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MANCHESTER, N.H. -- On Jan. 22, 1980, Wayne MacDonald, who headed the Young Republicans of New Hampshire, received an anxious telephone call from Ronald Reagan's presidential headquarters in California. It was 8 a.m. (5 a.m. on the West Coast) and the Reaganauts had been up most of the night fretting about possible Granite State fallout from George H.W. Bush's victory in the Iowa caucuses the night before.

"They were very worried," said MacDonald, who was backing Reagan. "Very upset." The young operative assured him that New Hampshire was still solid for Reagan, which proved to be the case.

Today, another Iowa upstart has threatened to upend the presidential pecking order in a Republican primary season. And once again those manning the front-runner’s firewall in New Hampshire believe they have things under control. Six days from now, we’ll learn whether that’s true or not.

Iowa doesn’t pick presidential winners, but it does help even famously independent-minded New Hampshire voters winnow out the also-rans. Tuesday’s cliffhanger in which Mitt Romney edged Rick Santorum was no exception, as Rick Perry and Michele Bachmann -- and perhaps Newt Gingrich -- learned to their chagrin.

A common cliché about the kick-off caucuses held in the Hawkeye State is that they provide only three tickets out of Iowa to New Hampshire. That dynamic was in place this year: Santorum, Romney, and third-place finisher Ron Paul certainly earned the right to face each other again in next Tuesday’s first full-scale primary.

But those three candidates will be joined by two others. Jon Huntsman bought his own ticket to New Hampshire by skipping Iowa and virtually setting up shop here. And Gingrich’s ticket was punched not by his dismal fourth-place finish Tuesday night but by the beneficence of a well-connected local, Manchester Union Leader publisher Joseph W. McQuaid.

“We don't have to agree with them on every issue,” McQuaid said in a front-page editorial endorsing Gingrich in late November. “We would rather back someone with whom we may sometimes disagree than one who tells us what he thinks we want to hear.”

The dig was aimed at Romney, and more direct hits from the conservative paper came in the ensuing month, right through this week, when Union Leader subscribers would usher in the New Year by reading a McQuaid column asserting that although Gingrich and Romney have altered their previous stances on important issues, one of them was sincere and the other was opportunistic.

“When Gingrich has changed his position on an issue, it has been out of a genuine change in his thinking,” the Jan. 1 editorial proclaimed. “Romney, on the other hand, practices the age-old art of political expediency. When he ran for Massachusetts governor, he was pro-choice, pro-gay marriage, pro-gun-control, pro-mandated health insurance. Now that he is chasing the presidential nomination of a more conservative party, he is against all those things.”

This theme was picked up by Gingrich on Wednesday morning. The former House speaker, fresh off calling Romney a “liar” on Tuesday, flew to New Hampshire early enough to host a morning rally here. The candidate, who reiterated his attacks on Romney in morning television interviews, was bolstered by a full-page Union Leader ad his campaign paid for, proclaiming Gingrich to be “a bold Reagan conservative” while describing Romney as a “timid Massachusetts moderate.”

The bigger spotlight in New Hampshire, however, will now be on Santorum, who noted that his shoestring campaign went from “zero to 60” in less than a week as his 381 Iowa town-hall meetings and speeches and painstaking stumping in all 99 Iowa counties fueled a fast finish; he lost to Romney by just eight votes.