[napscoordinator]

Poor guy got 45,000 votes and 2nd place. Why are we feeling sorry for him. That is great considering he didn’t go to all 99 counties and really didn’t spend much time in Iowa. I think he did great under the circumstances. It was a better bang for his buck compared to Cruz who spend 2 years and huge amounts of money for 4 percent win. I don’t think this does much of anything in regards to the nomination except Trump needs to make up that 1 delegate deficit which he probably will in New Hampshire.

[VanDeKoik]

He leaves Iowa with one less delegate than Cruz, and will be ahead of him in one week.

I can’t wait for the editorials calling Cruz a loser and that he needs to leave the race.

[PapaBear3625]

Poor guy got 45,000 votes and 2nd place. Why are we feeling sorry for him. That is great considering he didn’t go to all 99 counties and really didn’t spend much time in Iowa.

Perhaps he just decided that winning Iowa was not worth the required extra effort. As it is, Cruz got 8 delegates, Trump got 7.

[Dr. Sivana]

It was a better bang for his buck compared to Cruz who spend 2 years and huge amounts of money for 4 percent win.

In a way, Trump has spent 30 years developing and projecting a persona that gave him a huge head start in name recognition. People already know who Donald Trump is, outaside of wonks like us and our nemeses at DU and maybe high-information voters in Texas, Ted Cruz was an unknown.

Trump's persona earned him unbelieveable gobs of free media exposure, mostly positive, at least to anti-Obama, anti-establishment types.

Trump has also framed the debate, forcing a spotlight on illegal immigration, which Pat Buchanan and Tom Tancredo failed in doing, and Bush, McCain and Romney had no interest in doing. So in that way, he is already a winner. He has tied John Ellis Bush in particular and the Establishment/consultant class generally in knots.

Despite the friction in the time before the caucus, I (a Cruz supporter) appreciate that Trump created breathing room for Cruz to succeed, and has also helped create a media environment where if Cruz fights back, he's not the only one, because Trump does it louder and has the means to hurt his opponents that Cruz does not have, because Cruz did not invest 30 years in building that persona.

Trump is not my first choice, but I do believe he loves our country, and the election is better thanks to his role in it.