'Playing it safe' and playing to lose: Trump's primary opponents' unique campaign strategies

With Iowa’s GOP caucuses rapidly approaching on Jan. 15, one has to wonder how many of the participating candidates actually want to be president. As we all know, Donald Trump is running to stay out of prison, become dictator-for-life, rain terror down on his enemies, and force the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff to do his laundry every other Saturday. Meanwhile, two of Trump’s top rivals, Nikki Haley and Vivek Ramaswamy, are “playing it safe” and genuflecting to their ocher overlord, respectively. 

Trump himself appears to be phoning it in in many respects. Perhaps he’s confident that his hold on the once-grand party—the one that he’s permanently curdled with his baleful basilisk gaze—is as solid as the four feet of cranium between consensus reality and his solipsistic CPU. 

Then there’s Ramaswamy, who appears to be running for Trump sidekick/top sycophant. He’s seized on the brilliant strategy of getting his message out to far fewer people.