Is Trump Steaming Toward a Candidacy-Sinking Iceberg? Three Writers Look at Iowa and Beyond.

Frank Bruni, a contributing Opinion writer, hosted a written online conversation with Mike Murphy, a co-director of the Center for the Political Future at the University of Southern California, a former Republican strategist for John McCain and others and a host of the podcast “Hacks on Tap” and Kristen Soltis Anderson, a Republican pollster and a moderator of the Times Opinion focus group series, to discuss their expectations for the Iowa caucus. They also banter about the road ahead for the G.O.P. primary and what the general election might look like after the primary.

Frank Bruni: Mike, Kristen, happy Iowa caucuses. I’m sitting here at my kitchen table in a parka and earmuffs, in honor of the freezing temperatures that caucusgoers are expected to brave. And I thank you for joining me.

Have any of the developments of recent days (Donald Trump’s appearance in two different courtrooms, Chris Christie’s exit from the race, the Nikki Haley-Ron DeSantis debate, some other twist) potentially altered the trajectory of the race or set up caucus results that might surprise us?

Kristen Soltis Anderson: I doubt that the events of the last few days have done much. This is still Trump’s caucus to lose.

Bruni: But will he win as big as some people believe? And if he does stage a blowout, is there only one, or more than one, ticket out of Iowa?

Soltis Anderson: I wouldn’t be surprised to see Trump get a majority of votes. And I think there’s only one ticket out of Iowa. DeSantis would need to dominate handily, winning or coming near Trump’s share, to have a prayer of gaining the momentum he’d need to thrive in New Hampshire or South Carolina. Without that, DeSantis has nowhere to go besides looking ahead to 2028.

Mike Murphy: Iowa is the opening act for the Big Show in New Hampshire and South Carolina. Two story lines will count out of Iowa: Who is the biggest winner, and who is the biggest loser, in the expectations game, the noise of which will have an effect on New Hampshire.

Haley has been inching up in Iowa for several weeks, and I think she will beat DeSantis for second. Then she’ll get the “winner” medal and move on. Nothing works as well as beating somebody you were behind. If Trump does get a blowout win — which I doubt, I think he’ll be under 45 percent and underperform — it’ll still be all about New Hampshire and then South Carolina.

Bruni: Kristen, you wrote the words “DeSantis would need to dominate handily.” That feels to me like a fantasy at this point, no? I’ve seldom seen a candidacy go from such promised dominance at the start to such a feeble, pathetic state as his has, and I’m remembering Rudy Giuliani, I’m remembering Scott Walker. Hasn’t DeSantis possibly done so poorly that he’s doomed not just this quest but future ones, and that talking about 2028 is yet more fantasy?

Soltis Anderson: Yes. I think it is extremely unlikely DeSantis shocks the world in Iowa.

Murphy: DeSantis is just one bagpiper short of his final political funeral.

Soltis Anderson: But I’m also no longer in the business of saying anything in politics is impossible. I don’t think he has doomed future chances completely. His favorables among Republicans are still very strong. His problem is just that they like Trump more. If Republicans get to autumn and Trump is their nominee and faltering badly, you will probably see some rose-colored glasses, “aah, if only we had nominated DeSantis instead, we should have given him a chance” wish casting emerging.

Bruni: You’re so, so right, Kristen. He becomes “The Man That Got Away.” I can hear Judy Garland singing it now. Or maybe that’s Renée Zellweger.

Soltis Anderson: Exactly!

Bruni: Mike, I don’t want to get ahead of you, but it sounds to me like you think Haley could really have a shot at this nomination? Fascinating. Please sketch for me the scenario by which she steals this thing from Trump, “steal” being different in my usage than in Trump’s “Stop the steal” parlance, please rest assured.

Murphy: I’ve said that for a year — not necessarily Haley but somebody, which could include her, could beat Trump — to endless chortles from my podcast “Hacks on Tap” co-bloviators, David Axelrod and Robert Gibbs.

My theory is New Hampshire is an iceberg for Trump. If someone other than Trump wins that state, the bigger question is can the New Hampshire winner do anything after that, or will it be just a fluke win in a single, quirky, independent-voter-heavy state? So it’ll all be about South Carolina in the end — it’ll take two Trump losses to really blow up the race.

Bruni: So if Haley did win New Hampshire and did win South Carolina, has she upended the race or just changed the final math of Trump’s nomination victory?

Murphy: Back-to-back Trump losses would blow the race wide open for Haley. I think she’d likely become the nominee. Trump’s whole con is built upon being Superman. If he loses twice, three if you count Biden in 2020, it is kryptonite for him.

Bruni: Wouldn’t Trump reject the New Hampshire and South Carolina results as rigged? What does that look like, and how does that play out and affect — or not — the overall outcome? Kristen, I’d love your thoughts on this as well.

Murphy: He will claim it was stolen, but patterns are hard to deny. He’ll look weak, whiny and old, and it’s deadly for him … he would be America’s biggest loser.

Soltis Anderson: That’s one thing. The other problem Haley would face is that Trump’s team is very smart this go-round and has set up the rules in many states to be quite favorable to him. He can, for instance, bank all of California’s 169 Republican delegates with ease instead of them being divvied up proportionally. Momentum and math are both a challenge for Haley.

Murphy: Yes, because the G.O.P. rules are mostly winner-take-all, we don’t have the long primaries that the Democrats do. I don’t think the G.O.P. will be a nail-biter that goes on forever. She either ices Trump in New Hampshire and South Carolina, sets him on fire and runs the table, or it’s over after a loss for her in South Carolina.

Bruni: What minimum margin of victory does Trump need in Iowa to stave off the stories — which you know that most of us in the media are itching to write! — that the king is teetering on his throne? That the Weeble is wobbling and couldfall down?

Murphy: Trump performing under expectations in Iowa, whatever that number is — 55 percent, 50 percent, 45 percent, whatever — would add another large log to the Haley-momentum bonfire.

Soltis Anderson: I think Trump winning Iowa is seen as a foregone conclusion and the margins won’t affect the postcaucus coverage much, barring something drastic. It’ll be all eyes on New Hampshire and then the looming buzz saw of South Carolina.

Bruni: The Palmetto Buzz Saw — I like it!

Soltis Anderson: There’s got to be a college football play named that or something.

Bruni: This time around versus 2016 or 2020, Trump is objectively meaner, more committed to conspiracy theories and blunter about the ways in which he’ll test or undermine democracy and the rule of law. Might that not potentially have a negative impact on him?

Soltis Anderson: In our recent Times focus group of Iowa caucusgoers, I was struck by how many Republican voters view Trump through a sort of Dr. Jekyll/Mr. Hyde lens. They get that he can be crazy, vengeful, a bully and so on. But they also think “the old Trump” — who, in their mind, is a strong leader who gets things done and puts points on the board for conservatives — is still in there somewhere. They hope “old Trump” is who shows up at the end of the day. In that Fox News town hall last week, you saw that his advisers have clearly told him to tone it down and project “old Trump” as much as he can.

Murphy: There is some conventional wisdom about how he has a good campaign staff this year, but that’ll all go out the window if he loses. Totally nut case meltdown. He’s behaving well now because it’s easy to cruise along on a big — if potentially illusionary — national primary polling lead. His campaign has not faced a real crisis or been tested.

Bruni: Nut case? Meltdown? Trump?But he has seemed to me so very composed of late … a real statesman!

Soltis Anderson: I just want to say for the record that I’m not under the illusion that Trump will just be able to coast in “old Trump” mode through November. Mr. Hyde is not going to stay hidden for any meaningful stretch of time. And at a minimum, billions of dollars will be spent on the air by Democrats reminding America of that.

Bruni: One more question about Haley. I’ve seen less than I thought I’d see written about how her being a woman informs and colors her shot at the Republican nomination — because everything is always all about Trump. Does it hurt her in a MAGAfied party? Or not? Or not much?Are there, I don’t know, closet MAGA feminists?

Soltis Anderson: Republicans will almost never say they want to vote for someone because of gender or race. But they also hate that they are portrayed as racist and sexist, so they do relish any chance to try to prove that they aren’t. The fine line for someone like Haley to walk is that you can’t make it a big deal, but you can say, “Because I am a woman, I will make it harder for Democrats to demonize us.”

Bruni: Kristen, in a December Times Opinion piece, you argued that as strange as it may seem, the lawless Trump is running as the order candidate, in part because Biden was elected to bring order and hasn’t. Mike, what do you think of that dynamic?

Murphy: Kristen is onto something. The number in national polling that would terrify me into the bottom of a whiskey bottle if I were working for Biden is that whenever voters are asked who is better to run the economy, Trump kills Biden by 10-plus points. That is really, really bad for Biden. So on the economic front, Trump equals order and good economy. Biden’s age makes it worse because it leads people to doubt his ability to get it right and do the job, which means chaos as well. Biden should run a team campaign and get his younger stars like Gina Raimondo, Pete Buttigieg and Mitch Landrieu out front.

Bruni: Do you buy the conventional wisdom that Trump is Biden’s weakest Republican opponent?

Soltis Anderson: Trump has an unbelievable number of negatives going against him, from people’s potent memories of Jan. 6 to his own penchant for disaster and the fact that it will be very challenging for him to stick to the “Mr. Stable Genius” message for long. But the thing to keep in mind about Trump is that he does scramble electoral math a little by drawing in the sort of low-propensity voter who has otherwise eluded Republicans. There are certainly voters out there who are not showing up for someone like Haley but would show up for Trump. However, I’m also not convinced that the addition of low-propensity Trump-only voters fully counterbalances the lost high-propensity voters that Trump has bled to the Democrats in the last few years.

Murphy: If Biden continues to crater, Trump may still lose the popular vote but win the Electoral College.

Bruni: What’s the magic anti-crater serum? If each of you were advising Biden and his Democratic allies, what principal recommendations would you make?

Soltis Anderson: Voters need to feel like the control room is not empty. Biden has all but disappeared from a lot of Americans’ minds. If Biden is not as compromised by his age as Republicans claim, he and his team need to start proving that to normal Americans — and fast.

Murphy: Build a time machine and not run. Barring that, surround yourself with young, smart people. Second, focus on motivation: Biden wants the middle class to win, Trump cares only about Trump winning. Finally, stop the malarkey about telling people the economy is better than they think it is. The customer is always right.

Bruni: Let’s conclude with a lightning round. Short, quick answers. Ready or not, here we go: If Trump wins the nomination, whom does he choose as his running mate?

Murphy: Kristi Noem or a Kardashian. And I leave for Portugal.

Soltis Anderson: Tim Scott or Elise Stefanik.

Bruni: What’s the strangest and most unsettling cabinet appointment you could actually see Trump making?

Murphy: Gen. Michael Flynn to Defense Department. But it’s a close call; there will be a guttersnipe parade of dregs and seditionist traitors.

Soltis Anderson: Mike, you wouldn’t be fine with Kris Jenner as, say, secretary of commerce? Honestly, America could do worse!

Bruni: On a scale of 1 (very little) to 10 (a lot), how much impact will Hunter Biden’s troubles have on Joe Biden’s re-election campaign?

Soltis Anderson: 2.

Murphy: 3.68. Beltway stuff, but gets in the way of a better narrative. Takes space. Psyches out the candidate.

Bruni: Mike, I’m really disappointed you didn’t go to a third or fourth decimal point. What’s with the arithmetical hedging? Sheesh.

Murphy: I am a master of precision in punditry!

Soltis Anderson: Pro tip: Never trust a pollster who touts their figures out to the hundredths place. Real pros round to solid integers because we aren’t trying to peddle false precision, ha-ha.

Bruni: OK, then, you two masters of deliberate precision and strategic imprecision: What is Vivek Ramaswamy doing a year from now?

Soltis Anderson: Speaking to enthusiastic crowds at Turning Point USA events. Or maybe he’s secretary of commerce, and not Kris Jenner.

Murphy: My hope: Starting his own line of giant fly swatters. My guess: TV gasbag on one of the cable and streaming channels to the right of Fox.

Bruni: And Chris Christie? What’s he doing a year from now?

Murphy: Secretary of commerce in Haley’s cabinet, after endorsing her four days out of New Hampshire, to claim credit for her going-to-happen-anyway victory. If he had done it a week before, he might’ve gotten attorney general.

Soltis Anderson: Back on television as a commentator, where he’s very, very good.

Bruni: Let’s finish back in Iowa and pin this sucker down. You’re in the casino and mustbe precise. What percentage does Trump get, and who finishes second and by how many points behind? Live large!

Murphy: Trump 42 percent, Haley 27 percent, DeSantis 19 percent, Human Fly 6.21 percent.

Bruni: Decimal points for the fly only, Mike? (Sigh.)

Soltis Anderson: Trump 48, Haley 22, DeSantis 18.

Bruni: I’m going to keep things interesting and weigh in here with Trump at … 53 percent! I even think that’s possible. If there’s one leitmotif to Trump’s political reign other than the sheer lunacy of his antics, it’s that we underestimate him time and again. It’s called wishful thinking.

In any case,I’ll keep score. Thank you both so much — for your wisdom and, just as important these days, your good cheer.

Frank Bruni is a professor of journalism and public policy at Duke University, the author of the book “The Beauty of Dusk” and a contributing Opinion writer. He writes a weekly email newsletter.

Kristen Soltis Anderson is a Republican pollster and a moderator of the Times Opinion focus group series.

Mike Murphy, a co-director of the Center for the Political Future at the University of Southern California, is a former Republican strategist for John McCain and others and a host of the podcast “Hacks on Tap.”

Source photographs by Scott Olson, Anna Moneymaker and Kevin Dietsch/Getty Images

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