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Newt and Santorum were both essentially broke.

Of the two, Newt did by far the best job in lining things up. He tried in VA as did Perry, but the only ones who passed muster there were the two who ran before, Romney and Paul. Their submissions were not checked.

Santorum did not even try to qualify for VA ballot.

Santorum has difficulties in various states with delegates and will not win as many delegates as his vote totals would suggest he should.

Newt does not have those delegate problems.

Ron Paul is a special case. He is a Libertarian masquerading as a Republican in order to have a chance to draw attention, get in the debates and get anywhere at all. He may very well go third party, or if not, negotioate his son Rand onto a ticket in return for his delegates.

Newt is a man of towering accomplishment and intellect. He wanted to drive the debate and rehabilitate himself politically and personally, from what I have seen of his run, but without money and organization such as Romney has out the wazoo, he has done amazingly well.

Before Romney unleashed the neutron bomb of lying ads on Newt, he was the leading candidate of all, nationwide.

He crashed in Iowa due to that attack, recovered in the good state of SC, then hobbled into second to Mitt’s powerful FL punch. Early votes alone, for Romney, were enough to sink Newt there, but Romney false Newt ads were a 65-1 ratio to negative ads about Mitt.

Given all, Newt did much better than Santo in doing necessary nuts and bolts. Neither were flush enough to contest Mitt on far off islands, as important as each delegate is.

Ron Paul does well organizationally, but he isn’t a Republican and many people love him on some things and believe he’s insane on others. Therefore no matter what, he cannot win states and caucuses, but does collect a lot of proportional delegates to use as leverage.