One of the basic precepts of modern political campaigns is that, while voters claim to hate negative advertising, it nearly always works. The reason why candidates devote considerable resources to opposition research and spend fortunes on ads trashing their opponents is that decades of experience has taught political consultants that such tactics are effective. But the question we should be asking today is not necessarily about the ethics of this approach or whether too much money is spent on politics. Rather it is whether this piece of conventional wisdom is being debunked in 2016.

There’s never been much disagreement between Republican and Democratic professionals about the value of going negative, and the 2016 presidential cycle is no exception. The best-funded campaigns have spent as much, if not more money attacking rivals than in boosting the reputations of the people that they were intended to help. Indeed, the Republican who raised the most money in the lead up to the campaign — Jeb Bush — has unleashed a super PAC blitz in the form of what is estimated to be at least $30 million worth of negative ads aimed at convincing voters that Marco Rubio is, to understate the matter, unworthy of public office.

The belief in negativity as a cardinal principle of politics that an amateur, albeit one that is a marketing genius, like Donald Trump has also embraced. Trump has spent the last six months blithely abusing his rivals with insults, taunts, and criticisms of dubious validity whenever they appeared to be presenting a threat to his ambitions.

But a funny thing happened in Iowa.

Having largely ignored Cruz for the opening months of the campaign, Trump did an about face after polls began showing the Texas Senator leading him in the Hawkeye State. Trump spent the remaining days of that campaign harping on Cruz’s Canadian birth (“Canadian anchor baby”), inflating a kerfuffle over reporting a loan on one form but not another into a major ethical lapse and landed punches about the senator’s views on ethanol and questioning his bona fides even on issues where they agreed such as immigration.

The beating he administered not only put Cruz on the defensive, but it also seemed to erase Cruz’s brief lead in the polls in Iowa and made Trump the favorite heading into Caucus night.

But to the consternation of the pollsters as well as the Donald, Cruz won. After graciously accepting his defeat for a day, Trump melted down on Wednesday claiming the election was stolen by Cruz’s dirty tricks. The most serious accusation is that Cruz’s staff jumped on an erroneous report about Ben Carson heading home to Florida to leave the race and made sure their precinct representatives knew about it. It’s doubtful this affected many votes and, as Chris Stierwalt notes, if anything, it may have helped Marco Rubio rather than Cruz. The real fault belongs to Carson’s disorganized campaign for sending out mixed messages (Did he really have to go home for clean clothes? Dry cleaning services are available in both Iowa and New Hampshire) and to CNN for not checking before spreading the rumor. Moreover, the notion that Trump, who has spread more misleading rumors (“what everybody says”) and outright lies in the last six months than the press corps and the other candidates combined, actually cares about fact checking is hilarious.

Yet the real issue here is not whether Cruz behaved badly or Trump’s inability to accept being a loser, even for a night. It’s that Trump’s negative barrage intended to collapse support for Cruz flopped.

The same can be said for Bush’s all-out blitz against Rubio. Instead of being hurt by the deluge of ads calling him a weathervane and an absentee senator, Rubio’s support has surged in both state and national polls in recent weeks. If anything, the negative ads and the attention they have drawn to Bush’s hard feelings about his former protégé not waiting his turn to run for president has hurt the former Florida governor.

But instead of wondering why these tactics failed and contemplating a change in strategy, both Trump and Bush are doubling down on their attack plans. Trump has spent the days after Iowa calling Cruz a liar and a cheater. Bush is not only continuing to pour millions down the rabbit hole of anti-Rubio advertising, Chris Christie has joined him in this approach. Christie lacks the funds for more anti-Rubio ads but he’s made up for it with personal insults about the senator, calling him “bubble boy” and comparing him to “the king of England.”

The reason for these decisions isn’t a mystery. Trump knows he missed a golden opportunity to destroy Cruz’s hopes by beating him in Iowa. Though few think Cruz will do nearly as well in New Hampshire, Trump knows a strong showing for the Texan will put the wind in his sales as the fight heads to South Carolina.

As for Bush and Christie, New Hampshire is do or die for them. Both flopped in Iowa and aren’t doing that much better in New Hampshire despite devoting most of their time to winning the state. If Rubio finishes ahead of them, both are finished. Though Rubio is the only moderate conservative that appears to have a chance of making it a three-man race with Trump and Cruz, the other moderates are determined to knock him off, in a desperate bid for survival as well as an open display of spite.

Will these new attacks work? Everything every well-paid consultant has told every candidate that they are bilking for exorbitant fees over the years says that it must. And perhaps it will this time. But as we saw in Iowa, the mud may not be sticking. Indeed, the more Trump rails at Cruz, the less he appears the confident, politically incorrect and brash “winner” telling off the world and the more he looks like a petulant, spoiled rich kid who has always been able to bully his way to getting whatever he wants.

As for Bush and Christie, having devoted their campaigns to taking shots at Rubio, they seem to have forgotten to make a good case for their own fitness for the presidency. It may also have occurred to some Republicans that the most telling criticism of Rubio — that he is a conservative version of President Obama — actually plays right into the Florida senator’s best talking point. Rubio asserts that he is the most electable candidate in the race. Though Obama is widely disliked by Republican voters they’d love to have a GOP candidate that wins elections and infuriates opponents the way the president has done.

What voters like about Cruz is his ideological purity and his burning desire to defeat his opponents. Though Trump’s invective may get under Cruz’s skin, nothing that’s been said about him appears to have undermined the rationale for his candidacy. As for Rubio, the bitter attacks against him seem only to have highlighted the best aspect of his candidacy, a youthful and optimistic vision for the country.

The laws of political gravity haven’t been completely annulled so it’s possible that negative attacks may start working. But this election cycle may teach us that blind faith in such tactics is as misguided as a Pollyanna-style campaign that completely eschewed them. Trump, Bush, and Christie may be teaching us that while going negative works sometimes, there are exceptions to every rule.

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