With just a week and a half to go until the Iowa caucuses kick off the Republican presidential nominating calendar – followed eight days later by the New Hampshire primary – the verbal fireworks between the leading contenders are firing back and forth.

Just about anything said by one of the White House candidates can instantly spark a firestorm.

Case in point – a comment from former ambassador to the United Nations and former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley that New Hampshire voters “correct” the Iowa caucus results, quickly went viral. The remark was eviscerated by two of her rivals – Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis and former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie.

Christie argued that Haley was being “immature” and DeSantis charged that she was “insulting” Iowans.

Campaigning in Milford, on Wednesday, Haley told the large crowd listening to her that “we have an opportunity to get this right. And I know we’ll get it right, and I trust you. I trust every single one of you. You know how to do this. You know Iowa starts it. You know that you correct it.”

Pointing to her home state, which on Feb. 24 will hold the first southern contest in the Republican presidential primary schedule, Haley added “and then my sweet state of South Carolina brings it home.”

The comment appeared to be tailored to Granite Staters, and the crowd cheered Haley’s remarks.

Recent political history backs up Haley’s comment. The past three winners of the Iowa Republican presidential caucuses – former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee in 2008, former Sen. Rick Santorum of Pennsylvania in 2012, and Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas in 2016 – all came up short the next week in New Hampshire. And none of them went on to win the GOP nomination.

Then-Texas Gov. George W. Bush, the winner of the 2000 Iowa GOP caucuses, also lost the following week in New Hampshire, but did eventually capture his party’s nomination and then the White House.

Haley has enjoyed plenty of momentum in recent months and has soared in the latest polls in New Hampshire, which suggests she has significantly closed the gap with former President Donald Trump, who remains the commanding front-runner for the Republican nomination as he makes his third straight White House run.

Surveys also indicate that she’s caught up to DeSantis in Iowa as well as in national polls, tied for second place far behind Trump.

Haley has placed plenty of emphasis on a strong finish in New Hampshire, and her upward momentum in the state has accelerated since she landed the endorsement last month of popular Republican Gov. Chris Sununu, who joins her at each of her campaign stops.

But she has also spent plenty of time and resources in Iowa, and returned to the Hawkeye State on Thursday. Since launching her campaign last February, Haley’s held roughly 150 town halls, just about equally divided between Iowa and New Hampshire. And while her comment is backed up by recent political history, it may not have been the smoothest political move as her rivals instantly used it as ammunition.

Another popular GOP governor, Kim Reynolds of Iowa, didn’t seem to care for Haley’s remark.

Reynolds, who endorsed DeSantis in November, took to social media soon after Haley’s comment

“I trust Iowans to make their own decisions. No ‘corrections’ needed!” she wrote.

DeSantis, who’s staking his presidential campaign on a strong finish in Iowa, argued the next morning in a local radio interview in Iowa that Haley was “incredibly disrespectful to Iowans to say somehow their votes need to be corrected. I think she’s trying to provide an excuse for her not doing well.”

Christie, who is once again placing all his chips in New Hampshire as he runs a second time for the White House, stands in third place in most Granite State surveys, far behind Trump and Haley but ahead of DeSantis and multi-millionaire entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy.

Thursday night, Christie again took aim at Haley.

“You don’t have to correct anything that Iowa does or doesn’t do. That’s not New Hampshire’s responsibility. Your responsibility is to do what you think is right. You don’t have to worry about what Iowa does,” he told the crowd at a town hall in Hollis.

“I think people in Iowa saw here yesterday that she’s willing to say anything to an audience to try to curry their favor,” he told reporters minutes later. “She mocks Iowa voters just to try to get a laugh out of New Hampshire voters. I mean that’s just immature. Grow up.”

While Christie was in southern New Hampshire, Haley was at a CNN town hall in Iowa, where was asked about her comment. She said it was intended as a joke.

 “We’ve done 150-plus town halls,” she said. “You got to have some fun, too.”

Noting that she hails from South Carolina, Haley said that the early states “banter against each other on different things. New Hampshire makes fun of Iowa. Iowa makes fun of South Carolina. It’s what we do. So, I mean, I think the problem in politics now is it’s just like too serious and too dramatic.”

Sununu: Christiehas ‘hit his limit’

Sununu turned up the volume this week on Christie, and Christie clapped back.

New Hampshire’s governor, speaking with reporters multiple times as he campaigned for Haley, emphasized that he is not calling on his “friend” to drop out of the Republican presidential nomination race.

But Sununu argued that Christie’s “numbers are falling” and claimed that the former New Jersey governor has “hit his limit.” Additionally, he emphasized that Christie “has the chance to be the hero. To put Nikki over the top. To deliver Trump that loss, Nikki that win that the rest of the country’s looking for.”

“I know he’s disappointed that I didn’t get behind him, but at the end of the day, this is the path. Chris has kind of hit his limit… at around 13% of the vote. He speaks the truth on Trump, but that’s very different than whether it translates into votes for the nomination to become president of the United States,” Sununu said on Tuesday night after introducing Haley at a town hall in Rye.

He emphasized that Christie is “not going to surge 30% in the next three weeks. That ain’t happening. He hasn’t put a ground game in any other state, and you can’t just use New Hampshire as a launching ground to nothing else.”

Sununu said Christie could make a sacrifice to do exactly what he says he wants, which is to defeat Trump.

“I think Chris is smart enough to see the writing on the wall, to know that he has a great opportunity here not just to get behind Nikki but to do something really important for the country and the party and start moving us forward. He has been, and I think has the opportunity to continue to be a very important voice in that.”

While Sununu was talking with reporters in Rye, Christie was on CNN, firing back.

“Chris Sununu was one of the most vocal Donald Trump critics in this country,” Christie, a top Republican Trump critic, stressed. “This is a guy who has said that Donald Trump is unfit. All things that his candidate is unwilling to say.”

Christie accused Sununu of abandoning “his principles to try to get himself some political favor inside of his own state.”

On Thursday Christie claimed that “Chris has changed from being a governor to a political prognosticator.”

Christie once again pushed back against the calls for him to drop out of the race and back Haley to prevent Trump from winning the nomination.

Pointing to the crowd of nearly 300 that came out to see him, Christie said “you saw all these people tonight who don’t want me out of this race. They want to vote for me. And I suspect a lot of these people here, if I dropped out, wouldn’t vote at all, because she’s unwilling to take Trump on.”