Nikki Haley

The big question that every New Hampshire personality is ready to answer, expecting it before each conversation with an out-of-state journalist, is some form of “will your state still matter after this?” The absence of a truly competitive primary nags at them, and local officials bristle at the notion that in this new era of celebrity politics, where approaches are measured in virality and meme potential, the old skills of glad-handing at small-town gatherings is declining into a memory.  “They’ll be back,” Chris Ager, the New Hampshire Republican Party chairman, tells me. “This is a special place, and it’s not going anywhere.

“Many are called, but few are chosen.” That verse from Matthew (22:14) certainly applies to presidential aspirants. The latest to be called but not chosen is Ron DeSantis, who ended his campaign Sunday. Technically, he “suspended” the campaign, but that was simply to comply with campaign finance laws. In practice, the run is over.  The campaign was a brief, unsuccessful effort by a candidate who began with high promise, based on his success as Florida governor. He won that office, just barely, in 2018 after a decisive endorsement from Donald Trump. He was reelected overwhelmingly in 2022 against a well-regarded Democratic opponent.

Vintage news outlets, with lots of time to kill and space to fill, are desperately trying to say the Republican primary contest is still open. It’s not. Ron DeSantis’s campaign is already filled with embalming fluid. True, he finished second in Iowa, but that was his most favorable terrain, and he failed to win outright. DeSantis’s basic strategy was to draw away Trump voters by taking strong, socially conservative positions, such as banning abortions after six weeks in Florida. It didn’t convince primary voters. That spells the end for DeSantis nationally because it failed in a state where he spent a lot of time and money and where Republicans are very conservative. To invert the song, "New York, New York," if he can’t make it there, he can’t make it anywhere.

The back-to-back nature of the Iowa and New Hampshire contests has in the past fulfilled an important function for Republicans as they choose their presidential nominee: they've made clear who the top-tier candidates are for the job, and in several key points, dramatically changed the race. This time around, Iowa failed to do so — and New Hampshire may follow suit.  For Donald Trump, the caucus win went as expected, with a slim majority of the overall vote, in what looks to be the lowest turnout competitive Iowa caucus in a quarter century.

It was former New Jersey governor Chris Christie who ended up getting smoked. His share of the Republican primary vote had dwindled to the single digits. His fusillades at Donald Trump proved as ineffective as the Ukrainian counteroffensive against Russia. He could only skedaddle... but not before delivering a lengthy departing address bewailing the manifold sins of Donald Trump, expressing his regret at conniving to advance Trump’s political fortunes and pledging, “I will make sure that in no way do I enable Donald Trump to ever be president of the United States again.” Christie was an enabler in 2016, when, to the surprise of the Republican establishment, he broke ranks to endorse Trump, hoping to secure the vice presidential nod, or at least a cabinet position.

Not enough people are asking a pretty obvious question: will 2024 be the last cycle where Iowa and New Hampshire are the first states in the nation to vote on the presidential nomination? Democrats have already ditched them. The decision by party leaders to move away from the Iowa-New Hampshire schedule for the first caucus and first primary in the nation was motivated by a recognition that the two states no longer represent the populations at the center of their current coalition. In other words: there are too many white people in these places. So South Carolina is now their first real state that counts, at least for this cycle — but probably for the foreseeable future, as Democrats shift toward their coalition of black Americans, single women and college-educated suburbanites.