Newsrooms have been quick to suggest Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla., won the Iowa caucus this week, even though he finished behind billionaire businessman Donald Trump and Texas Senator Ted Cruz.
“U.S. Senator Marco Rubio, emerging from the first Republican nominating contest of the 2016 presidential campaign as the party’s leading mainstream candidate, faces a strong field of rival establishment figures in next week’s New Hampshire primary,” read one Reuters report titled “Marco Rubio becomes early hope for mainstream Republicans.”
Reuters’ social media feed said elsewhere of Rubio’s third-place finish, “Marco Rubio emerges as champion of battered Republican party.”
Vox stated in one headline, “Why the Iowa caucus was a win for Marco Rubio, even though he lost to Ted Cruz.”
“Ted Cruz is the guy who may have put a 2-by-4 to Trump but Marco Rubio, who came within 2 percentage points of making the domineering developer into a third-place also-ran, might turn out to be the real long-term winner,” Politico’s Glenn Thrush said.
“Until Iowa, he was a talented but electorally rootless political prodigy who seemed to own no particular state or wedge of the Republican electorate, a perpetual No. 3 everywhere and on every subject. Now he’s No. 3 with a bullet,” he added.
The going theory is that by managing expectations effectively, and by beating all poll-based predictions regarding how he’d perform in the Hawkeye State, Rubio actually “won” Monday night by proving he’s a genuine contender and that his campaign is “surging.”
“To the extent that Iowa is all about momentum, rather than delegates, you could say the night was won by Bernie Sanders and Marco Rubio,” said the Guardian’s Paul Lewis.
“Rubio won,” Financial Times columnist John Gapper stated bluntly.
Fox’s Charles Payne added in a note of his own, “make no mistake Rubio won a lot tonight and his rivals all know that.”
Others argued, however, that Rubio’s success in Iowa is hardly the major takeaway, and that media is overselling this point.
“Rubio could very well be the Republican nominee. He will likely be able to sign up more major donors and score a few endorsements by citing his Iowa results,” wrote the Huffington Post’s Nick Bauman.
“And he’ll have at least one fewer opponent to worry about: Mike Huckabee, the former governor of Arkansas, suspended his campaign Monday night. But Rubio’s performance in Iowa doesn’t mean he won anything. It just means he still has a chance,” he added.
Others also responded to the Iowa caucus by stating it’s far simpler than pundits are making it out to be.
“Marco Rubio came third in Iowa last night. He didn’t win. He didn’t almost win. He came third, just behind Donald Trump. He is not a ‘cinch’ for the nomination. He has not ‘proven his critics wrong,'” wrote National Review’s Charles C. W. Cooke. “He has put himself in a better position that he would have been in if he had failed to break twenty percent, and done nothing more. The road ahead of him is a long one. ”
Part of the reason that Rubio appeared to be the clear winner Monday evening, he added, is that the Florida senator wasted no time addressing supporters and media with a boisterous, barnburner of a victory speech after the results came in.
In contrast, Cruz, the first-place winner, gave a very long speech that networks were forced eventually to cut away from, and Trump appeared “genuinely morose and utterly unsure as to what he should do.”
Cooke wasn’t the only one who noted this power move by Rubio.
“Rubio taking a lesson from the Bill Clinton playbook: Get out on TV first and say you won. Worked in New Hampshire in ’92, ‘comeback kid,'” the Los Angeles’ Times’ David Lauter said.
