The fantasy that there’s going to be a race for the 2024 GOP presidential nomination

The elites demand their horserace:

Candidates cannot continue to let the former president dominate the media like he has for the last six months. They need to be more aggressive about seizing the opportunity to boost their national profiles. There has been positive movement from some candidates, but more needs to be done.

It must be said that candidates who stay in this race when they have no viable path should be called out. They are auditioning for a Trump presidency cabinet that will simply never happen. And even if a Trump administration magically materialized, no public humiliation that great is worth the sacrifice.

As governor of the first-in-the-nation primary state, I will do everything I can to help narrow the field. I plan to endorse and campaign for the best alternative to Mr. Trump. As of now, it’s anyone’s for the taking.

For 20 years straight, the winner of the New Hampshire Republican presidential primary has gone on to secure the party’s nomination. Once the voters of Iowa and New Hampshire are presented a clear alternative to Mr. Trump, his path forward darkens, and the Republican Party’s future begins to take shape. The rest of the country needs to see not just that the emperor has no clothes, but that the Republican Party is able to refocus the conversation where it needs to be, on a nominee dedicated to saving America.

The Iowa and New Hampshire elections are pseudo-events, that are imbued with significance by the media because of the desperate need to generate clickable content. They are the equivalent of treating the 2023 Yankees’ 3-1 start as if it were evidence that they were going to have a better winning percentage than their 1927 predecessors.

Also too, it’s pretty funny that Sununu cites the five previous New Hampshire primary winners, when two of those winners were Donald Trump, and a third (Bush the Lesser) ran essentially unopposed. Also also too, the last GOP presidential nominee to win the Iowa caucuses other than Trump was also Bush. Other winners include such memorable names as Rick Santorum, Mike Huckabee, and Ted Cruz. Collectively, Iowa and New Hampshire have been LESS predictive of the GOP nominee over the past 20 years than the random Republican primary.

Also also also too, Trump is up by more than 20 points in both states.

But some people have to play their little games.

Joe Biden is going to face Donald Trump in the general election less than 15 months from now, and only epidemiology or Capt. Willard stand in the way of that outcome.