Santorum: Defy pundits in South primaries

Rick Santorum told Alabama voters to ignore predictions Mitt Romney would win the Republican presidential nomination and vote Tuesday with \"your own head.\" \"Don\'t vote with what the pundits say,\" Santorum told a rally of about 2,000 people in Birmingham. \"Vote with your own heart and your own head.\" In public-opinion polls, Santorum was third in a tight three-way race heading into the Alabama and Mississippi primaries Tuesday. In Alabama, he\'s in a statistical dead heat with Romney, a former Massachusetts governor, and former House Speaker Newt Gingrich. In Alabama, where 50 Republican National Convention delegates at stake in Tuesday\'s primary, a Public Policy Polling survey showed Romney ahead with 31 percent of the vote, followed by Gingrich with 30 percent, Santorum with 29 percent and Rep. Ron Paul of Texas with 8 percent. A separate PPP survey in Mississippi, whose primary has 40 delegates at stake, showed Gingrich ahead with 33 percent of the vote, Romney with 31 percent, Santorum with 27 percent and Paul with 7 percent. Both polls were conducted Saturday and Sunday through automated phone interviews. The margin of error was 4 percent in Alabama and 3.8 percent in Mississippi. The Hawaii and American Samoa Republican caucuses were also being held Tuesday, with Romney widely expected to win those contests. Romney, who celebrated his 65th birthday Monday, suggested to Alabama supporters a Southern primary victory would be the perfect birthday present. \"Thanks so much for giving me this birthday present. Hopefully, I can unwrap it tomorrow,\" he told a crowd at Mobile\'s Whistle Stop restaurant Monday. He later told the Fox News Channel that despite what Santorum told NBC\'s \"Meet the Press\" Sunday, \"We\'re closing the deal, state by state, delegate by delegate. \"I guess two, two-and-a-half times as many delegates as he has, about the same number of state advantages that he has, many more Republican voters than he has,\" Romney said, comparing his status with that of Santorum. Romney has 454 delegates, Santorum 217, Gingrich 107 and Paul 47. A candidate must accumulate 1,144 delegates by the August GOP convention in Tampa, Fla., to clinch the nomination. Gingrich, born in Harrisburg, Pa., but making the South his home ever since high school, mocked Romney\'s newfound taste for grits Monday after pointing out he lived in Columbus, Ga., \"right next to Alabama,\" and taught at West Georgia College \"right next to Alabama.\" \"I kind of feel relatively at home here,\" Gingrich told a Birmingham crowd. \"In fact, this morning when I had grits, I thought it was a very normal thing to do.\" Gingrich said President Barack Obama\'s press secretary \"basically attacked me\" Monday for promising to cut the price of gasoline to $2.50 a gallon if he became president. Gingrich quoted White House spokesman Jay Carney as saying Obama would not \"look the American people in the eye and claim that there is a strategy by which he can guarantee the price of gas will be $2.50 at the pump. \"Any politician who does that is lying,\" Carney said, \"because that strategy does not exist. It is a simple fact that there is no such plan that can guarantee the price of oil or the price at the pump.\" Gingrich said, \"I have suggested that if we developed our energy capacity to the degree we could, that that would bring down the price of gasoline on the theory that supply and demand works -- and this is not something that Obama is very used to.\" Paul is focusing on the caucus states. He won the popular vote in the U.S. Virgin Islands Saturday but lost to Romney in the delegate count. \"The delegate hunt is on,\" he told reporters as he campaigned over the weekend. His campaign promised another \"massive town hall\" in Illinois Wednesday at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign ahead of next week\'s Illinois primary. Many of Paul\'s biggest events have been at colleges.