Monday, January 25, 2016

Donald Trump's Unique Playbook in Iowa

He's got a unique playbook everywhere, not just Iowa.

Nevertheless, here's Politico, "Trump follows his own unique Iowa playbook":
His rivals may be camped out there until Feb. 1 but he's thinking bigger — an early-voting state sweep.

DES MOINES, Iowa — Republican presidential candidates are frantically crisscrossing Iowa telling caucus-goers they are the only voters in the world that matter. But not front-runner Donald Trump.

While Ted Cruz and Marco Rubio are camped out here until the Feb. 1 caucuses, Trump is following a different playbook.

He’s got a 757, and he’s flying it around the country in the final week regardless of what his rivals are doing. After barnstorming in Iowa over the weekend — he even overnighted in Sioux City — Trump has trips planned for New Hampshire on Monday and South Carolina on Wednesday, just days before the Iowa verdict is rendered.

Trump’s confidence — or maybe overconfidence — has his campaign dreaming of an early-state sweep. “It gives us a mandate,” Trump said of securing a victory in Iowa.

His momentum is hard to deny. Both the Cruz and Rubio camps privately acknowledge they very well might finish in second or third place here. Trump has even attracted establishment politicians like Iowa Sen. Chuck Grassley to one of his rallies, something that would have been unthinkable just a few months ago.

While Grassley, an Iowa GOP icon, hasn’t endorsed Trump — the veteran senator still plans to appear with other candidates — he borrowed Trump’s slogan over the weekend, declaring it was time to “Make America great again.”

Trump continues to preach urgency to his Iowa faithful, even if his flight manifest tells a different story. “If you lose your wife, if you lose your husband — I don’t care. You’ve got to caucus,” Trump told about 500 people Saturday at Central College in Pella, Iowa.
Actually, that overnighter in Iowa is more in line with breaking the mold for the Trump campaign. He normally flies back to New York or Florida after hitting the Hawkeye State. See, "Donald Trump Aims to Win in Iowa."

But, yeah, I think the "Trumpmentum" at this point is pretty much insurmountable.

I can't believe that the polls are going to be wrong after they've consistently had Trump leading the national race for months, and this last few weeks in Iowa. Frankly, it's that nagging question about the ground game that's the only thing that's unsettled. And when you think about it, maybe even talk of "grassroots mobilizing" is old-fashioned this time around. Trump's reality-showman campaign might just boost untold numbers of first-time caucus-goes out on election night.

Pretty phenomenal.

More at the link, in any case.

0 comments: