In the days since the last Republican presidential primary, the focus has been entirely on Donald Trump and Ted Cruz. Whether it’s Trump’s birther attack on Cruz or the Texas senator’s cheap shot at “New York values,” the national conversation and the attention of the press has been about those two candidates. Today’s expected endorsement of Trump by onetime Cruz ally Sarah Palin will only reinforce the narrative that the two men the only real contenders for the GOP nomination. The Palin-Cruz breakup soap opera will also make it even more difficult for any other candidate to get any attention.
Seasoned pundits and what we consider the Republican establishment will bravely try to ignore this and continue to promote the notion that neither Trump or Cruz can or will be nominated. Such commentary will warm the hearts of the four men currently vying for the other lane — Marco Rubio, Jeb Bush, John Kasich and Chris Christie — that many of us have always assumed would be an equal, if not better, way to win the GOP contest. But with less than two weeks to go before Iowa and another group of national and state polls released in the last few days, it may be time for the political class to ask whether the competition among the moderates really matters. Or if it does and one of them still has a theoretical chance to succeed, whether the changing circumstances will permit that to happen. If so, then conservatives not enamored of either a Trump or a Cruz victory will need to ask themselves some serious questions about the future of their party and the course of the 2016 race.
The argument for a three-way race rests on the idea that once the early primaries are finished, there will be a host of states where an outlier like Trump or a candidate that appeals to the party’s social conservative and Tea Party factions won’t have the same natural advantage that they have in Iowa or South Carolina. At that point, a candidate with the national appeal, organization, and money that appealed to more moderate conservatives might hold their own and ultimately prevail. As Jeb Bush seemed to fade into irrelevance and bitterness the last few months, Marco Rubio seemed to fit that bill best. But those expecting Trump to fall to earth or the Cruz surge to peak and then fall apart, need to stop dismissing the national polls that indicate it’s not likely to happen.
The national polls may be irrelevant to the state contests, but they do provide a clear idea about the political environment. The current Real Clear Politics average of national polls still shows Trump way ahead with 34.5 percent. Cruz is a distant second with 19.3 percent and Rubio an even more distant third at 11.8 percent. In theory, that may provide Rubio with a path to a final three showdown assuming the other moderates dropped out after finishing behind the Florida senator in Iowa and New Hampshire. But the bad news for Rubio is that although Bush, Christie, and Kasich are all languishing in the low single digits in the national poll average (respectively with 4.8, 3.5 and 2.3 percent), the equation is very different when you look at state polling.
The most recent New Hampshire poll from ARG shows Trump with a substantial lead at 27 percent but with Kasich having overtaken Rubio in second place with a surprising 20 percent, and Rubio, Christie, and Bush at 10, 9, and 8 percent. Another new poll out of South Carolina also shows Trump the frontrunner with 32 percent and Cruz at 18. But Jeb Bush leads the moderates in South Carolina with 13 percent while Rubio has 9 percent. In Florida, a primary many thought would be a fight to the death between Bush and Rubio over their home state, Trump also holds a commanding lead with 31 percent, Cruz in second with 19, Bush with 13 percent and then Rubio with 12 percent.
What conclusions can we draw from these numbers?
The first is that Trump is leading just about everywhere and nothing that has happened in recent weeks give us any indication that’s about to change. Indeed, with the rumination in Washington from some establishment types about Trump being preferable to Cruz if it came down to that choice, it’s clear that a lot of people are reading these polls and concluding that barring something unforeseen happening, Trump is going to be the nominee.
The other has to do with the moderate competition. The national polls still indicate that a moderate has a theoretical chance but only if there is just one left standing in the weeks after the first primaries in February. But right now, it doesn’t look like that’s going to happen. Rubio has the money and the national polls numbers to, as Stu Rothenberg writes, to absorb some early losses and still win. But he can’t do it if Bush, Kasich, and Christie are dividing the moderate vote. And if Kasich finishes second in New Hampshire and Bush is the leading moderate in South Carolina, they won’t drop out. Christie may also do well enough in New Hampshire to stay in the race. Indeed, Bush’s level of frustration at Rubio’s decision to run, and the size of his campaign war chest, may lead him to stay in the race until Florida no matter how badly he does before that. And neither Bush nor Rubio can survive a loss in their home state and right now it’s hard to imagine either overcoming a 20-point deficit to Trump.
Even more revealing were the matchups in last week’s NBC/Wall Street Journal poll that asked likely Republican voters to choose in a three-way matchup between Trump, Cruz, and Rubio, the one moderate with the largest national following at the moment. The answer provides very little comfort for those who think a Trump or Cruz victory is unimaginable. It showed Trump again comfortably ahead at 40 percent with Cruz at 31 percent and Rubio lagging behind with 26 percent. So it’s possible that even if all the other moderate conservatives were to disappear, even then Rubio wouldn’t be able to win the nomination of a party that clearly appears to have been captured by insurgents that want a non-traditional candidate.
If Rubio surges in the next few weeks as Trump and Cruz tear each other apart, these calculations may prove wrong. But we do know that those who want someone other than Trump or Cruz must unite behind a single candidate to have a chance. Right now the egos of the candidates and the likelihood that none of them will be eliminated early on may doom the eventual winner of the mythical moderate primary. But it may also be true that even if the last moderate standing can eliminate his opponents quickly, there may not be enough votes left in the center of the GOP to make it matter. If so, those bizarre speculations about whether a non-conservative like Trump is better for the GOP than a revolutionary like Cruz will be the only choice many Republicans have left.
