Donald Trump (Photo: Twitter)
The Republican race for the party’s presidential nomination was turned into a shambles a few months back when flamboyant billionaire Donald Trump announced his entry.
Since then he’s held a commanding lead in almost every poll.
But on Monday night, voters in Iowa caucused to deliver not a poll, but the first actual response from voters to whether they want to move with Trump, follow a Senate insider like Marco Rubio, a Senate rebel like Ted Cruz, surgeon Dr. Ben Carson, Sen. Rand Paul or someone else.
Pulling down fractional portions of the support on most polls have been Jeb Bush, Rick Santorum, Mike Huckabee, John Kasich, Carly Fiorino and Chris Christie.
With just 4 percent reporting, the first results turned in Monday night showed the following:
Cruz: 32.3 percent
Trump: 31.1 percent
Rubio: 14.6 percent
Carson: 9.2 percent
Paul: 4.3 percent
Bush: 2.3 percent
Fiorina, Christie, Huckabee, Santorum and Kasich each received less than 2 percent.
Fox News in an opinion piece said, “No one expected Donald Trump to be seen as the potential nominee for the Republican Party in 2016, much less part of the conversation. But here we are, facing the Iowa caucus, with a reality star and businessman leading in the early states.”
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The commentary continued, “Is Trump as teflon as he and everyone else thinks? In the past weeks, we’ve seen Trump claim that his supporters are so loyal that he could literally shoot someone in broad daylight and the poll trends would not change. The numbers make it hard to argue with him, but will the caucus tell the same story?”
But the piece also warned not to count out Jeb Bush.
“His polls are low and he hasn’t been as present in the media as Trump, Cruz, or Carson. We’ve seen previous candidates rise from the ashes to win the nomination, even as recent as 2008. Bush’s stability in the polls could mean voters see him as a calm in the storm – the dependable and steady candidate.”
The Iowa GOP polls have participants declare their preference for a candidate by the simple method of a show of hands or by writing out a ballot.
The GOP events are in the process of selecting delegates to the national convention, at which the party nominee formally will be named.
USNews noted that the state has about 1 percent of the nation’s voters, “so it doesn’t have many votes in the Electoral College that will eventually elect a president from the parties’ nominees.”
“But, the state can mean everything because of the simple fact that its contest comes first. While a candidate doesn’t need to win Iowa to win its party’s nomination, results in Iowa are followed closely by the media and are an early signal of how the country as a whole will respond to the candidates. It also sets the state for the first primary, eight days later, in New Hampshire. In politics, momentum is king. If a candidate doesn’t place highly in the early states, support and dollars typically begin to dry up, which means that Iowa often is successful at winnowing the field. In a race with many candidates, like the 2016 contest for the Republicans, how a politician fares in Iowa can determine whether he or she will remain on the ballots for the rest of the U.S.”
Iowa GOP picks have not always picked the eventual nominee. In 2012, Santorum was tied with the eventual nominee, Mitt Romney.
In 2008, Mike Huckabee was the pick, in 1988 Iowa picked Robert Dole over George H.W. Bush and in 1980 picked Pat Robertson over Ronald Reagan.
Tom Davis, a former congressman from Virginia who previously headed the National Republican Congressional Committee, said in the Wall Street Journal if Trump failed in Iowa, “The mystique around him could fade – opening up opportunities for other candidates and jeopardizing his position in New Hampshire, where he had led for weeks.”
Add former Al Gore adviser Michael Feldman, “A higher-than expected turnout in the GOP caucuses is a likely sign of a Donald Trump victory in Iowa. More important, it would be the first tangible evidence that enthusiasm for Mr. Trump can be translated into actual votes. Organization, along with his substantial ability to dominate media coverage, would give Mr. Trump a huge advantage and immediately narrow the GOP field.”
The fight has been filled with the typical rhetoric of candidates accusing each other of flip-flopping on issues, but Trump’s presence has brought to the headlines some of his constitutional concerns – he wants to stop illegal aliens from entering the U.S. and says he’s prepared to take drastic steps to halt that flow. He also wants to examine those members of a group from which many terrorists emerge before they come into the United States.
Trump has emphasized his status as a Washington and government outsider, and his presence also has led all other candidates to discussions on which conservatives have worries, such as freedom of religion, speech and more.
Cruz, while he is a senator, has emphasized his conflict with the Washington establishment, and, in fact, the establishments, opposition to his candidacy.
Trump, according to Oregon Live, has been “the frontrunner in Republican preference polls for months, but broader-based national polls suggest in has various hurdles to overcome.”
One concern, the outlet said, is that he doesn’t appeal to women.
His “bluster,” the report said, “isn’t likely to win over women or independents, the voters who ultimately will decide the election in November.”
Cruz has been the closest to Trump for weeks, and Rubio is bringing up the next spot.
The Fox 9 station in Iowa on Monday said the contest would “offer the first hard evidence of whether Trump can turn the legion of fans drawn to his plainspoke populism into voters.”
The report continued, “The scope of the billionaire’s organization in Iowa is a mystery, though Trump himself has intensified his campaign schedule during the final spring.”
CNN called it Trump’s “Moment of truth.”
“Trump has dominated the Republican race at every turn,” CNN said. The caucuses, the report said, were “the first real test of his ability to transform all the attention surrounding his candidacy into lasting electoral success.”
from PropagandaGuard https://propagandaguard.wordpress.com/2016/02/02/iowa-results-trump-cruz-fight-for-outsider-role-in-gop-race/
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