Ted Cruz’s team has a theory about how the next four weeks will go: He will edge out Donald Trump in Iowa, suffer a drubbing to him eight days later in New Hampshire, and then by the third week in February, actually be locked in the “two-man race” that he today confidently predicts the election has already entered.

Then, here in the Palmetto State, his path to the Republican nomination will be cemented.

“In most prior elections, Iowa and New Hampshire split. They go for different candidates,” Cruz said Saturday in a college auditorium here in the ruby red Upstate region. “South Carolina