He's dead, Jim
Posted on 02/02/2016 5:31:18 AM PST by Cincinatus' Wife
WEST DES MOINES, Iowa -- Donald Trump's supporters showed up at the Sheraton Monday night fully expecting their man to win the Iowa caucuses. And why shouldn't they? Trump had held a lead of varying sizes in 13 of the last 13 polls listed in the RealClearPolitics average of Iowa polls. How could that not win?
"Beats the hell out of me," said Michelle Tepley, a Trump fan from Waukee. "It doesn't make any sense."
"Sad," said Kimberly Hawn of West Des Moines.
"I don't know, I don't know," said Steve Brewer of Norwalk.
Months ago, before Trump took the lead in Iowa, a number of analysts argued that he wasn't a "good fit" for the state's Republican electorate, made up heavily of voters who describe themselves as born-again evangelical Christians. Then Trump took the lead and -- in the polls at least -- fought off challenges from Ben Carson and eventual winner Ted Cruz. So analysts thought Trump might not be so bad a fit after all.
But on caucus night, some of Trump's supporters returned to the old "bad fit" theory to explain Trump's surprise loss.
"It was the evangelicals," said Dick Stoffer of West Des Moines. "They've done it before -- they did it four years before with Santorum, they did it with Huckabee before that."
"The evangelicals," said Carol Anne Tracy of West Des Moines. "We've got a lot of evangelicals, and I just don't think they felt that [Trump] praised God enough."
"It's happened before -- the guy with the biggest Bible wins Iowa," said Ken Crow, a Tea Party activist from Winterset.
The caucus results -- Trump soundly beaten by Cruz, finishing barely ahead of Marco Rubio -- seemed to confirm another nagging suspicion about the Trump campaign: that it had not paid sufficient attention to turning out its voters.
Most of the people at the Trump event had attended caucuses earlier in the evening. At those caucuses, the presiding officer asked whether there was a representative from each campaign present to speak, and, if not, whether anyone attending would like to speak on a particular candidate's behalf. At the caucus I attended, in Pleasant Hill, a suburb just east of Des Moines, there was no one to speak for Trump -- no representative of the campaign -- and no voter willing to stand up and speak on his behalf. (The precinct ended in a Cruz landslide: 110 votes for the Texas senator, versus 36 for Trump and 34 for Rubio.)
At the Sheraton, some Trump supporters had similar stories.
"We were at a caucus and Trump didn't even have anyone there to speak for him," one man told me.
"That's insane," added a man nearby.
* yawn *
Trump and Cruz will split the more conservative votes to pave the way for GOPe boy rubio.
Oops, they didn't.
We'll see how this race looks after South Carolina.
Oh, Byron York. There’s an impartial observer.
It would have been worse for Trump if there had not been so many other candidates. Cruz took the “very conservative” vote from Trump by two to one.
We’ll see how this race looks after South Carolina.
—
Exactly! If Trump wins both, Cruz will be there to split the “anti-establishment” voters to pave the way for GOPe boy marco.
Trump leads in the next three states. NH by a lot.
Rubio is a distant 2nd there. Cruz is nowhere to be seen.
Cruz has one delegate more than both Rubio and Trump. After NH, he will be in 3rd.
Even if Trump came in 1st, he would still only have one more delegate than them.
So in the end, we can finally stop wasting time on a state that will vote for the Democrats in the fall anyway, and start the real race. One where you dont win by basically becoming a naturalized citizen of the state, like Iowa.
That’s what I’m afraid of
He should not have skipped the debate. Now he’s branded as a loser.
Iowa was a throwaway for Trump.
Few things. 1)Cruz was supposed to win Iowa. It was tailor made for him and his campaign. 2)Trump is not an evangelical. He wasn’t winning Iowa. 3) What scared Trump wasn’t Cruz, but Rubio.
Now that they are moving on to NH, the Establishment candidates are in play. This is where Trump needs to prove he can win.
The Cheap Labor Express and the architects of TPP and other job-destroying uniparty garbage know that Trump is their worst nightmare. The lockstep barrage of anti-Trump articles from the Salem-owned “conservative” online media has been very telling.
Whatever. If Cruz wins, I’ll vote for him. But I’m still voting for Trump when my primary voting rolls around. Cruz has proven that he will buckle under pressure in certain areas and side with the uniparty. I’d still rather take a chance on a candidate who isn’t beholden to anyone rather than a career politician.
This gives temporary momentum to Cruz, but the bigger issue is not the Cruz win, rather the Rubio surge.
The guy is going to absorb all the establishment/open borders money now.
It's a three way race, and it's likely Cruz and Rubio will go at each other during the next two primaries, to see if one can knock the other out.
Dicey, but kind of fun to watch.
Let’s go for the mole theory because this doesn’t ring quite right.
I doubt it. Last night’s result didn’t surprise me except that Rubio did much better and took lots of votes from Trump - by people who waited to make up their mind until they walked into their Precinct.
The bigger issue is that Cruz, not surprisingly, got 77% of the Evangelical vote. That won’t be the case in any of the remaining primaries coming up soon. So, no surprises last night and this isn’t close to being over.
The one big kicker is this - if the likes of Kasich, Christie, Paul and Bush (less likely) drop out after lousy showings in NH - where does their support go? Likely, it’ll all go to Rubio.
As I see it, the only down side for Trump was how well Rubio did last night. The establishment is not going to go quietly, and Trump's ability to garner media attention may not be translating into votes as well as he would like and needs.
There's only one conservative in the race. Anybody voting for somebody other than Cruz should be asking themselves why they left conservatism behind.
If I may, I’d like to ask you a question: what does it do to your life and your heart and your mind to do nothing but beat away at a somebody? It’s seem like first thing every morning you’re at it ... are you lonely or eaten up with hate or just bitter or lonely? I’ve never seen anything like it.
God bless you.
That’s what I’m afraid of
That is exactly what is happening.
Also, Rubio’s people aren’t really running his campaign anymore. The GOPe is directing his campaign now.
The pro-amnesty GOPe and their Chamber buddies are great strategists. The establishment is paving the way for Marco.
He's dead, Jim
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