As Paul Waldman noted earlier this morning, Mitt Romney will be in a tight spot once he's finally clinched the nomination and has to pick a vice-presidential candidate for his ticket, a decision that gets trickier by the day thanks to the elongated primary season. On one side he'll be pressured to appease all of Rick Santorum's supporters, either by granting the second slot on the ticket to the runner-up or another social conservative of his ilk. On the other hand, Romney will have just finished a nomination that has pushed him further and further to the right, so he'll need someone who won't alienate the broader general-election voter base.

Writing in Politico, Glenn Thrush finds Republicans terrified of the possibility that their likely nominee—Mitt Romney—has completely alienated Latinos with his harsh, anti-immigration rhetoric, and left Obama with the space to rack up a huge margin of support among the Latino community. Here’s Thrush:

Hispanics, a powerful bloc whose vote could decide the outcome in pivotal states such as Nevada, Florida, Colorado and Arizona, seem to have responded by abandoning Romney, with only 14 percent of Hispanic voters favoring him over Obama in a recent Fox Latino poll — one-third of the Hispanic support George W. Bush enjoyed in 2004.

Thus far, I’ve been convinced that Republicans will rally around Mitt Romney if and when he wins the nomination. The former Massachusetts governor might not be popular with Republican voters, but Barack Obama is the most hated figure in the GOP, and unity is necessary if Republicans want a shot at taking the White House.

The rightward trek of Mitt Romney has been the Manifest Destiny of the GOP campaign. The more Rick Santorum and Newt Gingrich hoard the evangelical and ultra-conservative vote, the more pundits and politicos say that Romney has no choice but to continue shuffling away from his past policy positions to make himself look more appetizing to “the base.” Last night’s third-place finishes in Alabama and Mississippi did nothing to change the conventional wisdom. Romney will clearly have to pick a vice-presidential nominee who satiates the hard right.

“A divide that existed between the political fortunes of black and white Americans has just been erased, and I guess it’s been erased for all time.” That was the assessment of Julian Bond, the legendary civil-rights leader and former NAACP chair, after Barack Obama won the presidency. It was echoed by prominent African American figures of all generations, who were hopeful that Obama’s victory would usher in a new age of successful black politicians. “In the twenty-first century,” wrote journalist Gwen Ifill in The Breakthrough: Politics and Race in the Age of Obama, “the breakthrough generation of black politicians is aiming to capture much bigger territory. Obama’s relentless and disciplined giant-slaying campaign is by no means the only story.”

Rick Santorum nabbed a nominal victory last night, placing first in both Alabama and Mississippi. But the wins do little to change the basic dynamic of the Republican nomination fight. Major newspapers and pundits may opine that the 2012 campaign is a competition driven by momentum, but at the end of the day, delegates are all that matter, and on that count, Santorum didn't make any progress. He won Mississippi 33 percent to 30 percent over Mitt Romney, yet per the AP's delegate count, Romney will receive 14 of Mississippi's delegates compared with 13 for Santorum.

By now, Mitt Romney was supposed to have this thing wrapped up, but it turned out that he had to go down south and compete in Mississippi and Alabama. Romney called it an "away game," but he did his best, talkin' bout grits and saying "y'all." Shockingly, the Republicans of Dixie didn't quite buy it. But they did buy the guy from Pennsylvania. Which holds a lesson: cultural affinity isn't just about culture. It's good if you can talk the way a particular group of people do, and say sincerely that you eat what they eat, listen to the music they do, and share a common upbringing. That helped Mike Huckabee do so well in the South four years ago. But Rick Santorum is no Southerner, and yet he was the guy whom Republicans in the southernest of southern states identified with (and not, notably, Georgia's Newt Gingrich, although Newt was actually born and raised in Pennsylvania as well).

So what was that identification about? Put up against Romney, Santorum was more than enough of a Southern Republican. He may be Catholic while most of the people who voted for him were Protestant, but he's sure as hell no respect-other-faiths, don't-wear-your-religion-on-your-sleeve kind of guy, which Romney basically is. And Southern evangelical Republicans liked that, whatever they might think of the Pope. When Santorum explains his hatred of liberals, of gay people, of women who think they can have sex without being punished for it, and above all of Barack Obama, they could tell it was no act, no pandering. It's who he is, deep down in his soul, and he didn't have to drop his g's to make it hit home.

I may not be a great fan of the Republicans of Mississippi and Alabama, but I'll give them this: at least they displayed no evident interest in which Northerner did the best job of eating their food and speaking in their unique tongue.