The final debate before the Iowa caucuses had just ended, and the spin room at Drake University in Des Moines was full of bluster. Surrogates for Nikki Haley and Ron DeSantis, who had just spent more than two hours taking swings at one another, were insisting Wednesday that their preferred candidate had landed a haymaker. But amid all the projections of confidence that cold evening in Iowa, where jackknifed semis and snowbound cars littered the ditches every few miles, there was also a noticeable effort by both camps to temper expectations ahead of the first contest of the primary Monday.
Haley will finish “better than most expect,” former GOP congressman Will Hurd—who dropped his own long shot 2024 bid to support Haley—told me when I asked what a “strong showing” would look like.
“We have no pressure on us,” a DeSantis surrogate said when I asked him the same question, suggesting that the Florida governor could take a victory lap wherever he finished in Monday’s caucus.
Even Donald Trump—the dominant front-runner who once again snubbed the debate, counterprogramming it this time with a Fox News town hall two miles away—has laid the groundwork to save face should his victory in the Hawkeye State prove less decisive than he wants, preemptively accusing DeSantis of “trying to rig” the caucus.
For the most part, the outcome of the contest—and the primary race in general—has seemed more or less a foregone conclusion: Trump, despite his two impeachments and 91 criminal charges and explicitly authoritarian platform, seems to be coasting toward victory, while his challengers play for second—or perhaps a spot in his potential administration. But all the hedging reflects the uncertainties that linger here, even in a contest that hasn’t seemed particularly competitive so far.
“Every candidate has exactly the same opponent, and that opponent’s name is ‘Expected,’” said Dennis Goldford, a professor of political science at Drake University, which hosted the CNN debate between Haley and DeSantis January 10. “So the question is whether anybody exceeds expectations—whether somebody like Trump fails to meet expectations.”
“That,” he added, “will determine how far this nomination process continues down the road.”
Trump—who leads his two closest rivals by about 20 points combined here in polls and has run as a de facto incumbent—is expected to win out in this highly unusual caucus. But the margin of victory could prove important. Should he clear 50%, he would demonstrate “his grip on the party,” said veteran Iowa Republican strategist Jimmy Centers, and perhaps make his march to the nomination seem all the more inevitable. But a narrower-than-expected victory for the former president could embolden the anti-Trump wing of the party, suggesting a potential path to victory for an alternative in a head-to-head matchup. The margins matter in that second-place race too. “One of them has to emerge,” Centers told me of DeSantis and Haley. “I think if whoever finishes second is able to put four to five points between them and third, that clearly demonstrates that there is a gap.”
DeSantis had entered the race as an apparent heir to Trump’s throne—a culture warrior with all of Trump’s cruelty but less of his chaos. “I’m…the only one running that has beaten the left time and time again,” as the Florida governor put it in his opening statement at last week’s debate. But despite his campaign’s robust ground game in Iowa, Haley has seemed to build momentum in recent weeks; she’s pulled ahead of DeSantis in Iowa polling averages—and has even come within a few points of Trump in New Hampshire, the site of the second primary contest.
“Nikki Haley is by far the best we’ve seen,” a volunteer for her campaign told the crowd last week at a stop in Ankeny, a suburb of Des Moines. He and his wife usually “cancel each other out” at the ballot box, he told the group, but this cycle, they’re both in on Haley. “If she can unite the two of us, she can bring this country together.”
The former United Nations ambassador has made electability the centerpiece of her bid, positioning herself as a more traditional Republican than her opponents and better-equipped to lead than the “couple of 80-year-olds running for president”—a reference to Trump and President Joe Biden, who are 77 and 81, respectively. But isn’t the electability argument undermined by the fact that one of those 80-year-olds is currently leading her by more than 30 points in Iowa polls?
“I hope not,” one attendee told me after that January 11 rally in Ankeny, as Sheryl Crow’s “Woman in the White House” blared from the speakers. Voters here, who pride themselves on their ability to kick the tires on the candidates who come through every four years, can sometimes bristle at the sense that they are being taken for granted. And while she voted for Trump twice and considers him a successful president, “chaos follows him,” the attendee told me, adding that she hopes the party is ready to move on. “He’s just too much,” another attendee said.
That may be true, but it’s not clear if Haley or DeSantis are enough. Chris Christie, the race’s most strident Trump critic, suspended his campaign last week with blunt assessments of his former rivals: DeSantis is “petrified,” the former New Jersey governor said, in comments picked up by a hot mic, and Haley is “not up to this.”
“She’s going to get smoked,” he predicted.
Both Haley and DeSantis are hoping to change that prevailing narrative Monday night, which will play out against the backdrop of the winter’s first big storm, with below-zero temperatures now settling in as Iowans head to their caucus sites. “It’s gonna be frigid,” Centers, the GOP strategist, told me. “I think we’ll still be good on turnout. But now we’re gonna find out.”
Eric Lutz
Source link
