Cruz-n’ on the Right, Cliff-hangin’ on the Left- the Iowa Caucuses of 2016

Back in the day when the Baltimore Colts prepared to take the field, the team’s three captains would each be given a chance to address the team, just before exiting the locker room. The defensive team’s captain and the special team’s captain would each implore their respective squad’s members to “give it their best,” etc., etc. Then, after the “we gonnas” were all said and done, the offensive team’s captain who, from 1957-1972, was all-time great Johnny Unitas, always, always said the same thing, each and every time, “Talk’s cheap…let’s go play.”

Insofar as Iowa goes, the time for cheap talk was finally over, and Senator Ted Cruz won the day, handily, defeating front-runner Donald Trump by a solid four-point margin in the nation’s first official nominating contest. Cruz won the contest in the Hawkeye State the old fashioned way, with a solid ground game and an in-person, tour-de-force statewide canvassing throughout Iowa’s ninety-nine counties. It just goes to show that hard work and diligence does, indeed, pay off- pre-election polling and punditry, be damned. Cruz managed to weave together a winning tapestry of evangelicals, dyed-in-the-wool conservatives, and Republican stalwarts to fashion a hard-fought and hard-won victory- one sorely needed as he heads into first, the New Hampshire primary, where he is not expected to win, and then the South Carolina primary, where he could very well parlay the Iowa win into his first primary victory.

Donald Trump and Marco Rubio also turned in solid results, with Trump edging out Marco Rubio by a single percentage point. Admittedly, Trump lacked the ground game that was key to Cruz’s victory, and much of his own support came from first-time voters who flocked to “the Donald” out of their disgust with the “same old, same old” from Washington politicians. There was much posturing, particularly by Fox News, as to whether or not Trump’s skipping the Iowa debate had anything to do with his second-place finish. Yet that is, at best, nothing more than conjecture, because he just did not have an in-state organization and ground game that came anywhere near what Cruz had put into place. Meanwhile, Marco Rubio stunned the nation with a very solid third-place showing, beating the odds as well as the pre-election polls and nearly surpassing Trump, in the end. Rubio rode the wave of a last-minute surge and goes into New Hampshire as the odds-on rising star in that state’s primary who, for the time being, is Trump’s to lose given “the Donald’s” polling numbers in the Granite State. If Rubio manages a second-place finish in New Hampshire, he will have surpassed Chris Christie and the other “mainstream candidates” vying for solid “also-rans” in the nation’s first primary. Additionally, if Rubio does manage a second- or a third-place finish, it will prove to be the swan song for the remaining candidates Christie, along with Ben Carson, John Kasich, Carly Fiorina, Jeb Bush, Rand Paul, Rick Santorum and Jim Gilmore, who will join Mike Huckabee, Lindsey Graham, George Pataki, Bobby Jindal, Rick Perry and Scott Walker in suspending their campaigns.

Speaking of Carson, there were some reports of some of Cruz’s surrogates, including his co-campaign manager, Rep. Steve King, sending out a false narrative that Dr. Carson had suspended his campaign, in a deceptive effort to woo Carson’s evangelical delegates to the Cruz camp. Carson, himself, managed to gain just under ten percent in the Iowa caucus, and thereby achieved a fourth place finish. Even if Dr. Carson’s allegations prove to be true, there wouldn’t have been enough “pilfered” votes to propel him into the top three finishers, nor would it have driven Cruz into a second-place finish.

Over on the Democrat side, three tenths of one percent– a difference of four delegates is the razor-thin margin that Hillary Clinton maintains over Bernie Sanders, as of this writing, in a race still too close to call. It is significant that in at least six of the precincts, a coin-toss was needed to produce an eventual outcome and delegate determination- and as fate would inexorably and inexplicably have it, Hillary “won” all six of the coin-tosses. Had they gone Sanders’ way, it would be Sanders who would have been leading Hillary by two delegates. Sanders, who is expected to win by a wide margin in in New Hampshire, is nevertheless able to claim a moral victory, considering he was down fifty points in Iowa’s polling, less than a year ago. Hapless Martin O’Malley, who barely registered in Iowa, had no choice but to suspend his campaign well before the night’s caucuses were over.

By this time, next month, the quest for the Republican nomination will be, essentially, a three-man race between Cruz, Rubio and Trump or, at most, a four-man race between these three, and one more. The only question will be as to who, if any, will be that fourth- Carson or Christie are the only possibilities, and these are remote, at best.

Now that the Democrats are officially down to two choices, as they have essentially always been, their nomination remains as murky as ever. If Hillary Clinton prevails in South Carolina and Nevada, and runs the table on “Super Tuesday,” she will essentially have gained the Democrat nomination. Should Bernie Sanders prevail, then look for Joe Biden and/or Elizabeth Warren to make a late bid for a nomination, even if it means doing so at a brokered convention, that is- unless the Democrats enter the fantasy land that would foresee a self-described and elderly socialist becoming the next president of the United States.

 

-Drew Nickell, 2 February 2016

©2016 by Drew Nickell, all rights reserved.