Will the New Hampshire primary see the return of ‘the crazy’?

As the first results of the Iowa caucus began to come through, a remarkable prospect dawned on US election analysts. There finally seemed to be a way out of ‘the crazy’ that had dominated the Republican race since early summer, following the launch of Donald Trump’s campaign. And what a nine months it has been: the Great Wall of Trump (which Mexico will pay for), his myriad of burn-book-worthy enemies, the rise and fall of Ben Carson, and Texas Senator Ted Cruz, a man even more loathed by the GOP establishment than the New York tycoon. But finally, the Iowa caucuses – that long-standing thorn in the side of both party establishments – propelled Marco Rubio into the top tier. He has long been seen as a candidate who can unite the party: his conservative record makes him acceptable to the Tea Party, while the fact he neither sounds nor looks like a lunatic makes the establishment view him fondly. Last week I suggested that if he did well in Polk County (Des Moines), which more resembles the rest of America than Iowa as a whole, things might get interesting – and, while taking 23 percent of the vote overall, Senator Rubio topped the poll in both Des Moines and Davenport, the state’s third largest city. Oh those halcyon days of last week. Marcomentum was well and truly underway. Fresh endorsements like Senator Tim Scott of South Carolina and recently vanquished presidential candidate Rick Santorum came rolling in. The bookies odds in New Hampshire, a state with a far more moderate Republican electorate than Iowa, tightened. Perhaps, just perhaps, New Hampshire would come in to save the day for the establishment and give us, after all, a remarkably normal election season. But it seemingly was not to be. ‘The Governors’ (a term worthy of a villainous trio in a Marvel comic) – Chris Christie of New Jersey, John Kasich of Ohio and Jeb Bush of Florida – would see to that. Success in the libertarian-leaning state is an all-or-nothing for any moderate seeking the presidency, which is why the Guvs have been decamped here for most of the past year, bobbing around at between 8 percent and 15 percent in most polls. If they weren’t going to break free from each other, they certainly weren’t going to roll over for some pipsqueak first-term Senator, who they consider a lightweight. So came Saturday night’s debate, with Chris Christie, laying into Rubio as – not wholly unfairly – an inexperienced robot, who had never run anything and just repeated the same prepared lines his advisors had handed him (four times, in fact). It wasn’t just a bad performance; it was a catastrophe for the history books alongside Rick Perry’s ‘oops’ of 2011. As Taegan Goddard of Political Wire tweeted:

Marco Rubio isn’t ready for prime time. Let the panic begin.

— Taegan Goddard (@politicalwire) February 7, 2016

So here we are. Rubio, the third place ‘victor’ of last week, is not going to win New Hampshire. Donald Trump, the weakened and humbled ‘loser’ of Iowa, will do so. Despite the state’s history of last-minute shifts, his 17-point average poll lead is healthy enough to all but take victory in the Granite State to the bank. Furthermore, Trump’s team know the terrain far better than they did Iowa: his campaign manager is from New Hampshire, where he served as state director for the Koch-backed grassroots organisation Americans for Prosperity. But the ‘ticket out of New Hampshire’ – with the credibility to contest the next states aggressively – will be defined by which of the candidates come second, third, fourth, fifth and indeed, sixth. With 44 percent of voters saying they may yet change their minds, according to the latest UMass tracking poll, and just eight points separating the five runners up, it is possible for each of the Guvs, Marco Rubio and Ted Cruz to finish in any order, perhaps by extraordinarily tight margins. A Rubio second place confirms much of the existing narrative: a weakened compromise candidate, but one who cements his role as the establishment choice with the greatest chance of beating Hillary Clinton. His brand will need further damage control, but at least his purported strategy of Iowa 3^rd, New Hampshire 2^nd, South Carolina 1^st seems on track. There is still a good chance this happens. A Kasich, Bush or Christie second place (listed in order of likelihood) complicates things further, as it provides Rubio’s newly won moderate supporters with a candidate who might be better suited to their tastes. When whichever of these men drop out after New Hampshire, their supporters may gravitate to the surviving Governor, likely Kasich, rather than coalescing around Rubio. Instead of the classic ‘winnowing of the field’ in the early states, a three-person race will have become a four-person one, with the ‘moderate’ third of the vote split between two candidates. Which brings us to the establishment’s nightmare. As Harry Enten of FiveThirtyEight asked rhetorically on Twitter last week, ‘Is there a state worse for Cruz than New Hampshire?’ It is moderately moderate, low in its evangelical population and has residents so unshocked by ‘New York values’ that they may even venture to the Big Apple occasionally. But let’s say Rubio fizzles, Christie rises a little and each of the four horsemen of moderation get 12 percent a piece – with his solid ground game, Cruz could come a clear second with just 16 percent. Since the Iowa caucuses came into being in 1972, no candidate has gone on to win the Republican nomination without carrying one of the first two contests. The Republican National Committee hopes to change that this year. But what are the optics of Donald Trump and Ted Cruz taking first and second place in both states, particularly as the race moves to more conservative territory in South Carolina (February 20) and the slew of southern states voting on Super Tuesday (March 1)? A two-person race between Trump and Cruz might then be upon us. Ruth Graham of Politico wrote last week that New Hampshirites see their primary as ‘America’s backstop of common sense’, stopping the bombastic in their tracks. This year, it could prove to be the contest that resurrects and escalates the craziest nomination contest the Republican Party has ever seen.