Trumped in Iowa Cruz and Rubio are the big GOP winners, while Hillary shows weakness.
http://www.wsj.com/articles/trumped-in-iowa-1454390219
The American political revolution appears to be exaggerated. Iowa Republicans played to their social conservative form Monday by vaulting Ted Cruz to victory over Donald Trump in their first-in-the-nation caucuses, while as we went to press Democrats were narrowly turning back Bernie Sanders’s populist challenge in favor of Hillary Clinton’s interest-group machine.
The night’s biggest loser, to borrow a word, was Mr. Trump, who in the end couldn’t turn his large crowds and polling leads into enough caucus voters. There’s no doubt the New York businessman helped to generate higher turnout, which broke recent caucus records for Republicans. But perhaps he should have attended that debate last week after all, or maybe there are limits to his unconventional media-dominated, celebrity politics.
Mr. Trump still leads in the New Hampshire polls, but one question is how he will respond to the uncomfortable reality of second place. His speech on Monday night was, to borrow another phrase, low-energy.
Instead Mr. Cruz prevailed like Mike Huckabee (2008) and Rick Santorum (2012) by mobilizing the state’s cultural conservatives into a 28% plurality. The first-term Texas Senator had the support of Iowa’s conservative pastors network, he spent months organizing across the state, and his campaign invested heavily in voter analytics. The Texan also passed the first test of his theory that he can win the GOP nomination, and then the Presidency, with a hard-edged conservative message.
The question going into New Hampshire and beyond is whether Mr. Cruz can expand his coalition beyond the most conservative voters. The entrance polls showed he did less well than both Mr. Trump and Marco Rubio among voters who said they were somewhat conservative or moderate. Mr. Cruz also trailed both men among voters who said they cared about the economy and jobs. To win the nomination, Mr. Cruz will need to broaden his support beyond the Mark Levin-Glenn Beck radio audience.
Mr. Rubio was arguably the night’s second-biggest winner with his strong third-place finish at 23%, close behind Mr. Trump’s 24%. He won a plurality of late deciders according to the entrance polls, which suggests that he became the choice of mainstream conservatives who were looking beyond the Trump-Cruz slugfest. The first-term Florida Senator did especially well among voters who said they are looking for someone who can win in November. His speech Monday almost sounded like a victory statement, and its inclusive conservatism was clearly intended as a contrast to Mr. Cruz’s polarizing version.
Ben Carson finished a distant fourth at about 9% and the neurosurgeon may ask himself what might have been if he had organized his campaign better from the start. Once ahead in the Iowa polls with his non-political appeal and soft-spoken style, he faded amid staff turmoil and unsteady debate performances.
No other GOP candidate came close to double digits, which means New Hampshire will be make-or-break for them. Jeb Bush, Chris Christie and John Kasich will have to climb past Mr. Rubio or Mr. Cruz to keep going past the Granite State with any credibility. Messrs. Santorum and Huckabee, with their failure to replicate their previous Iowa victories, are all but finished this year.
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The close Democratic contest shows Mrs. Clinton’s weakness as a candidate, but it also reveals that the Democratic Party’s most powerful interest groups can still unite against a progressive populist. The former Secretary of State deployed all of these forces—the public unions and the women’s groups—against Bernie Sanders’s youth brigades in a caucus state where organization is paramount. Mr. Sanders’s socialist idealism had to overcome this machine.
The former first lady will now try to present an air of inevitability as she attempts to cut into Mr. Sanders’s big lead in New Hampshire. And Mr. Sanders will be hard-pressed to stop her unless he can appeal to more core Democratic constituencies than his own base among young people and the gentry left. He’ll need scores of black support in South Carolina, while Las Vegas unions dominate the Nevada caucuses. He has the money to compete for many weeks, but he’ll need victories to stay credible.
Iowa shows that Mr. Sanders’s biggest obstacle is that while many Democrats have doubts about Mrs. Clinton, as well as the Obama economy, they are also more serious about holding the White House than they are about making a statement. Democratic interest groups depend far more than Republicans do on the favors of government, so holding power is paramount. A 74-year-old self-avowed socialist who thinks ObamaCare didn’t go far enough is a political risk many Democrats still don’t want to take.
Mr. Sanders may also have to make a decision about how much to mention the FBI investigation into Mrs. Clinton’s mishandling of classified information on her private email server. If the FBI recommends a misdemeanor or worse, there will be an uproar even if Attorney General Loretta Lynch declines to act on it. Mr. Sanders has to let Democrats know that in Mrs. Clinton they could be elevating a very wounded nominee.
As for Mrs. Clinton, the family pattern has been to tough these controversies out, dismiss incriminating evidence as GOP partisanship or media malpractice, rally the Democratic interest groups to muddy the details, and hope Republicans nominate a candidate even more flawed or disliked than she is. On Monday’s evidence in Iowa, Republicans may not play along.
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