Now that was an interesting Iowa caucus! On the Republican side, Ted Cruz came in first (8 delegates), Donald Trump second (7 delegates), with Marco Rubio nipping at his heels for third (7 delegates).
On the Democratic side, it appears that Hillary Clinton eked out a historically narrow victory over Bernie Sanders. I say “appears” since last night it was reported that results from 90 precincts had gone missing. Given her serial history of lawbreaking, and the entire weight of the DNC all-in on dragging her over the finish line, would anyone put it past Hillary to monkey-wrench the process to avoid a narrow loss?
Let’s take a look at last night’s biggest winners and losers:
Winner: Ted Cruz: Given no chance at the beginning of the cycle, or even a few months ago, Cruz pulled out a clear victory against a candidate given eight months of unprecedented free media coverage. As I noted while following his 2012 senate race, Cruz is a smart, disciplined and indefatigable campaigner, a true conservative, and will make a great President.
Loser: Donald Trump: See above. A novice politician pulling 24% and second place in the Iowa caucuses would normally be cause for celebration, but Trump roared into Iowa like a juggernaut on a wave of unbelievable media interest and limped out like a hobbled mule. For all the talk about Trump’s money making a difference, there are few signs any of it was spent on an effective ground game. And for once he wasn’t bragging after the results came in.
Loser: Jeb Bush: Remember a year ago how everyone was predicting Bush’s fundraising machine and organizational muscle would bulldoze his rivals aside? Not so much. Bush ended up spending $2,884 per Iowa vote to come in sixth.
Winner: Marco Rubio: A strong third keeps him in the game, and he’s well situated to pick up deep-pocketed Bush backers who aren’t turned off by the huge amounts of money they’ve already thrown away.
Losers: Governors running for President. It used to be that Governor was seen as the ideal perquisite for running for President (Reagan, Bush43, Clinton, Carter, etc.), but not only did Jeb Bush come in sixth, John Kaisch, Mike Huckabee, Chris Christie, and Jim Gilmore (who we’ll mention only because he was a governor, since he got a whopping 12 votes in all of Iowa) all did even worse, Martin O’Malley came in an exceptionally distant third on the Democratic side, and Rick Perry, Bobby Jindal and George Pataki didn’t even make it to Iowa. Huckabee and O’Mally have suspended their campaigns, and the other governors should follow suit.
Loser: Rand Paul: Few expected Paul to win, but few expected him to do markedly worse than his father. He should drop out
Losers: The remaining Republican candidates. At this point there’s no path to victory for Ben Carson, Carly Fiorina or Rick Santorum. They should drop out as well.
Winner: Bernie Sanders: He went from being a crazy old socialist with no chance of winning to a crazy old socialist who fought the Clinton machine to a virtual tie.
Loser: Hillary Clinton: She desperately needed to win Iowa and got it, maybe (the Iowa Democratic Party is refusing to release actual vote totals, as opposed to precinct results), with the help of some missing ballots and unlikely coin flips, by the skin of her teeth, but she vastly underperformed in a race that was supposed to be cakewalk for her a year ago. “Her inability to ride a first-class ground organization to a decisive triumph underscores the candidate’s weakness and the lack of a message that resonates with primary voters.” And there were accusations that Hillary was using paid staffers as precinct chairmen.
It’s now a three man race on the Republican side, and a dog fight on the Democratic side.
You know who wasn’t happy about Hillary Clinton’s latest Benghazi testimony? The families of the Benghazi victims. Funny how that “absolute moral authority” the MSM bestowed on Cindy Sheehan doesn’t apply to families of the slain when they criticize Democrats…
Longshot GOP Presidential contenders are running out of money. “Any burn rate over 100 percent is considered dangerous by campaign finance experts. Pataki’s was 226 percent, Graham 188, Paul 181, Jindal 144, Huckabee 110 and Santorum 101.”
Speaking of Presidential fundraising, here’s why Rick Perry had to drop out: “Perry spent more than a million dollars during the last reporting period – July through September – while raising only $252,000 in contributions. And the former Texas governor, who exited the race in mid-September, had only $45,000 cash on hand at the end.”
“When you vote in your first Presidential election, please remember which political party decided to make your lunchtimes a living Hell for a decade. Spoiler warning: it wasn’t the Republicans.”
Austin Attorney Marc Rosenthal, who helped bankroll the Williamson County Democratic Party, including gave $58,000 in donations to (now ex-) state rep Diana Maldonado, has been sentenced to 20 years in prison for “racketeering, conspiracy, bribery, extortion, tampering, and mail fraud.”
He’s already got Sarah Palin, Jim DeMint, Sean Hannity and Ron Paul, among many others. Who will be the next big name to endorse Ted Cruz? Phil Gramm? (Possible) Bush41 or Bush43? (Unlikely) Marco Rubio? (Probably would have happened by now.) Rush Limbaugh? (Nope. He avoids endorsements as a matter of policy.)
You know who should endorse Ted Cruz? In all seriousness? Craig James. With polls showing him around 4% and his latest FEC report showing he had only $9,000 cash on hand, it should be obvious to everyone (James included) that he won’t be the next Senator from Texas.
If James wants to run for office again (and I think he does), he should ask himself which looks better: 1.) Running a no-hope campaign to the bitter end and getting 4% of the vote, or 2.) Announcing Sunday night or Monday morning that he’s ending his campaign and endorsing Ted Cruz? In the later case, he’ll probably still pull 2-4% of the vote, and he can always point out the fact he ended his campaign early as the reason why. The Guy Who Dropped Out is a lot more viable than The Guy Who Got Slaughtered So Bad He Pulled Single Digits. Plus it wins him the gratitude of the conservative activists he’ll have to work with in the future, and maybe a nod for, say, a congressional race down the road. Not to mention depriving legions of disgruntled Texas Tech fans from their expected allotment of schadenfreude on election day…
Today Instapundit Glenn Reynolds asks: “Back in 2008, the social-cons were all-in for Romney, to the point where Hugh Hewitt’s take became a running tagline (“You know who this is good for? Mitt Romney!”) that’s still used by by bloggers from time to time. Now, not so much. So what changed about Romney since 2008 to make him un-conservative?”
A good question, even though I wasn’t a Romney guy back in 2008. But three obvious answers occur to me:
The Tea Party Happened: The election of Obama and Obama’s extreme big-spending, big-government ways have “radicalized” Republican voters to the point that it’s no longer acceptable to campaign like a conservative and vote like a liberal. As the 2010 primary defeats of Charlie Crist and Mike Castle proved, Republican primary voters are no longer willing to give establishment Republicans a pass on their own free-spending, big government ways, and Mitt Romney is as Establishment as they come.
ObamaCare Happened: Before ObamaCare, Republicans might have been willing to downplay the socialistic, anti-freedom aspects of RomneyCare and its own individual mandate under the guise of state rights and the 10th Amendment. But after the passage of ObamaCare, RomneyCare has become a far greater political and ideological liability to Romney, and one that largely negates one of Republicans’ greatest attack issues against Obama, thus making it a much greater problem than it was in 2008.
Romney Isn’t Running Against john McCain: Despite John McCain’s many personal virtues, his voting record is far more that of an establishment Republican than a rock-ribbed conservative. Be it McCain-Feingold or the Gang of 14, McCain has constantly flirted with RINO-hood in his Senate career, making himself a media darling and infuriating the base. In 2008, there was a solid case to make that Mitt Romney was more conservative than McCain. It’s much harder to make the case that Romney is more conservative than Rick Santorum.
Bottom Line: Romney had flaws that were easier to overlook in 2008. You know whose conservative reputation the last four years have been bad for? Mitt Romney!
When I first started covering the senate race, I would grab just about any scrap of information I could about and throw a link to it. Now? The firehose is starting to open up, and I’m getting a bit more selective. For example, I’m not feeling the need to link to Democrat Paul Sadler calling out David Dewhurst over education funding (or Dewhurst’s response), especially since Sadler repeats the lie that the state cut education funding, when it actually increased slightly. (Actually, Sadler attacking Dewhurst, and Dewhurst counter-attacking, is good for both of them; by attacking each other, not only do they garner publicity, but it’s easier for them to ignore the primary challengers that threaten them from their left and right flanks (respectively.) Likewise, I’m not going to link to the Politifact piece on Cruz, since doing so would suggest Politifact has something resembling credibility, which it doesn’t.
Maybe I’m just feeling cranky today.
Politico looks at the Cruz-Dewhurst contest. The idea that Tom Leppert is in second place is mainly supported by that internal Dewhurst poll, which is (as I’ve argued before) dubious due to the completely opaque nature of the methodology,
David Dewhurst: The GOP’s Bad Side Personified: Dewhurst’s “complete disregard for the voters has become so pervasive an issue that it threatens to throw him into a downward spiral; and rightfully so…familiarity with Dewhurst makes it easy to discern that the more he interacts with the right-wing base, the higher his negatives grow.” Ouch!
Ted Cruz was interviewed several times at CPAC. Here he is on Fox Business News:
He also gets some love from The American Spectator.
Dewhurst campaign endorsed by HOSPICE, errr, HOSPAC, the Texas Hospital Association’s political action committee. I can see Dewhurst seeking these business group endorsements, I just can’t see why he would think announcing them to the world at large would cause anyone to vote for him. Every single one of them is like a big rubber stamp that reads APPROVED REPUBLICAN ESTABLISHMENT CANDIDATE.
Dewhurst picks up the endorsement of the Texas Agricultural Aviation Association, which means…wait, really? That’s a real organization? There are enough cropdusters in Texas that they have their own PAC? How can I be sure they’re not just making it up to see if I’ll link to it?
This tiff by the Glenn Addison campaign over Cruz campaign “dirty tricks” is much ado about nothing. You mean opposition research staffers actually sign up for opponent’s emails? Do tell. The piece also mentions that Team Dewhurst is the one pushing for inclusion of Addison in the debates, since he potentially siphons conservative votes from Cruz. That’s smart thinking from the Dewhurst campaign, and even principled, as Addison has run a hard-working, serious Senate campaign in every aspect except fundraising.
Craig James gets some fundraising help from fellow “Pony Express” backfield star (and NFL Hall of Famer) Eric Dickerson.
He also endorsed Rick Santorum for President. That’s probably a pretty canny move for him, as Santorum (for good or ill) seems to be consolidating support as the anti-Romney conservative candidate, and thus, very possibly, the actual GOP candidate. (Now that I’ve said that, given my previous prognostication skills when it comes to predicting Presidential races, expect Ron Paul to sweep Super Tuesday.) It’s quite possible that some Santorum supporters take a closer look at him on that basis alone.
James discusses his endorsement on (you guessed it) Mark Davis of WBAP, who seems to be the go-to radio guy for this race:
I’ve been busy hosting a family even this weekend, so I haven’t been able to do a post on Thursday’s debate. But I wanted to point out the results of the straw poll at Saddle Up Houston (which, with 3,321 voters, had a lot more attendees than I suspected).
Keep in mind all the usual caveats that apply to straw polls: They don’t tend to mean a lot when it comes to real voting.
President
Ron Paul: 54.4%
Rick Santorum: 15.6%
Rick Perry: 13.3%
Newt Gingrich: 11.9%
Mitt Romney: 4.2%
Jon Huntsman: 0.5%
Charles “Buddy” Roemer: 0.0% (Jeeze, how do you not manage to snag even .1% of the vote?)
That’s an excellent showing for Ron Paul, but Paul has consistently proven himself much more adept at winning straw polls than primaries. Caveats aside, it’s a bad showing for Rick Perry (if you can’t win a straw poll in your own state, where can you win it?) and Mitt Romney (the frontrunner should get more than 4.2% of the vote, even against two favorite sons).
Senate
Ted Cruz: 49.1%
Craig James: 12.9%
Glenn Addison: 12.0%
Tom Leppert: 9.1%
Lela Pittenger: 9.1%
David Dewhurst: 7.1%
Charles Holcomb: 0.3%
“Doc Joe” Agris: 0.3%
Curt Cleaver: 0.0%
Ben Gambini: 0.0%
That’s good news for Ted Cruz, Craig James and Glenn Addison, and bad news for David Dewhurst. And even though Tom Leppert outpointed Dewhurst, he can’t feel good at merely tying Lela Pittenger, who has neither campaigned as much as him, nor spent 1/1000th of what he has. (Also, Doc Agris can’t feel good about putting up such a paltry total in his own back yard.) Gambini getting 0% isn’t a surprise, since he’s been the invisible man. Cleaver getting 0% is a bit more surprising, since he’s had at least the semblance of a campaign.
But again, these results don’t mean much, as I seriously doubt we’re going to see Craig James battle Glenn Addison for a spot in the runoff against Cruz. They do highlight an enthusiasm gap between Cruz and Dewhurst, but just how much of that gap will translate into votes remains to be seen. I don’t think we’ll get a glimpse of how the race is shaping up in the minds of actual primary voters until we see polls from some of the established polling companies like Gallup, Zogby and Rasmussen.