Today I’m going to quickly update two previous columns.
The first, published nearly a year ago, argued “Iowa and New Hampshire…will be critically important in sorting out the winner (of the GOP nomination).”
I noted that “Questioning the influence of these early states…has become commonplace, with the winners in Iowa and in New Hampshire each going on to capture their party’s nomination only about half the time.”
However, I wrote, “this analysis misses the tremendous joint power of these two early states. The simple fact is, since 1976, when proliferating primaries and caucuses became the chief mechanism for selecting convention delegates, every nominee but two, in both parties, won either Iowa or New Hampshire.” (The exceptions were, well, exceptional.)
Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis and former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley understood this dynamic. DeSantis put all his chips on Iowa, while Haley bet big on New Hampshire. Both lost their wagers.
Neither got what George H. W. Bush labeled the “big mo’,” a rush of support derived from the two V’s: visibility and viability,........