The top two candidates in the Iowa caucuses may have been the Republican establishment’s nightmare scenario, but that establishment—with a giant assist from the media—is working on spinning Marco Rubio’s third-place finish into a win. With 99 percent reporting, Rubio took 23.1 percent, compared to 24.3 percent for Donald Trump and 27.7 percent for Ted Cruz. Yet he got onstage and delivered a full-on victory speech:
Not only was Rubio running third in the final polls, he had been polling in third since mid-December, and before that had been in fourth since early September. While Trump’s lower than expected results let Rubio finish in a closer third than predicted, a “moment they said would never happen” this was not. In reality, it’s a moment the Republican establishment and the media have been cheerleading for months, basically since the depths of Jeb Bush’s sucking became clear.
In his pseudo-victory speech, Rubio tried to frame himself as something of a Republican Barack Obama—hope, change, the urgency of now (“this is not a time for waiting,” Rubio said)—even as he attacked Obama. He tried to frame himself as positive and clear-eyed, even as he went after Hillary Clinton.
Rubio is currently polling fourth in New Hampshire, which holds its primary next Tuesday. But will Trump, with his lack of ground game, fare better in a primary state than in a caucus state? Can Cruz make something happen for himself in a state that doesn’t play to his strengths? And can John Kasich hold onto his support with Rubio emerging so clearly as the establishment’s boy? Given a political discourse in which an awful lot of people with very loud megaphones are willing to declare Rubio a winner on rather thin evidence, he has a good chance of being declared a winner in New Hampshire, too, if he can get another top-three finish. Of course, at some point he’ll have to start winning something. The question is whether the media and the Republican establishment can prop him up for as long as that will take.