Four scenarious for the GOP Iowa caucuses

About a week ago, Nate Silver, the genius of political predictions, outlined four possible outcomes -- "Roads out of Iowa" -- for the Republican Iowa caucuses and what each will mean going forward for the party establishment.   I'll summarize the first three.

Road No. 1:  Trump beats Cruz, and Rubio does well.
This is the one the Republican establishment would prefer.  It would essentially knock Cruz out of the running, making a two-man race between Trump and Rubio.   Then they would work to coalesce around Rubio as "the savior" from the Trump/Cruz crowd. 

Road No. 2:   Trump beats Cruz, and Rubio does poorly.   If this happened, the party elites might try to coalesce around another -- Bush, Kasich, or Christie -- in New Hampshire.   Or they might begin to capitulate toward Trump, thinking him unstoppable.

Road No. 3:  Cruz beats Trump, and Rubio does poorly.  This would be a big problem for the Republican elites, because their hope was for a good showing from Rubio to stop Cruz.  In this scenario, they're left with both Trump and a stronger Cruz, without the savior they were hoping for in Rubio.

And the winner is: 

Road No. 4:  Cruz beats Trump, and Rubio does well.   I'll quote Nate's reasoning in full, since it turned out to be right one.

"If both Cruz and Rubio have strong nights in Iowa, however, the meaning is clearer: Trump didn’t live up to the hype. There would be questions about whether Trump’s support in polls was a mirage to begin with, whether it had collapsed at the last minute because of voter dissatisfaction with his having skipped the Republican debate, or whether his lack of a turnout operation had foiled him. Those questions would be important for determining whether Trump had a chance to recover in New Hampshire. But in terms of the media narrative, they’d all be variations on the theme that Trump had gone bust.

"In some ways, the Republican primary might even start to look fairly conventional. An 'outsider' candidate with evangelical support would have won Iowa. A couple of 'insider' candidates would be looking to emerge out of New Hampshire, with Rubio having a leg up because of his strong Iowa showing. Trump wouldn’t necessarily disappear — the media will keep writing him into the plot so long as he is willing — but it might be as more of a Newt Gingrich-esque sideshow, a candidate who wins a few states here and there but has little chance of commanding a majority. If we enter Iowa in a Trumpnado and exit it with what seems to be a fairly normal Republican race, that might be the biggest surprise of all."

Now, enough about Iowa . . . and about the election for a few days.   New Hampshire is just a week away though.

Ralph

PS:   The final tally on the Democratic  side keeps narrowing.   The latest as of midnight on Tuesday is that Clinton's lead was not 0.3% but 0.2%.  And now we hear that some of the precinct caucuses were absolute ties and had to be decided by a coin toss.    So it seems a bit overdone for Hillary Clinton to keep making so much out of "winning" Iowa.