It’s been one scary horror movie. But now, at last, the happy ending. The slasher is dead. The aliens have been defeated. The flesh-eating zombies have been disposed of once and for all. The vampires will never suck blood again. You exhale. You relax. You heave a sigh of relief.
Big mistake! As even the most casual observer of cinematic conventions knows, this is the moment of maximum peril. The moment when, suddenly, the slasher’s not really dead. The aliens aren’t all gone. The zombies haven’t been disposed of. The vampires are stirring. They’re BACK!!!!
Donald Trump lost Iowa. But he’s far from politically dead and decisively defeated. Yet large parts of the Republican party and the conservative coalition remain as foolishly complacent as they were during his ascendancy. And some of the anti-Trump forces are now heaving sighs of relief and letting down their guard.
Don’t! It’s not as if he’s fallen all that far. Trump lost Iowa by 3 percentage points. As we write on February 4, he seems to be maintaining a comfortable lead in New Hampshire. And who’s doing much to persuade voters to abandon him? Not Chris Christie and Jeb Bush’s super-PAC, who are desperately and irresponsibly focusing their attacks on Marco Rubio. Not elements of the Republican establishment, who agree with Jimmy Carter in preferring Trump to Ted Cruz.
And if Trump wins New Hampshire, what then? Winning New Hampshire after losing Iowa is a pretty good recipe for winning the nomination, as the examples of Ronald Reagan in 1980, George H. W. Bush in 1988, John McCain in 2008, and Mitt Romney in 2012 suggest. In fact, since the modern primary system really came into being in 1972, the eventual GOP nominee has always run first or second in New Hampshire. So it’s dispiriting that more of an effort isn’t being made to decisively knock Trump down and out.
Maybe the voters of New Hampshire will rise to the occasion on their own, deal Trump a death blow, and end the horror show. Or perhaps New Hampshire will be Trump’s last gasp, and the voters of subsequent states will decisively reject him. But complacency at this point is unwarranted and could be disastrous. And hope is not enough, either. Republicans and conservatives—elected officials, donors, activists, and citizens—are going to have to finish the job that the Republicans of Iowa so creditably began.
