CHRIS SUNUNU IS DELUSIONAL

I wasn't planning to write about New Hampshire governor Chris Sununu's New York Times op-ed "If Republicans Narrow the Field, We Will Beat Trump," but I see that both NBC and Fox News are giving it respectful coverage. So I'd just like to make the point that Sununu is completely delusional, and is encouraging others to be delusional as well.

Sununu writes:

This week, Republican primary candidates for president will have a chance to make their case before a national audience — with or without Donald Trump on the debate stage. To win, they must break free of Mr. Trump’s drama, step out of his shadow, go on offense, attack, and present their case....

Candidates on the debate stage should not be afraid to attack Donald Trump.... Tim Scott, Ron DeSantis, and Vivek Ramaswamy — candidates with compelling stories, records and polling — must show voters they are willing to take on Mr. Trump, show a spark, and not just defend him in absentia.

Sununu seems to believe it's just a coincidence that DeSantis, Ramaswamy, and Scott have had some polling success while not attacking Trump very hard (or, in Ramaswamy's case, at all). It appears not to occur to Sununu that attacking Trump would cause these candidates' poll numbers to crater.

Donald Trump is beatable, and it starts in Iowa and New Hampshire. Ignore the national polls that show he is leading — they are meaningless....

The best indicator of Mr. Trump’s strength is looking to where the voters are paying attention: in states where candidates are campaigning, television ads are running, and there is a wide range of media attention on every candidate.

In Iowa and New Hampshire, the first two states that will vote in the 2024 Republican primaries, Mr. Trump is struggling. In both Iowa and New Hampshire, he is consistently polling in the low 40 percent range. The floor of his support may be high, but his ceiling is low.

Is that true? It sure doesn't seem true in Iowa. Yes, Trump can't quite get to 50% in Iowa polling in a multi-candidate field, but why does he need to when he has a 26-point lead? And when pollsters have surveyed hypothetical Iowa head-to-head matchups involving Trump, he generally crushes his opponents. In a Daily Mail poll conducted early this month, Trump beat DeSantis 48% to 35%, beat Scott 54% to 34%, beat Ramaswamy 54% to 28%, and beat Mike Pence 67% to 20%. In a New York Times poll conducted a few days earlier, Trump beat DeSantis head to head 55% to 39%.

But Sununu isn't proposing a mass culling of the field before Iowa. He says:

At a minimum, any candidate who does not make the stage for the first two debates must drop out.

Anyone who is polling in the low single digits by Christmas must acknowledge that their efforts have fallen short.

I agree that Perry Johnson, Will Hurd, Asa Hutchinson, Larry Elder, Francis Suarez, and Ryan Binkley should all drop out. But in the recent NBC/Des Moines Register poll of Iowa, they're all at 0%, except for Hurd, who's at 1%. How does redistributing 1% of the vote diminish Trump's double-digit lead? And even if you get rid of Doug Burgum (2%) and Ramaswamy (4%), that's 7% of the total vote to redistribute, and Trump leads DeSantis in this poll by 23. Besides, Ramaswamy won't drop out because (a) he's doing much better in New Hampshire and in national polling and (b) he's in the race to build his brand, not to win.

Here's Sununu's key proposal:

After the results from Iowa come in, it is paramount that the field must shrink, before the New Hampshire primary, to the top three or four.

So ... presumably Trump, DeSantis, Ramaswamy, and Scott? Not Chris Christie, even though he's polling better in New Hampshire, and is the media's favorite anti-Trump candidate? And whoever the survivors are, if they're each at 10% to 15%, they'll still be dividing up the anti-Trump vote. So how does that solve the problem?

If you think Trump can be beaten -- I don't -- you need to pick one opponent. And since the GOP isn't capable of that kind of collective action, and certain candidates won't drop out because they're in the race for reasons other than the belief that they can win, this will never happen, no matter what Chris Sununu says.