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The Cruz folks have the bar set pretty high I see. At this point, anything less than a smashing Cruz victory will be a crushing disappointment.

Frankly it doesn't matter to me whether Trump or Cruz wins Iowa. So long as the RINO candidates are bringing up the rear. I think both Trump and Cruz will get their share of delegates in Iowa.

What some don't realize is that over a year ago, six months before he even entered the race, Trump hired Chuck Laudner to run his Iowa campaign. Laudner is the same guy who engineered Santorum's victory there four years ago.

So I'm confident Trump is getting good advice and that his "ground game" is much stronger than some of the Cruz folks seem to think it is. I'm sure that Trump's "flying in like a rock star" rankles some of them and they are therefore looking for Trump to get his comeuppance in Iowa. But I fear they are setting themselves up for a fall if they think Trump is going to allow himself to get smoked.

Typically only 20% of the registered Republican voters show up for these caucuses. When Santorum won in 2012, he obtained LESS than 30,000 votes statewide. A typical Trump rally has between 7,000 and 15,000 people at a minimum and he's done at least a dozen of them already in Iowa. Probably more and certainly more in the weeks to come. If even 20% of those coming to rallies shows up for the caucus, Trump will easily eclipse the 30,000 votes Santorum got in 2012. Many of these will be net new voters that previously did not participate in caucusing.

So looking through the prism of previous turnouts and an energized evangelical base that produced surprise victories for Santorum in 2012 and Huckabee in 2008, it would appear Cruz is in very good shape indeed, as he appears to have locked up the evangelical vote in that state. What remains to be seen is how many NEW voters come out on caucus night. If Trump can bring a lot of new blood to the caucus precincts, we could see surprising results.

While Iowa is not strategically that important, it is a very good litmus test to see how many new voters Trump can bring to the polling places. People who in years past were disillusioned with the choices offered and so stayed home.