Because the Republican nominating system's non-proportional allocation of delegates, combined with the schedule of Republican primaries and caucuses, is designed to very strongly favor the candidate with an advantage in early name recognition especially if they can effectively appeal to a particular demographic that the Republicans have been focusing on as a key element of their coalition since Nixon's southern strategy, especially in a crowded field since the system is designed to create artificial delegate majorities from small electoral pluralities.

(This is engineered as a way to shorten the competitive period of primary contests by making a candidate's victory nearly inevitable very early in the process without them needing to secure anything like majority support even within the primary electorate, allowing the party to move quickly on to focus on the general election.)

1) not a supporter - people who sue widows are pretty much on my not nice list