The real race for the GOP nomination is just now heating up on the barren snowfields of Iowa and the thawing affect is looking like a spring melt on a back country road, turning into sloppy, muddy ruts.
The campaign that finds traction just might be able to breakthrough to the top of the pack, but that’s a question of many twists and turns.
The talk in Iowa up to this point has been dominated with that of Cruz and Trump.
The staunchly conservative senator and the business man billionaire are slugging it out across the state to capture the first-in-the-nation prize and launch their political hopes headlong into the primary season.
Cruz is planning a bus tour for the first full week of January that takes him from the upper northwest region of the state sweeping across Iowa, covering ground from the Missouri river to the Mississippi.
One leading source in Cruz’ Keeping the Promise Super PAC contends that the January focus for their support of the senator will be in funding the ground game in Iowa with some weighty financing.
Most of the Super PAC’s January budget spend in Iowa will be going towards phone banks, voter identification, mobilizing field offices, and caucus training. Cruz has one of the best ground games in the state and it is already paying dividends for the campaign.
The Iowa Trump team is not far behind. The Iowa campaign is led by the battle-tested Chuck Laudner. Laudner is an old hand at election politics in Iowa and is a real coup for the Trump team to have.
Current analysis has the Trump team working in many of Iowa’s more populated counties such as Linn, Polk, Scott, and Dubuque.
There are two looming questions for the Trump campaign in Iowa:
Will they be organized statewide with county and precinct leaders urging support in the rural regions of the state, and with a significant number of Trump supporters being first-time caucus goers?
Will they show up on caucus night?
Third place is where the real race is. The strategy is simple; place in the top three and communicate a message to voters in New Hampshire that you have a strong campaign that resonates using that momentum to propel the campaign forward.
The three campaigns that are banking on this strategy are the Bush, Rubio, and Christie campaigns. The Bush Super PAC, Right to Rise, and the Rubio Super PAC, Conservative Solutions, are now engaged in an air war of epic proportions.
The pro-Bush Super PAC is attacking Rubio as uninterested in being president based on his poor attendance as a senator.
Additionally, they are hitting Rubio as weak on foreign policy, not being up to snuff to lead on the world stage. The pro-Rubio Super PAC, Conservative Solutions, is punching back hard on two separate fronts.
They are attempting to debunk the pro-Bush Super PAC’s claim by positioning the Florida senator as having attended more national security briefings than any other senator and coopting the support of Senator Grassley as stating that even he discredit’s Bush’s claims.
Michael McDaniel is a political commentator who has been covering election politics in Iowa for over a decade. For more of his reports, Go Here Now.
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