Mike Huckabee and Rick Santorum, both previous winners of the Iowa caucuses, will appear with Donald Trump at an event for veterans that the billionaire businessman has scheduled as counterprogramming to tonight’s debate on Fox News, which he is skipping, the New York Times reports.
All three candidates have the goal of shifting attention from Sen. Ted Cruz.
New York Times: “It is still early enough in the race for Mr. Clinton to warm up. (And he can take some time to warm up.) A more subdued Bill Clinton may not be such a bad thing either, say some Democrats, who cringe as they recall the distraction of his piping-hot words about Barack Obama in the 2008 race.”
“Yet the Clinton of lore, the once-in-a generation political natural who fought back to win his party’s nomination in 1992 and came through in clutch moments with great speeches over the years, has yet to appear.”
Jeb Bush told Bloomberg that his brother, former President George W. Bush, would campaign with him in South Carolina.
Said Bush: “He’s the most popular Republican alive… It may go against the conventional wisdom outside of the Republican world.”
Washington Post: “Trump’s agent told him (appearing on ‘The Apprentice’) was a terrible idea — business shows never work on TV, he said. Trump disagreed. Indeed, he fired the agent shortly thereafter. ‘If I would have listened to him,’ Trump told The Washington Post, ‘I wouldn’t have done the show.’ Not halfway into that first, hour-long meeting with Mark Burnett, Trump made up his mind. He sensed that ‘The Apprentice’ had enormous potential to introduce him to a broader audience, and especially to younger people.”
“The man who now seeks to be commander in chief had consulted no one, done no research. He liked the idea. He bought it. It was a classic Trump moment, an example of the gut-instinct decision-making that he proudly touts … He didn’t run for president because of ‘The Apprentice,’ but according to the show’s executives and producers, without ‘The Apprentice’ there would be no candidacy.”
A lawyer for Dennis Hastert said the former U.S. House speaker nearly died in November and still is recovering from a stroke, leading a federal judge to postpone Hastert’s sentencing scheduled for next month, the Chicago Tribune reports.
A new Monmouth University Poll in Iowa finds Hillary Clinton leads Bernie Sanders by 5 points, 47% to 42%, which is down from 22 points just one month ago.
Key finding: “Among voters who have a history of voting in state Democratic primaries, Clinton currently leads Sanders by 47% to 39%… Among non-Democrats who say they will change their registration to caucus with the Democrats – representing about one-fifth of the current sample – Sanders has a 48% to 40% lead.”
Kathie Obradovich: “News that the Donald plans to skip Thursday night’s Fox News debate in Iowa was the hubris a la mode to Trump’s not-at-all-humble pie. For a front-runner to skip a debate in Iowa four days before the caucuses takes an ego the size of the Trump Tower. His action may project that he thinks the caucuses are ready to be engraved with his name, but over-confidence can backfire in a close race.”
“There is substance behind Trump’s bravado, however. Five of the six most recent polls have Trump leading Cruz, with margins ranging from 2 to 11 percentage points.”
“The central question about Trump’s Iowa campaign is whether it can convert enough star-struck celebrity watchers into bona fide caucusgoers to win on Monday. Media reports about the strength of the Trump campaign’s ground game are inconclusive. Just because reporters find a lot of people at Trump rallies who don’t seem to know how to caucus doesn’t mean his campaign can’t turn out enough voters to win.”
A new Suffolk University poll in New Hampshire finds Donald Trump holds a comfortable lead over his opponents with 27% support, followed by Ted Cruz at 12%, John Kasich at 12%, Jeb Bush at 11%, Marco Rubio at 10%, Chris Christie at 6% and Ben Carson at 5%.
Former Providence Mayor Vincen “Buddy” Cianci has died, the Providence Journal reports.
“Cianci’s political career began in 1974, when he first became mayor of Providence. His terms in office were cut short by criminal actions: once, in 1984, when he was convicted of felony assault, and again in 2002, when a federal jury found him guilty of running City Hall as a criminal conspiracy. He spent four and a half years in federal prison and emerged to resume a radio talk show career he left in 1990.”
“I know it may sound contrarian, but this is the position that he wants to be in.”
— George P. Bush, quoted by Texas Monthly, on his father’s lagging presidential campaign.
First Read: “Just look at our new NBC/WSJ/Marist poll: Donald Trump now has a seven-point lead over Ted Cruz among likely caucus-goers, 32%-25%, with Marco Rubio at 18%.”
“It’s a closer race among past Iowa participants, Trump 29% and Cruz 25%. But among new participants, Trump has a 14-point advantage, 39%-25% — meaning a larger, newer turnout benefits Trump, while a smaller, older turnout helps Cruz. It’s that simple.”
“Are new participants going to flock to the caucus sites on Monday? So far, we’re not seeing it, though participants have until the night of the contest (Feb. 1) to register.”
A new Washington Post/ABC News poll finds that 31% of Americans would support the notion of Donald Trump running as an independent if he doesn’t win the GOP nomination, versus 64% who would oppose it.
“Even more alarming for the GOP, perhaps, is that nine percent of Americans say they would definitely vote for Trump if he did this, and another 14% would consider doing so. That nine percent is enough to wreak havoc on the general election, and that additional 14 percent might prove very tempting to Trump, given his own oft-stated goal of maximizing his leverage (not to mention his obvious fondness for media attention).”
Mat Bai: “The truth is that when it comes to challenging orthodoxies, the insurgents on both sides are way more retro than they are radical. And that may be why, no matter what transpires in Iowa Monday, they’re destined to come up short.”
“Presidential elections, Clinton famously said, are always about the future and not about the past…the other possibility, and I’m not dismissing it, is that this is the year when Bill Clinton’s axiom on elections no longer holds true. Perhaps unrest in the country is so profound, the primary electorates so ideologically pure, that nostalgia turns out to be an actual strategy. Maybe we’ve reached a point — after a string of presidencies premised on visions of a future, economic and social, that never fully materialized — where we’d rather retrench than rethink. Maybe this is throwback year, and it’s easier to go backward than look ahead.”
Larry Sabato and Kyle Kondik: “With just a few days to go before the Monday caucuses, we believe Clinton is decently positioned to survive Iowa. Momentum and excitement appear to be more on Sanders’ side, but he may be over-reliant on a base of supporters that are not well distributed throughout the state and a bit less likely to turn out at the level he needs… If despite all this, Clinton still comes up short, let’s not forget that Iowa’s Democratic activists are overwhelmingly white and somewhat more liberal than in many other states where Clinton will be favored due to strong minority backing. So a Clinton loss here is far from fatal.”
“For the Republicans, the late momentum (at least as this is written) appears to be Donald Trump’s, and he has built a modest edge in the kickoff contest. The GOP’s leadership, faced with a choice between the devil and the deep blue sea (Trump and Ted Cruz) from their establishment perspective, seem to favor the flexible Republican Trump over the ideologue Cruz, at least for now. We still have questions about Trump’s ability to get his supporters to caucus locations on Monday, but if he can jump that hurdle, he may only grow in strength in the state contests to come.”
Donald Trump may be in a battle with Fox News, but Rush Limbaugh backs him up:
“Everything he’s doing goes against the book. Everything that any analyst or consultant or professional would tell you not to do, Donald Trump is doing it, and he’s leading the pack. This creates its own set of emotions and feelings and thoughts that run from person to person.”
“Trump is functioning totally outside this structure that has existed for decades. As such, the people who are only familiar with the structure and believe in it and cherish it and want to protect it, feel threatened in ways that you can’t even comprehend.”
Amy Walter: “One of the most enduring misconceptions of this election is that Trump can say or do anything and not lose support. That is only half true. He has been able to turn around his image among GOP voters, but his image among the rest of the electorate is terrible. The most recent NBC/WSJ poll finds his disapproval ratings among all voters to be 58%. Almost HALF of all voters (47 percent) have a VERY negative opinion of him. To put that into perspective, Hillary Clinton is at 37% VERY negative. Not great, but better than his.”
Harry Enten: “Many Democrats, popcorn in hand, are watching the Republican presidential primary with glee, believing that a Ted Cruz or Donald Trump nomination would be a disaster for Republicans up and down the ballot. That’s certainly possible — even plausible. But even if we assume that Cruz or Trump would get blown out in the general election — a shaky assumption — history suggests that it’s far from a guarantee that congressional Democrats would benefit.”
“There is a modest relationship between House and presidential results; about 50 percent of the variation in how the balance of the House changes is explained by the Democratic presidential vote percentage margin and the Democratic seat margin heading into the election. In other words: The presidential and House races are related, but how closely the two mirror one another varies widely depending on the election.”
Taegan Goddard is the founder of Political Wire, one of the earliest and most influential political web sites. He also runs Political Job Hunt, Electoral Vote Map and the Political Dictionary.
Goddard spent more than a decade as managing director and chief operating officer of a prominent investment firm in New York City. Previously, he was a policy adviser to a U.S. Senator and Governor.
Goddard is also co-author of You Won - Now What? (Scribner, 1998), a political management book hailed by prominent journalists and politicians from both parties. In addition, Goddard's essays on politics and public policy have appeared in dozens of newspapers across the country.
Goddard earned degrees from Vassar College and Harvard University. He lives in New York with his wife and three sons.
Goddard is the owner of Goddard Media LLC.