Iowa caucus voters rewrite the script
Republicans snub establishment, elevate Cruz over Trump
Donald Trump likes to boast that, if elected president, he would make winning so commonplace that “you may get bored with winning.”
Apparently, he decided that people needed some more excitement. Because in Iowa’s Republican caucuses Monday night, he suffered an embarrassing loss to Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas.
It will be interesting to see how Trump handles being a loser, considering that he has built his campaign on momentum, trumpeting his poll numbers and trashing his opponents. Going into New Hampshire, which votes in one week, he might have to try to add a positive spin to his electoral shortfall, much as he has spun his business failures. He might have begun that approach Monday with a remarkably gracious and brief concession speech.
If the past eight months have taught anything, it is that the political landscape can change dramatically, defying all predictions.
Just last summer, in fact, much of the attention in Republican political circles was on the near inevitability of Jeb Bush as the party’s presidential nominee. (Bush was at 3% of the vote Monday night.)
Cruz, meanwhile, was seen as the archetypal arch conservative who could rally the base but would fall short. Trump was dismissed as a sideshow whose candidacy would quickly implode.
All wrong. And in a few weeks from now, the landscape could change again.
Although Iowa provides momentum, it awards just 30 delegates, or 1.2%, of the 2,470 attending the convention in July. The GOP primary schedule is full of states that are decidedly different in demographics and politics from Iowa and New Hampshire.
What’s more, some of these states — including Florida, Ohio, Arizona and California — award most or all of their delegates to the winner, rather than dividing them up proportionally. That means a candidate could lose early and still claim the nomination.
Cruz and Trump look like problematic general-election candidates who could also cause problems for GOP candidates running down ballot. Sen. Marco Rubio of Florida suddenly becomes the establishment favorite by virtue of his late surge in Iowa.
Since 1980, only two of six non-incumbents who won in Iowa went on to win the GOP nomination. So this race is just beginning, and candidates who live by the polls can die by them as well.