Trump, king of drama, sucks all of it out of the GOP nomination fight
The biggest news in the Republican presidential primary on Tuesday was that an obscure New Hampshire restaurateur was jumping ship from Chris Christie’s campaign to Nikki Haley’s.
As if it mattered.
Two weeks before the Iowa caucuses, the defining feature of the race is just how uncompetitive it's become. Donald Trump is now polling above 60 percent nationally among Republican primary voters. Rather than sweat it out like Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, his once-chief rival who spent the weekend working a Sheraton Hotel ballroom in West Des Moines, Trump rang in the New Year at Mar-a-Lago by taking in a performance of a rapping Vanilla Ice and a dancing Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle.
And as the campaign turns this week to Iowa, the former president will arrive there having already iced the rest of the field, trouncing his competitors down the homestretch of what has seemed for months like a slow-motion coronation.
”Trump defies all political gravity and rules and consistently has, both nationally as well as in the state of Iowa,” said Doug Gross, a GOP operative who was chief of staff to former Iowa Gov. Terry Branstad and plans to caucus for Haley. “And that's why he's in the position he's in because he has such a strong base following and a strong brand and knows how to play the fiddle.”
Trump, who has skipped four GOP debates and largely forgone barnstorming early nominating states, hasn’t taken the primary lightly. His team has worked for endorsements, leaned on state parties and put in place a more sophisticated delegate operation. Trump himself will make a show of force in Iowa ahead of the caucuses, starting with appearances on Friday and Saturday, the anniversary of the Jan. 6 riot at the Capitol. Next week, he will counterprogram a Jan. 10 CNN debate with a Fox town hall in Des Moines.
When top Trump lieutenants Chris LaCivita and Susie Wiles argued in a memo Tuesday that the only “real battle is who will place second” in Iowa, it was hard to disagree.
“Regardless of how well President Trump finishes in Iowa, the headlines will be about the second-place finisher so the media can make New Hampshire the flavor of the week,” LaCivita and Wiles wrote.
In a primary that has featured more cul-de-sacs than twists and turns, the media is hungry for any new flavor of the week. On Tuesday, that was Tom Boucher. The restaurateur who was named to Christie’s steering committee in the first primary state just last month announced he’s backing Haley.
But that too served as a reminder of the different planes on which the candidates are competing. Shortly after the Boucher news, Trump rolled out the endorsement of House Majority Leader Steve Scalise (R.-La.). As if that weren’t enough, he spent much of a Breitbart interview musing about flipping his reliably blue Democratic home state of New York, while bandying about the possibility of winning New Jersey, Minnesota and Virginia.
Even if Trump's prospects in those states are unclear, his primary positioning has vastly improved since 2016, with hundreds of volunteer door-knockers fanning out each weekend in early nominating states.
“He's run a much more disciplined and focused campaign than the other two times, and though it's a low bar, quite honestly, who the hell cares?” said Dave Carney, the veteran New Hampshire-based GOP strategist. “He has a great organization that's finally getting noticed. Sometimes, it's not playing prevent defense, but being smart with your candidates' resources. I don't think anybody on New Year's weekend in Iowa cared much about anything other than Michigan losing [in the College Football Playoffs]. He doesn’t need to do that. He’s not behind.”
Though Trump is expected to return to Iowa this Friday for a pre-caucuses rally in Sioux Center ahead of what his campaign said would be a “larger blitz” across the state, his footprint in the state will be far smaller than that of his competitors’. Few operatives in the field see any reason for him to do more.
“Why would he do anything different? It’s risking upsetting his strategy, the work he has done in nothing but going up and consolidating his strength,” said Jeff Timmer, a senior adviser to the anti-Trump Lincoln Project and the former executive director of the Michigan Republican Party. “Let DeSantis and Nikki Haley debate on CNN. OK, great. I'm gonna go on Fox and have my town hall and preempt everything — suck all the air out of it.”
It’s Trump now, in the words of the ’90s rapper he hosted at his resort, who plans to light up a stage and wax a chump like a candle.