That's very true. Santorum at his high mark was a shoe in to win Ohio, and should also have won Michigan.
The Santoroons can whine about "Newt stealing votes from Santorum" (which, wrongly, assumes that all Newt's support would have gone to Santorum had Newt bowed out - a lot of those folks might not even have voted at all), but the fact remains that Santorum lost Michigan and Ohio because he is, in fact, seeing his support level erode.
At his high-water mark, Santorum was doing so well because a lot of people beyond the hard-core politicoevangelical base of the So-Con wing of the Party were thinking, "well, hey, he won in Minnesota, Colorado, and a few other states, so let's take a look at him as a viable non-Romney."
Even I was looking at him much more closely (and defending him on the internet) back then. But since then, he has basically shown that he doesn't have any fire discipline, and is pretty much destined to tick off anybody who is NOT part of the hard-core politicoevangelical So-Con portion of the base. Which makes him unelectable (and I say this as someone pretty far to the Right on social issues myself, probably more so than most FReepers reading this).
There's also the fact that Newt actually has more pledged delegates than Santorum - despite the disparity in primaries won. When Newt talked about a "strategy" for the primaries, he meant it. Part of his choices in where to campaign, I've noticed, doesn't *just* seem to centre about where he thinks he will do well, but where there are actual delegates to be had. Why waste time in a Missouri primary that awards not a single delegate? Why waste time in Maine, where they're still trying to figure out how to apportion? Why spend money in Alaska which has 14 total delegates, when you can invest that money in Oklahoma, eek out a statistical third, and still come away with one less delegate than the winner, and one less than you would have gotten from winning Alaska?
To add to your good posts.
Santo was not vetted in August, September, October, November, December, January, and half of February. Why would they vett Rick since he was once mired in polls @2% and behind RuuPaul? It hasn’t even been a full month of serious Ricky vetting, and Newt has been vetted up and down, sideways, and every other which way for a very long time.