I guess this was Ted's epic move: A slight victory over Trump and Rubio. Well, a win is a win... OP: you must be thrilled!! Huckabee won the Iowa Caucus in 2008, correct? That sure was a big move, too. As for Hillary and Bernie, I like the competition. Minimally, we'll have two opponents speaking about current challenges, without completely degrading Muslims and Mexicans (Or, minorities for that matter). If Rubio sticks around as the guy in third place, he's not as polarizing as Cruz and Trump. He'll at least be a decent person, and I doubt he'll attempt to appeal to the sinister values that Trump, and at some points, Cruz, incorporate into their political agenda. As much as I disagree with Rubio, he's not on the same fringe level of intolerance and volatile ideas as "the two" currently leading him. I'll give him a listen.
Good lord Cruz is long winded. Maybe he was thinking this might be his only victory speech and he was gonna enjoy it. But damn dude...45 minute victory speech? SMH.
He staked his entire run on winning this state. It was a huge moment for him. The polls said he was going to lose.
Not at all...not at all. I enjoy watching this trainwreck. I'm sure you do, too. In terms of our perception and general self-respect, I'm slightly relieved that Trump didn't destroy Cruz. After all that he's said, and with what he represents, I will be EMBARRASSED for America if Trump is the nominee. That would be shameful. I don't agree with Cruz on anything, but he is the lesser of two evils, and he actually has political experience. I don't know how people have allowed Trump to get this far.
Cruz won more than just the Iowa caucuses tonight. In fact, the primary win was by far the smaller of his two main victories. Cruz also vindicated his national campaign strategy, which is based on increasing his potential support by turning out more conservatives, who have stayed home over the last few presidential election cycles. Virtually all the experts insisted that this was pie in the sky fantasy dreamer type thinking by Cruz and that in fact conservatives had turned out as strongly as they were likely to and that Cruz was wasting his time. Tonight Cruz was proven right. This was reflected in the Iowa poll assumptions used by most pollsters, which assumed that if turnout was high, over 135,000, then that would disproportionately benefit Donald Trump. That was clearly wrong, as turnout was 170,000, which was definitely at the upper end of of what most "experts" considered possible. So, the turnout was high, but it benefited Cruz more than Trump, because he was able to turnout his base in higher than expected numbers. This is the really big win for Cruz. Now all the pollsters are going to have to recalculate their turnout assumptions, in most cases pretty substantially. Between that and the effect of voters switching their support to other candidates as current candidates drop out of the race, this race is going to look a whole lot different shortly after New Hampshire in eight days.
So, you're predicting that Cruz will continue this momentum through NH and thereafter. Interesting. I can't envision Donald being "second" for too long. With all of his bravado, second place has to hurt his greedy little heart. Going forward, I wonder if Trump starts to play nice with Cruz, or if he amps it up to his common method of alienating all Republicans who aren't for him. He's got some serious PR thinking to do...
We'll see. This is certainly the hope and prayer of far right conservatives and they could turn out to be right. I don't see it myself. If these conservatives that don't show up to vote weren't motivated to vote against Obama in 2012, I'm not overly sure they exist in anywhere near the numbers needed to carry a national campaign. I mean, Iowa was about as perfect a state for him to start in as possible and he won but not in a huge dominating performance. Keep in mind, pre Iowa the talk was that Trump would turn out loads of voters who hadn't voted in a long time. How'd that work out?
Yes, the polls show Cruz in second place in most states, and in third in most of the ones where he isn't second. Of course he is currently in the lead in Texas. So, based on that status coming into tonight, with most of the experts predicting Trump would win in Iowa, are you saying you don't think Cruz's momentum will continue? What would make it suddenly stop, in your view? I think I have tried to explain this here several times already, but let me try once more. Donald Trump needs 50%+1 delegates in order to win the Republican nomination. He does not get that level of support now. He will probably not see any withdrawing Republican candidates endorse him nor will he receive any appreciable number of delegates from those candidates. He will not receive any support from any of the "automatic" delegates to the Republican national convention. We do not have a "first past the post" system. You can win the primaries in all 50 states and if you are not winning them with a majority of the votes - a support level that Trump does not appear to have - then it is highly unlikely that you do have the delegates needed to win the nomination. All that being said, I think that it is going to be really hard for any of the three leading candidates to win this thing. None of them has a clear path to 50%+1 at this point. So I am not predicting Cruz will win. But I will be surprised if he is not in it until the end.
Sorry , but the people that support Donald carry r****d strength. In a political sense it means they will flock to the polls no matter what he says or does. Trump got a bit too confident in Iowa, dissing the people there even, but I doubt he makes the same mistake again.
Wow, this is the uniter we've all been looking for, amiright? http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/ted-cruz-credits-attack-donald-trumps-york-values/story?id=36658796 He goes back to attacking "New York values" and slamming all liberals who live in big cities. Nice way to accept a campaign victory, R Edward! You can unite America in hating people who live in big cities. Nice.
