Thread: Imagining Trump Going the Distance

Imagining Trump Going the Distance

By JOHN HARWOODJAN. 13, 2016

The term “Republican establishment” refers to people like Scott Reed. Those people have had a very confusing year.

Across four decades, Mr. Reed has worked for his generation’s signature Republican leaders: Ronald Reagan, Jack Kemp, George Bush, Bob Dole. Now at the United States Chamber of Commerce, he’s watching Donald J. Trump challenge everything he thought he knew about his party’s nominating process.

Republicans elevate their “next in line” mainstream leader. Straight from reality television, Mr. Trump has vaulted past big-state governors and senators.

The party has traditionally valued ideological orthodoxy. With Mr. Trump’s divergence from conservatives on health care, entitlement spending and the Iraq war, Mr. Reed said, “ideology is getting flushed down the toilet.”

Most important, Mr. Trump has upended the strategic dynamics of recent Republican contests — the dynamics that have led people like Mr. Reed to predict his defeat.

“The key to being nominated has been to be the last man standing against a totally unacceptable candidate,” Mr. Reed said.

By “totally unacceptable,” he meant an ideologically zealous challenger who could excite a disaffected chunk of primary voters, but not a majority.

That’s how Mr. Reed managed the successful bid by Mr. Dole, then Senate majority leader, for the 1996 Republican nomination. Next in line after losing the nomination eight years earlier, Mr. Dole confronted an array of rivals led by the fiery populist Patrick J. Buchanan.

Mr. Dole beat Mr. Buchanan in Iowa, then lost to him in New Hampshire. When trailing candidates faded thereafter for lack of momentum or money — the typical post-New Hampshire pattern — Mr. Dole cruised to lopsided victories. Mr. Buchanan failed to capture 40 percent of the primary vote anywhere.

In 2016, that formula for stopping Mr. Trump may not work. The chunk of Republicans embracing an angry message, Mr. Reed said, “is two to three times its average size.”

Consider the combined support for Mr. Trump, Senator Ted Cruz of Texas, and the former neurosurgeon Ben Carson — all cast by conventional strategists for the “totally unacceptable” role. The three outsiders command two-thirds of Republican support nationally. “Establishment” favorites like Marco Rubio, Jeb Bush, Chris Christie and John R. Kasich remain political weaklings by comparison.

Currently, Mr. Cruz holds a small lead in Iowa, and Mr. Trump has a big one in New Hampshire and most everywhere else. One hope for their rivals: a long, destructive siege between the two that opens a path to victory for a third candidate, perhaps Mr. Rubio.

That hope fuels an intense competition to become the top “establishment” candidate in New Hampshire, even if that represents third place. No third-place New Hampshire finisher has won the Republican nomination.

But Mr. Reed has an increasing appreciation for Mr. Trump’s political ability. For all of his rhetorical fireworks, he has driven home his simple vow to “make America great again.”

Mr. Trump “is the most on-message candidate of this cycle, by a factor of 10,” Mr. Reed said.

He believes that at least half of Iowa and New Hampshire voters haven’t firmly made up their minds. That preserves an element of unpredictability three weeks before voting begins on Feb. 1 in Iowa.

Yet if Mr. Cruz holds his lead there, Mr. Reed sees the nomination race turning on Mr. Trump’s response before New Hampshire votes on Feb. 9. The self-proclaimed “winner” will have lost. The broad national terrain of 2015 will become a narrow, one-week battlefield on which “you have to win every day.”

“Can Donald handle losing,” Mr. Reed asked, “or does he flame out?”

He considers Mr. Trump’s resilience in recent weeks a positive sign. Under increasing pressure from Mr. Cruz, Mr. Trump seized the headlines again by simultaneously questioning the Canada-born senator’s eligibility for the presidency and hitting Hillary Clinton over her husband’s personal scandals.

His skills at political jujitsu “are remarkable,” Mr. Reed concluded. For the first time, he now believes Mr. Trump can win the Republican nomination.

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/01/13/us...-distance.html

Donald Trump is now the betting markets' favorite to win the GOP nomination

January 13, 2016

Up until this point in the 2016 presidential election, the betting markets have not been as kind to Donald Trump as the polls have. But now — less than three weeks ahead of the Iowa caucuses — the real estate magnate has finally pulled into first place as the market's favorite to win the GOP nomination:

The odds on a Trump victory are 15/8, or 34 percent, putting the billionaire real-estate mogul as favorite in the market for the first time, Betfair said in an e-mailed statement in London on Wednesday. Previous favorite Marco Rubio widened to 11/5, or 31 percent, while Ted Cruz is 7/2, 22 percent. [Bloomberg]

Trump's new lead in the betting markets is still matched by the polls, too. Nationally, Trump holds a 17-point lead ahead of the rest of the Republican field. Becca Stanek

http://theweek.com/speedreads/599057...gop-nomination

Is Ted Cruz Losing His Grip on Iowa?
By Josh Voorhees
Josh Voorhees is a Slate senior writer. He lives in Iowa City.
Jan. 13 2016 12:49 PM

Heading into Christmas, Ted Cruz had emerged as the clear favorite to kick off the Republican nominating contest with a victory in Iowa. He was racking up endorsements from evangelical leaders/kingmakers and was starting to pull away in state polls. But with less than three weeks to go until the GOP caucus, Cruz now has real reason to worry.

The latest sign Iowa could come down to the wire between him and Donald Trump comes via a new Des Moines Register/Bloomberg state poll, which shows the fiery Texas senator’s lead on the loud-mouthed tycoon shrinking from 10 points to 3 points among likely Republican caucusgoers in the past month:

Ted Cruz: 25 percent, down 6 points
Donald Trump: 22 percent, up 1 point
Marco Rubio: 12 percent, up 2 points
Ben Carson: 11 percent, down 2 points

As Ann Selzer, the well-respected director of the poll, points out, the narrowing race isn’t the result of a late Trump surge—the Donald’s been holding remarkably steady in Iowa for months—as much as an erosion in Cruz’s support. “It’s hard to say Donald Trump is back, because his support grew only one point,” she said. “It seems more a matter of slippage for Cruz.”

His drop could be the result of the increased attention that comes with being the favorite—which has included plenty of chatter about his Canadian roots—or it could be explained by something else, including statistical noise. Either way, Cruz doesn’t look as strong in Iowa today as he did in late 2015.

Of the six state surveys taken in the new year, Cruz led three and Trump led three, with neither man posting an advantage of more than 4 points. The RealClearPolitics average of those polls, meanwhile, has Cruz with a scant, half-point lead on Trump, 26.7 percent to 26.2 percent—down from four points shortly before Christmas. (Rubio currently sits in a distant third place with 13 percent.) Based only on the state polls, Nate Silver and his FiveThirtyEight team peg Cruz’s current chances at winning the caucus at 42 percent, and Trump’s chances at winning at 40 percent.

Still, Cruz shouldn’t panic. The polls tell us much more about today than they do about Feb. 1, when Iowans will officially kick off the 2016 presidential nominating contest. With less than three weeks to go until then, more than half of the respondents in the Register poll said that they could still be persuaded to back a different candidate (though those backing either Trump or Cruz are the most likely to say their mind has been made up). That could create a serious opening for Cruz, who is the second-choice of 23 percent of Iowa Republicans, compared with 11 percent for Trump. The doom-saying senator also appears to have the advantage when it comes to ground-level organization in the state, something that has traditionally been integral in a contest that sees only about 1 in 5 registered Republicans show up to caucus. Meanwhile, when Silver and his team factor in endorsements and national polls, they see Cruz’s chance of an Iowa victory rising to 50 percent and Trump’s falling to 26 percent. (FiveThirtyEight has found some evidence it may actually be a bad thing in the long term to be doing better in national polls relative to early state surveys, which is one reason Trump’s prospects drop when you add other factors to the state poll numbers.)

In the end, Iowa might serve as a microcosm for the entire GOP campaign: If Trump’s appeal is enough to convince large numbers of first-time voters to show up and caucus on a cold, dark night in Iowa, he’ll be well-positioned to steal an early victory that Cruz was counting on. If Trump can’t pull it off, though, Cruz could coast to caucus victory and deliver a sizable blow to Trump’s blustery brand, which has been built on his polling performances. Either way, the race will arrive in New Hampshire the next day with the GOP establishment trailing the winners and desperate to rebound.

http://www.slate.com/blogs/the_slate...k_in_iowa.html