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Talking Trump’s Chances

An insurgent front-runner with substantial financial resources is a hard combination to beat.
Noah CNN

This morning, I was on CNN’s “New Day” with Alisyn Camerota talking about Donald Trump’s chances to “run the table.” You can see a slightly truncated clip of the interview here.

Where the clip cuts off, I was saying that in this cycle, it feels like Republican voters seem much more interested in someone who stands against the existing GOP power structure than in ideological litmus tests.

The news since my column at The Week only reinforces my convictions about the shape of the race. The latest poll from CNN out of Iowa has Trump up 11 points over Cruz. The question – as we discussed in the segment – is whether Trump’s supporters show up in large numbers, something we can’t possibly know in advance, as well as whether events between now and February 1st change the shape of the race.

But the shape of Iowa – and New Hampshire – is already very different from past races, and different in a way that is good for Trump.

In recent history, Iowa has frequently gone to a factional candidate as a protest against the party candidate. In 2008, McCain and Giuliani ignored Iowa while Romney staked his claim to Iowa as the full-spectrum conservative alternative to McCain. Instead, the caucuses went to Huckabee, a factional candidate of the religious right. In 2012, Romney was the candidate with overwhelming establishment support. He faced a number of implausible insurgents against him, and ultimately lost Iowa to Santorum.

Cruz today, in terms of his positioning in Iowa and commitment to the state, looks something like Romney in 2008: he’s made a huge commitment to the state on the strength of his full-spectrum conservatism. He’s got a much stronger claim to that positioning than Romney did. But Trump is positioned very differently from a typical front-runner, because he is transparently not a creation of the establishment. There’s no reason to vote against Trump as a protest. In fact, a good portion of the support for Trump is driven by protest. So Cruz’s insurgent campaign is more purely factionally-driven. And on top of that, he is positively loathed by actual Republican officials in a way that Huckabee and Santorum never were.

All of that tells me that Trump has a very real shot to win the emotional argument for caucus voters’ hearts, to a considerably greater degree than Romney did in either 2008 or 2012. The main open question is how good he is at turning out his people.

Meanwhile, looking beyond Iowa, the powers-that-be in the Republican party seem to be edging towards Trump . . . as a way of stopping Cruz! There are the comments from Bob Dole, the comments from numerous insiders quoted in this New York Times piece – even perennial Trump-skeptic Nate Silver has noticed. And, of course, there’s was the endorsement by Sarah Palin.

I agree with Silver that the party isn’t deciding for Trump. But the party is deciding what they will do if there’s a Trump-Cruz race after New Hampshire. And on that question, they seem to be preparing to deal with Trump. And that leaves Trump in a much stronger position than Cruz in that eventuality.

Cruz is going to make the argument – he’s already making the argument – that he’s the authentic insurgent because figures like Bob Dole prefer Trump. But Trump is manifestly not a creature of the Republican establishment. What’s happening is simply classic bandwagoning behavior – people adjusting their positioning based on who they think is going to win. And Trump himself is adjusting to these new circumstances.

Trump is an insurgent front-runner with substantial financial resources. That’s a hard combination to beat.

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