Trump Iowa loss could mean trouble ahead

The Washington Examiner ^ | February 2, 2016 | Byron York

[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.

[jospehm20]

It gets more than not showing up. He did have to take some time out from his trips to Iowa to renounce his Canadian citizenship in 2014.

[The Iceman Cometh]

And I'm somehow supposed to believe that Ted Cruz is a capable person? There's not much evidence to support that.

[wideawake]

It's a fair question to ask.

Cruz indisputably has a firm grasp on what the Constitution says about the scope of presidential authority.

He also has been much more consistent in terms of his principles over the course of his career.

But he does not have a strong track record as an executive, because he hasn't really been one.

[BillyBoy]

>> Trump is not an evangelical. He wasn’t winning Iowa. <<

Uh oh! I'm Rick Santorum, a Roman Catholic from Pennsylvania! Never been "born again" or believed in salvation through Christ alone. Looks like there's NO WAY I can beat an EVANGELICAL like Rick Perry in IOWA!!

Yikes! I'm Bob Dole, a mainline united Methodist! I don't attend "bible belivin'" churches EITHER! And my opponent is PAT ROBERTSON! Guess I can forget about using Iowa to launch my campaign!

Oh man, I'm an Episcopalian from Michigan. This really sucks, I mean none of us has the slightest chance of winning Iowa.