Des Moines, Iowa – With Monday’s caucuses coming down to a binary choice between Donald Trump and Ted Cruz for the top spot, the previous two Iowa winners are aligning themselves with Trump in a demonstration of their disdain for Cruz.
The decision by Mike Huckabee and Rick Santorum to join Trump here Thursday night at his rally — which is being staged several miles away from the GOP debates, and will begin at 8pm Central to coincide with the main event — is an opportunity for the two struggling candidates to steal attention from their rivals on that debate stage.
But it’s also an opportunity for both Huckabee and Santorum to signal their preference for Trump over Cruz as the two leading candidates come down the home stretch in this first-in-the-nation nominating contest.
Huckabee and Santorum won Iowa in 2008 and 2012, respectively, but have failed to rekindle the magic of those campaigns. With both men stuck in the low single digits, their supporters began to murmur around Christmas-time of discussions that were described as “ABC” — Anyone But Cruz. The thinking was that, if their own preferred candidate could not gain traction as the caucuses drew near, it might be necessary for them — or even for the candidates themselves — to throw their support behind someone else in hopes of defeating Cruz.
Marco Rubio was thought to be the likely beneficiary of such efforts. Instead it’s Trump who is reaping the anti-Cruz sentiment and receiving a boost from the two candidates — Huckabee and Santorum — who have made defeating Cruz the centerpiece of their campaigns.
Of course, Huckabee and Santorum aren’t endorsing Trump on Thursday night. But by appearing at his rally they are signaling their preference for him over Cruz — the same way Governor Terry Branstad has done, first by calling for Cruz’s defeat last week and then today by defending Trump’s decision to skip the Iowa debate. (It should be noted that both Huckabee and Santorum, in interviews with NRO and other publications, have consistently pummeled Cruz as a phony hypocrite while sparing Trump of any real criticism.)
Huckabee and Santorum haven’t thrown in the towel. The priority for both candidates is still to win Iowa. But if they can’t, their fallback plan is to defeat Cruz.
By standing with Trump on Thursday night, they’re sending a clear message to Iowans about whom they should support if it’s not to be one of them.