“Just wait. Newt will rally on Super Tuesday,” maintained the local Gingrich aide, “and the race for the [GOP Presidential] nomination will be decided here,” in Louisiana.

Would Louisiana’s conservative electorate opt for a fellow Southerner like Gingrich, or would the state’s largely Catholic GOP instead embrace an outspoken conservative Catholic with a populist blue collar appeal like Rick Santorum? And, in a state that gave nearly half of its primary support to John McCain four years ago, could Mitt Romney make a rally?

Regardless, the one question that no one asks in political circles is whether the March 24 Republican primary in Louisiana will matter. All evidence points to an active GOP race — still on-going and competitive.

As this newspaper went to press, Rick Santorum has so far led Mitt Romney by eight points in Romney’s home state of Michigan in polls leading up to the February 28 primary. The former Pennsylvania Senator also leads in Ohio, all be it more narrowly.

The surveys commonly reveal that Newt Gingrich seems to be falling in conservative primary support across the board. No longer do the former Speaker and the former Senator so actively divide the activist Right’s vote that the former Massachusetts Governor can pull off a win by default. Gingrich stands at 15 percent in the latest Michigan polls. The GOP primary voter in the industrial Midwest seems to have soured on the former Speaker.

Aiding Santorum’s case, the ex-Penn. Senator actually runs stronger in Ohio against Barack Obama, leading the President by one point or a statistical dead heat, when Romney trails by four. The polls result shocked a political world which had concluded the former Mass Gov. would always be a stronger candidate with wavering independents. It is a survey result dashing Romney’s “case for electability.”

Yet, as New York Magazine columnist Jonathan Chait observed, “In fact, there are, very roughly speaking, two kinds of swing voters. One kind is economically conservative, socially liberal swing voters. This is the kind of voter you usually read about, because it’s the kind most familiar to political reporters—affluent and college educated. But there’s a second kind of voter at least as numerous—economically populist and socially conservative. Think of disaffected blue-collar workers, downscale white men who love guns, hate welfare, oppose free trade, and want higher taxes on the rich and corporations. Romney appeals to the former, but Santorum more to the latter.”

“As hard a time as Santorum would have closing the sale among certain moderate quarters, I don’t think it’s sunk in quite how poisoned Romney’s image has become among downscale voters.”

The former Pennsylvania Senator’s blue-collar appeal is built on more than touting his grandfather, the immigrant coal miner. It’s focused on an industrial strategy that would exempt manufacturing firms from corporate taxation. It’s takes Barack Obama’s tax credit ideas for manufacturing to the ultimate degree.

And, in some conservative circles, Santorum’s idea is considered as much of an “industrial policy” as anything the incumbent President has proposed. Alex Brill, an economist at the American Enterprise Institute, critiqued, “At the moment, it’s not just that [tax] rates are too high, it’s that there are too many goodies in the existing system. Santorum’s plan doesn’t address that; it’s quite the opposite.”

The ex-Pennsylvania Senator counters that economists ignore how much base salary pay benefits social cohesion and upward mobility. Manufacturing pays well; Walmart, not so much. An high school educated employee of an industrial concern makes four to five times that of someone hired in the much-ballyhooed service sector. With manufacturing having fallen to just more than 11 percent of the nation’s economy, Santorum believes that there is a link to the loss of high paying jobs and the breakdown of the American family.

As he explained in a speech before the Detroit Economic Club on Thursday, eliminating the 35 percent percent corporate tax on manufacturing (along with increasing the R&D tax credit to 20 percent), is about increasing the number of high paying jobs. What some call an “industrial strategy,” the Senator says is part of his pro-family agenda that also calls for tripling the child tax deduction.

“It’s the paycheck to paycheck folks, they want to hear someone talk directly to them,” explained Santorum supporter Chuck Laudner, manager of the Senator’s victories in the Iowa and Minnesota caucuses (in an interview with nationalreview.com.)

To free market purists, the former Penn Senator also calls for tax reform reducing the current six income tax rates to two, 10 percent and 28 percent, essentially the same as the President’s bipartisan commission on deficit reduction, but without similar increases in capital gains and dividend taxes.

Democratic consultant Bob Shrum confessed that Santorum’s focus on working middle class may have some dangers for Barack Obama’s populist focused campaign. “He sounds like he understands how people are struggling,” a rare position for a GOP candidate.

But, not for the average Republican. Santorum’s push for industrial jobs strategy is a recognition that the average GOP voter is a married couple making less than 68,000 per year. These are working middle-class voters, who would in the past have been loyal Democrats. Of course, they tend to be white.

Race and Class constitute the clearest breakdown of partisan loyalty. African Americans and Hispanics have joined with bourgeoisie suburbanites to form the Democratic coalition. Whites making $90,000 – $180,000 with a graduate degree are a more key part of the Democratic coalition than unions — many of whose members are now loyal Republicans, a trend that almost mirrors manufacturing’s fall to 11 percent of the economy.

Still, little in the current GOP offers a direct financial benefit to these voters. Yet, it is not as if the other side made a better deal. Even some of the most partisan Democrats argue that for the non-college-bound middle class, the Democrats have not delivered much, and President Obama, little at all.

As the NYT’s Nate Silver ob­serves, Romney’s support amongst independents tends to fall in the so-called “SuperZips,” high-income suburban enclaves in mainly Northeastern states. While that may allow the popular vote to draw closer, these are strong Democratic states at their core. Romney’s independent appeal helps little amongst working-class voters in the most active swing states like Pennsylvania, Ohio, Michigan, and the Upper Midwest. Santorum, however, appears to speak directly to these voters.

As Silver observed, “I am not quite ready to suggest that Santorum would be a better nominee than Romney. But the electability gap between the two is closer than it might appear because of the way Santorum’s strengths could play in the Electoral College.”

That this working class electorate is up for grabs, not only in a general election, but in the coming month of March primaries, spells danger for Newt Gingrich. It also stands as the reason that Louisiana may determine who the GOP nominee will be.

There is little doubt that Gingrich leads in his home state of Georgia in anticipation of the March 6 “Super Tuesday” primaries. He sits at 43 percent, with Romney at 29 percent and Santorum at 12 percent. (In the latest Mason-Dixon poll, at least. Some other match-ups put Gingrich with just a nine point lead.)

This contrasts with recent national polls of the Republican candidates, with Santorum at 30 percent, Romney at 27 percent, and Gingrich at 10 percent.

While polling data in the other SuperTuesday states is uneven at best, there is little to suggest that Gingrich is as strong across the South as he is at home. (North Carolina polling increasingly shows a virtual three way tie.)

Partially, it is a recognition that the South has evolved from a farming to a manufacturing economy on-par with the Rust Belt. Santorum’s social conservatism plays well, but his message of high-paying manufacturing jobs has begun to make itself felt in key Southern states.

Enter Louisiana. Should San­torum defeat, or come close to defeating Romney in Michigan, and have a strong showing in Ohio, a Georgia surge may not be enough for Gingrich to return as a credible conservative alternative.

Focus will turn to the next primary, namely Louisiana on March 24th. The state with its large Catholic population matched with a struggling economy that relies on petrochemical refining (i.e., a form of manufacturing) is a state tailor-made to break the narrative that Gingrich will rally in the South and strike to the nomination.

Mike Huckabee bested John McCain in the Pelican State, despite all of McCain’s institutional support and the conservative support divided in a GOP field far more crowded than today. As political consultant Mike Bayham explained to The Louisiana Weekly, “Rick Santorum is the Huckabee of this race. With one difference — he’s an electable Huckabee.”

This article originally published in the February 20, 2012 print edition of The Louisiana Weekly newspaper.