I think I may be suffering from dangerously high levels of candidate exposure. Since the first Republican presidential candidate debate in August, I’ve interviewed the potential nominees almost 150 times in total, and I probably spoke with them about 100 times before that debate took place. I’ve also been a panelist on two CNN-Salem Media Group hosted debates.
By the end of Friday, after the Trump-less debate on Fox News, I’ll have added a couple more interviews. Next week a few more. And I’ll be back on the stage with whomever is still standing on February 25 and March 10 for the remaining candidate debates. My radio show has become a kind of Switzerland for people from all the camps — neutral ground.
So who is ultimately going to come out on top? I have no idea yet. Nothing is close to being decided yet. Nothing.
Of course, that doesn’t mean that each debate doesn’t have its individual winners and losers. It does, and I call every event along the way like I see it, in the great tradition of sports journalist Howard Cosell.
It’s in following that tradition that I gave the gold in Thursday night’s debate in Iowa to Florida Sen. Marco Rubio, the silver to New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie and the bronze to Texas Sen. Ted Cruz. (Donald Trump got all the other medals, except perhaps for the “One Eye on New Hampshire” award, which is all that Ohio Gov. John Kasich appears to be interested in).
A significant majority of American voters seems to be deeply frightened by the world, but are trying not to think about it. That world regularly explodes in front of them, they are horrified and traumatized, and they then retreat to ESPN’s Sports Center to help them forget what is going on. The latest thing to unsettle them? The “explosive” spread of the Zika virus, which means Americans now need to worry about every pregnant wife, daughter or sister they know.
In short, we are living in a world weighed down with anxiety, which can in turn provoke a great deal of frustration and anger. Complicating all this is the fact that we are also talking about Americans, who have demonstrated time and again that we can also be won over by coherent appeals for optimism.
Into this complex picture have stepped what polls suggest are the three leading candidates. Trump amplifies the feelings of anxiety and anger — and he is perfectly right to do so. Rubio dials up the hope. Ted Cruz tries to do both every day. It’s a three-man race, right?
Not so fast.
Marco Rubio won Thursday by being the first to promise to rebuild the military and then to specifically ask Iowans to caucus for him in his closing remarks (Cruz followed and did the same thing), and for being the first to (rightly) go after former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s duplicity and failure. But Chris Christie got my silver medal because he also slammed Hillary, and tried to do it even harder. And that’s another recipe for winning over conservative voters in Iowa, New Hampshire and South Carolina.
Rubio also won the Luntz focus group, which is a tradition that matters in the state, and one that Luntz runs fairly. Ted Cruz opened and closed very strong, and weathered what felt like a hit job and an effort to make-good with Donald Trump to get him back on speaking terms with News Corp executives. And while Trump didn’t get a medal, he still won every other network and the 48 hours before. What a brew.
But this campaign is far from settled. Really bad things can happen so suddenly — indeed, they already have, sometimes with shocking violence — that it is impossible to rule out a resurgence of Christie, who could replace Trump as the candidate who can best address people’s fear. Or Kasich could still prove to be the voters’ choice to replace Rubio as the man who can tap into the yearning for hope.
Jeb Bush, meanwhile, will use his remaining millions to pick one last message as he places his chips on South Carolina, where he may well be joined by his brother, George W. Bush. (Bush 43 is still really popular there, by the way — I know because my radio show covers about every inch of South Carolina in drive time, and we get a lot of enthusiastic callers from there.)
But before South Carolina votes, Iowans will be weighing in Monday night, followed just over a week later by Granite State Yankees. And before February is through we will have results from South Carolina and Nevada, before hitting warp speed on March 1’s Super Tuesday.
Maybe by then we will have a better idea about who Republicans will pick as their competitor in the biggest competition of them all. But judging by how this campaign has unfolded so far, who knows?
