Will Republicans triage New Hampshire any time soon?

[MT Treasurer]

Or is the next cycle going to be when they finally flip it (only for them to predictably lose it again and having to come up with another revisionist excuse as to why the state was clearly/easily winnable for them if not for circumstances conspiring against them this time).

The argument that NH is "susceptible to large swings" is not only very debatable but also rather disingenuous: When NH did have large swings at the federal level in recent cycles, they all tended to benefit Democrats, something that is usually not brought up by the same people pointing to the state's supposed 'elasticity.'

It seems like the narrative that NH is a swing state at the federal level is based primarily on two races: NH-PRES 2000 and NH-SEN 2010. It really seems to be the GOP's FL in many ways, although Democrats are at least smart enough to figure out that FL is practically gone for them. What’s behind the NH obsession? The desire to win at least one New England state?

[TML]

I think the current wave of obsession has a lot to do with the fact that NH currently has a popular Republican governor who has significantly outperformed his state's partisan lean in each of his reelection bids. They thus think he could somehow transfer this electoral success to the US Senate (apparently not taking into account what happened to people like Mike Sullivan, Bill Weld, Steve Bullock, etc.). In Sununu's case, the fact that NH has no gubernatorial term limits likely played a big role in him forgoing a Senate run; I think he might have agreed to a Senate run if he had been term-limited out of the governor's office like Bullock was during the year of his Senate run.

[Skill and Chance]

It depends.  If they stick with the socially conservative base, it eventually doesn't make sense after a couple more cycles.  It's out of the way of all the other swing states and only 4 EV and most likely trending away from them unless they run a campaign as secular or more so than Trump 2016.   

[At-Large Senator LouisvilleThunder]

It's still going to depend on factors like incumbency and the nature of the issues and candidates running since Democrats have played smart and got lucky in the 2014 and 2016 Senate races while Republicans have bolstered their local GOP brand in races for the state government. There seems to be a certain segment among women voters especially who like their federal Democrats but state Republicans.

[Orser67]

I know this is a presidential elections sub-forum, but I think in triaging a state you also have to think about other federal races. I'm sure the fact that NH is partly in the Boston media market makes it more expensive to campaign in than it would be otherwise, but it's still a tiny state that (like all states) has two senators, and which has been reasonably competitive in most recent federal races. I think the GOP would be foolish to write it off so quickly.

[Brother Jonathan]

One major problem moving forward will also be the decay of the NH state party. It is increasingly being given over to the extreme culture warrior Trump faction, and beyond Sununu, there do not seem to be a lot of Republicans who can win both primaries and general elections. Regardless of the support the national party provides, they will need a functioning GOP in the state to work with, and that they will have one here is increasingly an open question.

The thing that makes me very pessimistic about the state of the NH GOP is that I cannot think of many candidates who stand out or seem like plausible candidates for statewide/national office beyond Sununu. Edleblut maybe, but he is decently to Sununu's right, though maybe working for him has laundered his reputation a bit. Jeb Bradley is getting older and probably would fare no better than Morse in a primary. No halfway electable Republican can win a primary in the 2nd District or has been since Charlie Bass. And bear in mind that Sununu only won the 2016 primary (and the general election for that matter) very narrowly, and he's been the only Republican to win statewide since Ayotte in 2010. Depending on the way trends go, the NH GOP could flip CD 2, but I don't know if they will do it with the sorts of candidates they have tended to put up there. We're also seeing suburban areas like Bedford continue to give Sununu good numbers, but downballot and in other races they are considerably less favorable to the GOP than in the past, and so one has to wonder if any other Republican can match Sununu in those areas or if once he is gone the decline in the GOP vote there accelerates.

I want to see how the Chair and Vice Chair elections go. If Bolduc wins Vice Chair, then we really are in deep. If Terrell (Sununu-endorsed) wins, then maybe there is a bit of hope for putting the party on a better long-term footing, showing that the activists realize that things are not looking good (if the voters follow is another question, and they don't seem overly inclined to do so). Chris Ager, running for Chair, seems not awful, though he came to prominence by taking the National Committeeman spot from Steve Duprey, which is emblematic of the sort of useless ideological purity lust that is hamstringing the party and making it less effective. Basically, if the party (and, more importantly, its voters) can realize the need to not insist on ideological purity and full commitment to unpopular positions, then maybe there is a chance for the party moving forward.

Re: but to the actual question no, probably not, since the national GOP seems to be a bit delusion about where they are actually competitive.