I don't know if you are aware of this, but to win a winner take all state, you have to win it. So far Newt has won two. How would that hurt Rick at all?
Take it to the limits (like in math)
In the limit of all states being winner take all: Newt hurts Santorum by preventing him from winning in these states (possibly)
In the limit of all states where delegates are awarded proportionally, Newt helps Santorum.
If you look at the polls almost half of Newt supporters go to Romney. That would mean in the proportional states, Santorum and Romney would roughly split the delegates.
Santorum and Romney would increase their delegate count at roughly the same pace. Because Romney has a significant lead on Santorum, he will get to the number of delegates required faster than if Romney is forced to split the vote three ways.
I’m a Newt fan, but I’ll gladly support Santorum. I just don’t think it is possible for him to outright win at this point. We need to push this to a brokered convention.
Back to my original point, this hinges on how many delegates will be assigned in a winner take all vs. proportional manner. I’m pretty sure that most of the remaining delegates are parsed out in a proportional manner.
I suspect that both Newt and Santorum have performed a detailed analysis. I suspects thats why Santorum isn’t more forcefully pushing for Newt to drop out.
I suspect he may drop right before a few of the winner take all states.