Gingrich earned the lead before Iowa by being positive and inspirational but then Romney picked his moment to attack when he saw the whites of the eyes with Iowa weeks away.
Then add Ron Paul doing the same. No one could survive that.
he did survive it, and rebounded to SC, and then got to Florida where Willard threw 17 mil dollars worth of negative ads, filthy ads, lying ads about Newt, and had every gop national and florida state figure sabotaging Newt at eveyr stop along the way. And Newt survived that.
Romney didn't reach out to Santorum immediately as he has Newt, because he knows Newt is dangerous. Santorum can be bought, and Romney and his people know who can be bought...
Iowa was the first volley. Florida was the second. If Gingrich had won Iowa like he was poised to do, there would have been no Santorum to mess things up.