NH has no business determining the Republican Presidential nominee, nor does Iowa. Two states that have voted precisely once for President in the general over the span of three decades.
Let’s see how the national Democrats would react if their nominee was chosen by Wyoming, Oklahoma or West Virginia today.
While I agree that no single state, nor duo of states, should permanently enjoyed such an outsized role in determining the GOP presidential nominee, it is simply not correct to say that NH and IA are liberal states outside the mainstream and thus are unrepresentative of the type of Republican that can win the presidency. No Republican ever has been elected president without carrying at least one of NH or IA (or, usually, both) in the general election. In fact, the closest the GOP has come to winning the presidency without carrying either IA or NH was in 2012, when Romney fell a whopping 64 EVs short (and the easiest path to 270 would have been had he carried FL, OH, Va ... and NH); prior presidential elections in which the GOP nominee failed to carry one of NH or IA were Democrat electoral landslides, with the GOP nominee falling short of victory by 97 EVs in 2008, 111 EVs in 1996, 102 EVs in 1992, 218 EVs in 1964,, 258 EVs in 1936, and 258 EVs in 1912.
As for NH and IA today, their performance in presidential general election has been within 2% of the national GOP performance during each of the past 6 presidential elections (the last time in which the states were out of the mainstream, 1988, was when NH voted 9% more Republican than the nation while IA voted 9% less Republican). And the primary electorates in IA and NH are good proxies for two of the three legs of American conservatism’s three-legged tool, with IA Republicans being strong social conservatives and NH Republicans being strong economic conservatives (national-defense conservatives are not well represented in either state’s GOP electorate, but they wield their influence in the SC primary and many subsequent contests).
So I would posit that a Republican presidential candidate’s success in the IA caucuses and NH primary is a good harbinger for his success in the general election. Sure, the states’ primary electorates have their idiosynchrasies, but the GOP could do far worse than with IA and NH as the first two primary contests.
But as I said at the outset, I don’t think that any two states should be entitled to have the first two contests in perpetuity. There are other states that similarly are good proxies for the national electorate—OH, FL, NV, NC, VA, AZ, NM, MO, GA and PA come to mind—that could be good choices for early primary contests. None is perfect, of course, but I think that it’s important to permit candidates to campaign in one state at a time early in the primary season so as to separate the wheat from the chaff and so as to avoid having the guy with the most money overwhelm insurgent candidates in a multistate contest. So maybe those 12 states (the 10 I listed plus IA and NH) could alternate with spots 1-12 in the primary season, leaving enough time between contests to allow for personal campaigning.