Is Ted Cruz destined to follow in the footsteps of Rick Santorum and Mike Huckabee, the last two Republicans to win the Iowa caucuses on the strength of the evangelical vote, and then get steamrolled by the party establishment? Not necessarily.
Iowa has gotten a bad rap among Republicans for being unable to pick winners. But every recent GOP presidential nominee has at least finished in the top three in the caucus with the exception of John McCain, who finished 1.2 percentage points behind third place despite largely bypassing the state. It is almost certain that one of top three finishers in Iowa will win the nomination this year.
When Iowa winners lose the nomination, it is frequently because the state’s social conservatives elevated candidates with less money and organization over contenders who could have competed with the establishment on more even terms. Huckabee and, belatedly, Santorum were boosted by their Iowa victories, but it wasn’t enough to get them close to where they needed to be to beat McCain or Mitt Romney.
That’s not the case this time around. Cruz has more cash on hand than Jeb Bush, Chris Christie and John Kasich combined, nearly twice as much as Marco Rubio. The Texas senator has appeal beyond evangelicals, which Huckabee and Santorum both lacked.
Rubio also ran as a “three-legged stool” conservative, despite controversies over his position on immigration. He finished a strong third while drawing from some of the same kinds of voters who backed Cruz. And he also can win non-evangelicals.
In between them is runner-up Donald Trump, whose coalition is unusual but more secular and diverse than Santorum or Huckabee’s and who holds a substantial lead in New Hampshire. The odds are that someone from this group will be able to go the distance, something that might not have been the case if, say, Ben Carson won Iowa, as seemed possible in October.
Each of these three candidates has a path forward, but also some obvious pitfalls.
Losing Iowa is a setback for Trump, especially since he finished closer to third-place Rubio than first-place Cruz. The outcome is less surprising than it may have first appeared based on the recent polling. Iowa was always Trump’s weakest early state. He had little traditional ground game, which his vital in a low-turnout caucus. He skipped the last Iowa debate.
You can make an argument that if Trump had attacked Rubio rather than Cruz (focusing on immigration), put together a real field operation, participated in the final debate and covered some of the bases normal politicians cover, he might have won. Still, having done none of those things, he finished second.
There are two major problems for Trump. First is that he has hinged so much of his appeal on being a winner and has made reciting favorable poll numbers a major part of his stump speech. Those polls don’t supersede actual election results and it’s possible that losing will melt away some of his soft bandwagon support.
The billionaire’s second problem is that Iowa demonstrated sustained attacks against him can work. His favorable ratings are anemic among Republicans and low among all other voters. He wasn’t many voters’ second choice. His ceiling is not conducive to a two-way race with either Cruz or Rubio. Trump could be like Pat Buchanan in 1996, someone who does well enough to terrify the political class but doesn’t win once the field narrows.
The good news for Trump is that he might not get a two-way race with either senator. There is no obvious reason for either of them to drop out and many reasons for them to turn against each other, as they were already doing in the waning days of the Iowa campaign.
Rubio has a unique ability to fuse the Republican establishment and the mainstream conservative movement in support of his candidacy. He also has positive personal and demographic characteristics – to be specific, he has a winning personality, is relatively young and is Latino – that contrast favorably with Trump’s political liabilities. It’s easier to imagine him winning beyond the GOP base than Cruz.
Finally, both the mainstream and conservative media generally like Rubio better than the other candidates with a clear path to the Republican nomination. They have wanted to report on a Rubio surge for weeks now and probably would have in the absence of a total collapse by the Floridian. Now he has in fact done well enough in Iowa to actually deserve such coverage.
But Rubio still has obstacles in his path to the nomination. Not only does he need to dispatch Cruz, but you have multiple candidates (John Kasich, Jeb Bush and Chris Christie) still vying for second and third place in New Hampshire. If Rubio keeps finishing third, like Lamar Alexander in 1996, his third-place showings will cease to be impressive.
Kasich has been running second in many recent New Hampshire polls. He didn’t do well in Iowa but also didn’t actively try to compete there. His voters include pragmatic conservatives, Northeastern moderate Republicans and Granite State independents who will vote in the semi-open primary, all of whom are less responsive to Iowa results than other voters and many of whom are likely to think Rubio is too young and inexperienced to be president.
Rubio probably has to beat Cruz and at least two of the three establishment candidates running in New Hampshire to keep his momentum going.
Cruz has the toughest path, since everyone is going to gang up on him. But conservatives have been eager for a nominee of their own since Ronald Reagan retired and both the condensed primary schedule and Super Tuesday are favorable to him. He is running a disciplined, data-driven campaign.
This year, one of the three tickets out of Iowa may be a winner.
