He did it.
The other guy didn’t do it.
And yet another guy did it.
By the end of the evening, the Iowa caucses proved a great night for Texas. Senator Ted Cruz, who seemed to have lost his political nimbleness in the campaign’s final days. It was a bad night for billionare-showman Donald Trump, who did not come up a winner. And it was a good night for Florida Sen. Marco Rubio, who finished close to Trump and now could be the candidate that the Republican establishment rallies around to try and stop Cruz and Trump.
And Jeb Bush? Forgeddabouddit: he barely caused a blip and the vote most likely unofficially marks the end of this generation of the Bush political dynasty. Here’s a roundup of media, blog and Twitter reaction to the GOP caucus results.
Texas Sen. Ted Cruz has won the Iowa Republican caucuses, a huge victory for him and a bitter defeat for Donald Trump in the country’s first presidential contest.
….The victory for Cruz is the first time that the conventional laws of politics have applied to Trump, a billionaire businessman who has built his campaign around the perception that he’s a winner who can bring his unique skills to the White House.
As CNN notes, Cruz had a better ground game. And not just better: for months countless news reports have noted the intricate political and data focus of the Cruz campaign in making sure they got ever single voter that could vote for the man who many say is the most hated U.S. Senator. He stayed (largely) on message and practiced pure, political science. And Trump? This is one case where political science trumped personality:
But Trump’s big personality, social media presence and large rallies failed to overcome Cruz’s more traditional approach to Iowa’s retail politics. Cruz spent months touring the state and reaching out to evangelical voters. The win sets him up as a formidable contender in the delegate-rich, Southern states that crowd the GOP calendar in the coming weeks and offers movement conservatives hope that one of their own can become the nominee for the first time since Ronald Reagan.
As he claimed victory, Cruz fired immediate shots at both Trump and the party elites who disdain him.
“Iowa has sent notice that the Republican nominee and the next President of the United States will not be chosen by the media, will not be chosen by the Washington establishment,” Cruz said.
With about 99% of the GOP vote in, Cruz was ahead of Trump 28% to 24%. Marco Rubio was at 23%.
And Trump? Despite some analysts predicting if he lost he’d lose with a few zingers, he was gracious in defeat, as The Politico notes:
All of a sudden, Donald Trump doesn’t mind losing.
A gracious Trump gave brief concession remarks on Monday night, congratulating Ted Cruz and expressing gratitude to his team and the people of Iowa.
Trump said he had been told at the outset of his campaign that he could not finish in the top 10 in Iowa and that he was satisfied with his second place finish.
“We’re just so happy with the way everything worked out,” he said.
“I’m just honored,” he said. “I’m really honored and I want to congratulate Ted and I want to congratulate all of the incredible candidates, including Mike Huckabee who’s become a really good friend of mine.”
Senator Ted Cruz of Texas, powered by a surge of support from evangelical Christians, handily defeated Donald J. Trump in the Iowa caucuses on Monday, throwing into question the depth of support for Mr. Trump’s unconventional candidacy.
In the first contest of a campaign that has been more of a populist revolt against the political order than a traditional Republican primary, Senator Marco Rubio of Florida finished a strong third, bolstering his case to consolidate the support of Republicans uneasy about the two top finishers.
With 85 percent of precincts reporting, Mr. Cruz had 28 percent of the vote, Mr. Trump 24 percent and Mr. Rubio 23 percent.
…Mr. Cruz’s victory was hard-earned. He fought off a barrage of attacks in the campaign’s final weeks from Mr. Trump as well as from Iowa’s longtime governor, Terry E. Branstad, and Republican leaders in Washington who warned that the hard-line Mr. Cruz would lead the party to electoral disaster this fall.
Having felled the brash Mr. Trump, who unceasingly predicted victory and dominated the race right up until the first voting, Mr. Cruz can now credibly portray himself, to conservatives who have yearned to unite behind a strong champion, as a giant-killer.
The close contest illustrated just how turbulent the Republican race may be, with the vote fragmenting between Mr. Trump’s blue-collar political newcomers, Mr. Cruz’s evangelicals and Mr. Rubio’s mix of conservatives and establishment-aligned backers.
Mr. Cruz benefited from a record turnout for the Republican caucuses here, but the brew of energy and anger behind Mr. Trump’s campaign did not translate into votes.
That was plainly the case in a race where more than half of the electorate identified as evangelicals: Mr. Trump’s celebrity-fueled airplane hangar rallies proved overmatched by Mr. Cruz’s appeal to born-again Christians, his extensive organization and his time-consuming visits to each of Iowa’s 99 counties. The throngs of Iowans who came to see Mr. Trump’s improvisational performances may have come away entertained, but not enough of them seemed persuaded that he was presidential.
Sen. Ted Cruz scored a hard-fought upset win over businessman Donald Trump in the Iowa Republican caucuses Monday night, making good on his bet that a methodical campaign organization would eclipse the New Yorker’s media dominance in the first test of GOP voters.
With 99 percent of the precincts reporting, Cruz (Tex.) was besting Trump by more than 5,100 votes, with fellow senator Marco Rubio of Florida a close third. Cruz appeared to capitalize on deep support from religious and social conservatives and showed that old-fashioned retail politicking could overcome Trump’s massive political rallies in the Hawkeye state.
….Trump had led the Republican polls since last summer, shortly after he declared his candidacy, and he had seemed to rewrite the traditional rules and expectations of national political campaigns. Yet his outsider appeal, which swelled crowds at rallies, failed to translate entirely to the caucus turnout, and some political analysts questioned his decision to drop out of the final GOP debate last week.
In Iowa, the hater became a loser. Like a late night infomercial salesman, when his product was put to the test, it turned out to be a dud.
In the first contest of the Republican nomination, Donald Trump, the man who predicted his entire campaign on his ability to win everything and everywhere, suffered a devastating defeat, with Texas Sen. Ted Cruz scoring a decisive victory in Iowa.
Absent policy expertise, his bluster about achieving foreign and domestic “wins” constituted the entire sustaining force of his campaign. As he once said on Twitter, quoting the golfer Walter Hagen, “no one remembers who came in second”. It was a triumphant attitude based on polling leads that continually defied expectations and a successful career in real estate that he elevated to mythological proportions.Trump was unstoppable, he continually insisted, and faced only an endless string of victories that were all but assured.
That all changed Monday night as a visibly-deflated Trump gave brief remarks to supporters in Iowa. Absent was the swagger of Trump events past: “I think we’re going to be proclaiming victory, I hope,” Trump said of next week’s New Hampshire primary.
It was perhaps his most magnanimous speech of the campaign. He congratulated Cruz on the win in Iowa and repeated over and over again that he loved the people of Iowa.
The Huffington Post’s Howard Fineman:
In the end, it was a surprise that it wasn’t a surprise: Iowa Republicans, most of whom are evangelical Christians, chose an evangelical Christian as their man: Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas.
At the same time, the plain-spoken and sensible voters of the state also plucked a new star out of the crowd: the comparatively moderate and photogenic young senator from Florida, Marco Rubio.
Cruz showed in Iowa that he could take a punch from Donald Trump. And Rubio showed that he could sneak up on the other two with charisma, charm and a sense of optimism.
As a result, Republicans are looking at a three-way race in which two first-term senators in their mid-40s — representatives of a new generation of conservative Republicans — are preparing to grind the 69-year-old billionaire between them.
As the Iowa Caucus draws to a close, there are two winners: Ted Cruz, who outperformed all expectations, and Hillary Clinton, the inevitable candidate who scraped by. However, there are also two losers, and their losses are bigger than the winners’ wins. Those two losers are Donald Trump and national polls.
For both, it is a very clear loss, and an almost symbiotic one. Trump relied solely on national polls, at one point questioning why candidates would use their own polling.
As it turns out, had Trump used internal polling, he might not be in the situation he’s in: It went from looking like a neck-and-neck race for first with Ted Cruz to a neck-and-neck race for second with Marco Rubio. Many conservatives who don’t like Rubio are questioning why the Florida senator would claim tonight is a victory, but he overperformed expectations. Just about everyone did, even Jim Gilmore, while Trump underperformed by roughly four points.
Progressive blogger Martin Longman:
Ted Cruz won tonight. Four years ago, Santorum won. Eight years ago, Huckabee won. Tonight, Santorum came in last place and Huckabee dropped out. Going back further, in 1988, Dole came in first, Pat Robertson came in second, and Poppy Bush came in third.
So, good for Ted. It’s better to win than to lose. But Iowa likes to vote for losers.
Donald Trump learned a lesson tonight about relying on polls, about the importance of a ground game, and about the foolishness of running away from Megyn Kelly if your whole schtick is that you’re the toughest guy in the race.
I absolutely love that he got his ass kicked and I thought he might cry during his brief shellshocked press conference.
These results resolve almost nothing, but the media spin will be ferocious. I can already see the outlines of a fight between the Clinton and Sanders camp over who really won, but you could do just as well by converting a single superdelegate from the other camp into your own. That’s how little it matters mathematically who actually “won” tonight, and it’s also at least as likely as not that the “winner” will have actually received fewer votes. That’s because of the way the delegates are assigned.
Finally, Iowa is a nice state. My father grew up in Iowa City while my grandfather was teaching there. But they aren’t representative of the country. Tonight decides nothing and it shouldn’t decide anything.
Final verdict?
Marco Rubio won.
A cross-section of Tweets:
So we have 3 GOP finalists: Cruz, Trump, Rubio. It could be a long & winding road through the primaries.
— Larry Sabato (@LarrySabato) February 2, 2016
If the race comes down to Ted Cruz vs. Marco Rubio, conservatives should be overjoyed. Republicans could do much much worse. #GOPprimary
— Matt Reed (@MattKFR) February 2, 2016
Editorial: Ted Cruz does the country a favor by beating Donald Trump in Iowa https://t.co/c1Cxi4YoQv pic.twitter.com/3WKIOGT60p
— Los Angeles Times (@latimes) February 2, 2016
Ted Cruz wins Iowa GOP caucus with most votes ever for single candidate | https://t.co/Fg8RJAKt9v via @foxnewslatino
— Fox News (@FoxNews) February 2, 2016
Ted Cruz and Bernie Sanders both called out establishment politics and economics tonight. #IowaCaucus
— Luke Russert (@LukeRussert) February 2, 2016
Ted Cruz and Bernie Sanders both called out establishment politics and economics tonight. #IowaCaucus
— Luke Russert (@LukeRussert) February 2, 2016
Joe Gandelman is a former fulltime journalist who freelanced in India, Spain, Bangladesh and Cypress writing for publications such as the Christian Science Monitor and Newsweek. He also did radio reports from Madrid for NPR’s All Things Considered. He has worked on two U.S. newspapers and quit the news biz in 1990 to go into entertainment. He also has written for The Week and several online publications, did a column for Cagle Cartoons Syndicate and has appeared on CNN.