Frank Cannon is president of the American Principles Project and a respected conservative political strategist with over 30 years of experience.
[A John Kasich victory in New Hampshire] changes the race fundamentally because Kasich is, among the establishment candidates, the least capable of getting crossover votes from social conservatives and traditional conservatives. He’s a strong economic conservatives and would be very strong in the Midwest, but the race goes south from New Hampshire to South Carolina and then to the “SEC primary.” So you could really completely muddle the race, and you would have an establishment candidate; Cruz, who is a strong social is candidate; and Trump, who is a strong populist candidate. And you could get the kind of fracture in the race that people have been predicting. I don’t think that would be as necessarily true if somebody else who had more crossover appeal came out of the establishment race. […]
