine. It is impressive, but it also means he loses in places he could have won, like Ohio and Michigan.

Newt Gingrich, after having his candidacy pronounced dead at least twice, really does appear to be doomed this time. If he can’t win in America’s most conservative states, where can he win? Some pundits now think his pledge to stay in the race all the way to the GOP convention in Tampa is mere bravado and he will drop out soon.

I suspect he won’t. Gingrich is no Tim Pawlenty . Neither boring nor conventional nor prone to fits of modesty, Gingrich, at a minimum, wants to show up at the convention with enough delegates to be a player. In his busy brain, he may even envision a scenario in which the delegates are locked in indecision and finally turn to him as the champion he envisions himself to be.

That will happen right after pigs fly, of course. Still, a deadlocked convention is not an impossibility. Especially now, with Santorum winning the competition to be the prime not-Romney alternative, the delegate apportionment in the remaining primaries and caucuses could end with no winner.

Sure, Romney will almost certainly arrive in Tampa with the most delegates, but given the chance to rethink the whole dispiriting nomination battle, would the convention rush to make Mitt their standard-bearer? It seems just as possible that they’d act like a bride in an arranged marriage who is suddenly told she can pick any man she wants. Would she really stick with a guy she doesn’t love?

Yes, Republicans have been so underwhelmed by their candidates and so barraged by negative ads about them that the Republican brand seems seriously damaged. And yet the incumbent president who has not had to run against anybody continues to languish in the polls. Given the grief Republicans have been giving each other, Barack Obama should be cruising to a second term, but he is not. Quite a few voters seem uninspired by any candidate.

Enthusiasm likely will rise after the conventions at the end of the summer. For now, though, “none of the above” seems to be the most popular choice.