– The bodies are piling up after the battle of Iowa. I’m John Phillips and this is The Rundown. In this episode, we’ll talk about what happened in the race for the Republican presidential nomination. Be sure to check out our next episode where we’ll take a look at what happened with the Democrats. Amid record-breaking turnout, Ted Cruz took the GOP crown, winning with just over a quarter of the vote at 28%. Businessman Donald Trump came in second with 24% and Florida Senator Marco Rubio was third with a surprisingly strong 23%. Dr. Ben Carson comes in fourth place with 9%, Rand Paul fifth with 4%, Jeb Bush is sixth with 3%, and everyone else comes in with 2% or below. If you’re counting delegates, here is what we know: Ted Cruz gets eight, Trump and Rubio each get seven, Ben Carson gets three and Rand Paul and Jeb Bush each get a delegate. But we have two GOP candidates throwing in the towel. Mike Huckabee quickly bowed out of the race, joking that he was suspending his campaign due to illness. Which illness? Well, the voters are sick of him. Rand Paul (Scott laughs) has also decided (laughs) enough is enough, despite finishing a credible fifth place, ahead of Jeb Bush who spent a whopping $2,884 per vote and still tanked.

Not enough to buy an extra exclamation point too, I’m told. Initially, Trump was uncharacteristically gracious about coming in second, conceding to Cruz and thanking Iowans, but he’s since changed his tune and is now saying Cruz illegally stole Iowa and is demanding the results be thrown out because of fraud from the Cruz campaign. Does Trump have a point about dirty tricks from the Cruz campaign or did skipping the debate sink his chances? Can Cruz win again or is this his high-water mark? And will Rubio keep rising? To talk about what happened in Iowa and why, we’re joined by our pal Scott Ott from his home studio in Dallas, Texas. He’s a political satirist and author. And in sunny southern California, stand-up comic and PJTV contributor Stephen Kruiser. So, Kruiser, Cruz finished first with 28% of the vote. Two things happened right before Tuesday’s election, and by the way, all the polls indicated that he was supposed to come in second. A mailer went out, an official mailer from the Cruz campaign essentially insinuating that if you don’t show up at the caucuses and vote for Cruz, you’re gonna be charged with a federal crime. The second thing that happened is that official campaign surrogates, including Steve King, the congressman from Iowa who was out stumping for Cruz all over the state and on stage with him at the victory celebration, was sending out tweets out saying that Ben Carson was dropping out of the race and, therefore, Ben Carson supporters should go support Cruz. These are dirty tricks like we haven’t seen in Iowa in many, many, many years. Is this gonna come back to haunt him or is this something his supporters can look past?

– The first, the mailer thing, is such inside baseball, I don’t think it’s gonna haunt him at all. It’s the kinda thing, there are variations of this mailer that have been sent out in campaigns past by different people all over the place. It is a nasty thing– – It’s like ACORN stuff. – but primaries get nastier as they get down to the wire too. When it finally comes time to vote, that’s when people start actually attacking each other. You know, you can be as collegial as you want and, oh, bash Hillary Clinton and everything, but now’s the time they have to start picking and choosing who they’re gonna go after. So, I think that’s inside baseball, that’s not gonna go. The Carson thing I put as much on Carson as I do on Cruz. Carson like, “Okay, I’m out “and I’m gonna go home for a few days,” that sounds like you’re leaving, okay? If this is his big evangelical moment in Iowa, it’s like, “Yeah, I’m not gonna be there. “I’m gonna go back to my home state “and then I’m not gonna campaign in New Hampshire.” So, he left that open to interpretation ’cause, in years past, when a candidate leaves Iowa and does that and says, “I’m not going to New Hampshire,” that means, “okay, I’m gonna quit the next day.” – But if it’s a gray area, why did Cruz apologize after the voting was done and the polls closed? – Because I think (John laughs) that he personally, I mean, it’s not like Ted Cruz was out there going, “He’s gonna leave,” it was some of his surrogates. And I think he’s embarrassed by that and he didn’t like it. So, it is a gray area and, I mean– – He did hire Jeff Roe, who’s one of the dirtiest tricksters in the game, to go out there and coordinate all of these attacks. – And I’m not opposed to that. I mean, you know, you do whatever you can. Trump gets the free media time, okay? Other people can’t get the free media. As long as you’re not out there committing actual voter fraud, which he didn’t do here, Trump can (shouts incoherently) all he wants to, but he didn’t commit voter fraud. So, I mean, but I do think the mailer thing is inside baseball and I think most people were, the only people I saw up in arms about that were people who’d worked on campaigns before. Everybody else was kinda going, “Uh, the Pro Bowl’s on.” (laughs) That’s what everybody else was doing. – Scott, you know, Dr. Ben Carson is a guy that all of us, I think, respect on this set. He’s a man of God, he is a guy who’s done amazing things in the world of medicine, and even if he doesn’t end up earning our votes, the man is of unimpeachable integrity. And I think that people beyond this set believe that about Dr. Ben Carson. Was Ben Carson the wrong person to play this kinda dirty pool with?

– Well, let me just tell our viewers here that John Phillips is still moving through the nine stages of grief (John laughs) after the Iowa (laughs) second-place finish of Donald Trump. And I hate to be the one to pee in your Trump Kool-Aid, (John laughs) but a couple of things we have to bring into consideration here. Number one is, that mailer of which you speak actually went out the previous week. It wasn’t something that was breaking news the afternoon of the caucus, and– – Was that ethical? – and that mailer, yes, let me tell you why. That mailer was a practical duplicate of a mailer that the Iowa Republican Party itself had previously used. And basically, the idea of it is to get the people who, you know, claim to be registered members of the party to actually show up. Now, I wouldn’t have done that kind of a mailer just because I think, you know, I don’t want people who don’t know anything to show up. (laughs) So, I just wanna bring a little clarity to that. You can argue one way or the other whether you thought it was a good idea or not. Now, as for the Ben Carson issue, CNN reported that Ben Carson was headed back to Florida and would not be going directly to New Hampshire and possibly South Carolina, that he’d be doing the National Prayer Breakfast in Washington, D.C., and the Cruz campaign, as it does with every breaking news story, alerted its supporters and its network, its e-mail or text network, about this news story. Ted Cruz later apologized that they did not send out the follow-up tweet where Carson denied that he was dropping out of the race. And so, this was a mixed communication that Cruz has apologized for. I really don’t think it was dirty pool on the part of Ted Cruz and he legitimately apologized for not doing the follow-up. If anything, CNN should apologize for inaccurately reporting the story. And were you more likely to have heard it on CNN or from CNN’s Twitter feed or from Ted Cruz, if you’re a Carson supporter? – I have a hard time believing that a Scott Ott– – I really think there’s more subtlety to both of these stories. – a Scott Ott-run campaign would’ve done either one of those things. And you wouldn’t do it because you’re an ethical person. – Yeah, well, and there’s a reason why I lost two races for county executive, John, (John laughs) and that may be it right there. All right, let’s move on to Marco Rubio, who came in a strong third and looks to me like he could become the next establishment candidate. Originally, it was supposed to be Jeb Bush. Bush showed no viability at all in the results from Iowa. – Low-energy. – Low-energy, absolutely. (Scott laughs) And neither did Chris Christie, neither did John Kasich, all of those guys were in the single digits. Does he become the guy now that the establishment gets behind whole hog? – After New Hampshire, yes. After the other guys leave, yes. I think that they’re all waiting. It’s this weird affinity that the super wealthy have for the candidate that they choose and to keep pouring money into. I mean, Jeb’s a dumpster fire. The money he’s spending, or the money Mike Murphy is spending for him right now, (Scott laughs) I’m surprised that not one of the people contributing to him has said, “I can’t do this anymore.” But, they’re gonna wait ’til after New Hampshire and that’s the only logical choice left. The establishment will only go wholeheartedly for Trump if it’s just Cruz and Trump, but Marco’s where they’re gonna go. I think one of the more important things to look at is you look at how many votes Marco got in third place in this one and that’s because of the huge bump in registration for the GOP in Iowa in this. And I think what it does is dispel this, “Oh, so many candidates, it’s a party in disarray.” I think that Iowa, more than anything else, threw that notion out the window. I think it shows that the party’s healthy. It shows that all of this competition has been good for it because it brought new people into the fold. It brought all of this and I think it was that increase, that bump in registration that enabled Marco to position himself in a strong third-place finish. Look at Trump, like he said, he was right, he said he got the second-highest number of votes (laughs) ever there, because Cruz got the highest. I think the whole thing was really healthy for the GOP and Republicans should seize on that too and say, “You know what? “This has been a good process. “Having a primary instead of a coronation “has been good for us and the whole thing “is going to flesh out and work out well.” – Scott, when you look at these results in Iowa and you look at where the other establishment candidates came in, how important is it for Rubio in New Hampshire to make sure that a John Kasich or a Jeb Bush or a Chris Christie doesn’t finish ahead of him? Because, by my estimation, if Rubio comes in second in New Hampshire and these other guys finish below him, there’s really not a whole lot of reason for them to remain in the race, and then all of their support gets behind Rubio, and then Rubio becomes a real force to be reckoned with. But if one of these guys finishes ahead of him in New Hampshire, then there’s no reason for them to drop out and Rubio’s gonna continue working the same corner as a Kasich or a Christie.

– Well, a couple of things here. Number one, I think we’ve talked about this idea before, that in the world of social media and YouTube and blogs and Facebook and instagram and all that kinda stuff and Twitter, you can keep on keepin’ on for a long time. So, you could just hang in there, even if you literally have zero money. So, that is one factor. You don’t have to drop out even if you’re getting lousy results if you think it benefits you in some other way, if you’d like to be a player down the road. You know, Ben Carson picked up a couple of delegates in Iowa. He can probably carry on for a long time, and he’ll do better in the South. The other thing is, I don’t think that it is accurate to label Marco Rubio as a so-called establishment candidate ’cause that always has the implication that he is some sort of a Republican in name only or more liberal or moderate. I think what Rubio may be is a conservative who is now looking like the last best hope of the so-called establishment. And remember, primarily, the establishment in any party are not the people who are labeled by ideology, but they’re the people who say, “We have to protect the brand and the brand has to win, “and we want the guy who can win.” And so, some of that money may move to Marco because they see him as the guy who can win. – I don’t think you can be a conservative anti-establishment guy and be a member of the Gang of Eight. That seems to be a deal-breaker to me.

– I know, it seems to be a deal-breaker to a lot of people too. And perhaps because I’ve actually served in a legislature, I understand how messy things can get and I understand how you can make mistakes and how you can say, “Hey, we’re trying to figure out “how to solve a problem here,” and you wind up ticking off some people. And in the course of my very brief political life, I had people who were my best friends, my worst enemies and my best friends again. (laughs) And I think Marco Rubio will go through a similar cycle. When Ted Cruz and Marco Rubio are fighting over immigration, they have no issue between each other right now. They really have the same position, but they’re trying to make it look like a fight. And I think Republicans in general do themselves a disservice when they gin up arguments between candidates who really have distinctions with no difference. – But I think that is a legitimate criticism of Marco Rubio. Maybe you disagree with me, Kruiser, but when he ran for the U.S. Senate, he ran essentially as Pat Buchanan on illegal immigration. And then he gets there and then be becomes Mr. Amnesty, putting his name on the Gang of Eight bill. That was a double-cross, wasn’t it? – That’s the one thing I’m obviously not happy with. You know, you can sit there and say he’s not an anti-establishment conservative, but that’s exactly how he was elected. People need to remember that. He was the anti-establishment conservative who had all the establishment money against him and he won that race fighting the establishment and the establishment candidate. When he got there, I wanna think that he is like one of the sharpest guys in the room. I still think Cruz is far and away the smartest guy in this race, ’cause he probably is. But I’d like to think Marco is sharp, but then I also start thinking like, I think he really got duped by McCain. (laughs) And not so much by Schumer, I think he got duped by McCain on that. I think McCain was probably like, “Come on, young buck. “Here’s a way to make a name for yourself. “We know you’ve got the presidential aspirations, “let’s do this.” But then, so you don’t wanna say, “Okay, now I’m gonna vote for the guy “who got easily duped by John McCain either.” So, I’m in this rough place with that right now. I really like Rubio. In reality, on everything else, he’s rock-solid conservative. It’s not eh-eh-eh, he’s rock-solid conservative on everything else. On this, ugh. – It’s the number one issue in this campaign. – It’s rough– – And John– – It’s rough for me, but when he says he’s evolved on it, I’d like to think he’s evolved on it. I’d like to give him the benefit of the doubt on this, which is where my wiggle room is in that, when he says he understands it better now and when he says, you know. But if he says Schumer duped him, I’m like, “Okay, well then don’t get duped by Schumer.” I mean, you gotta, how do you not know he’s skeevy when you say hello to him? So, it’s a weird place for me, but I think Marco’s just gonna have to stand there and go, “I swear to you, I won’t do this again.” He’s gonna have to be very clear about it. – Scott, you wanna get in? – And I think Marco has been very clear about that. You know, he is, “Secure the border, “secure the border, secure the border. “Then we can talk about other things,” and he’s been as definitive as he possibly can. But, I think, in every election cycle, we go through this thing. If I could find a presidential candidate who agreed with me on every single issue, his name might be Scott Ott, but I don’t think it would be because I often disagree with myself from time to time. (laughs) And so, I think this search for not just ideological purity but a guy who agrees with me on everything I think backs you into a corner. Now, there have been previous elections where I had friends who were saying, “If you don’t have the right position on abortion, “and I don’t mean that you’re just opposed to abortion, “you have to go down a whole list of qualifiers on that “and agree with me every single step of the way “or that’s a deal-breaker for me. “And not only will I never vote for you, “but I will smear your name every chance I get.” And I think that’s what we’re doing in many cases with the issue of immigration and, you know, to go back to– – But, Scott, we’ve been sold out on this issue many times. – this Mr. Phillips, frankly, I think you see everything through a Trumpian filter. (laughs) – We were sold out on this issue with the Simpson-Mazzoli amnesty, where we were promised, if we gave this one wave of amnesty, that they would secure the borders and it would be taken care of, and they lied to us. They lied to the American people. – You mean when Ronald Reagan sold us out on this issue? – He did. (Scott laughs) – Absolutely. – Yeah, is that what you’re talking about? (laughs) – We’ve seen this movie before. Why push the car off the cliff to see what’ll happen? I don’t trust him. – But here’s the thing– – If that’s your issue, you’re not gonna vote for Marco Rubio– – Here’s where I differ with you on this, John. – If that’s your only issue. – I don’t trust, I’m sorry Scott. I’m (laughs) sorry to talk. – That’s okay, go ahead. – I don’t trust Trump to get in there and do it either. I think, if you’re really that solid and this is your only issue, then you should be full-throated Cruz out there all the time right now because there’s no reasonable expectation– – Cruz isn’t pure on the issue either. – But nobody’s pure on the issue! Nobody’s stood– – That’s right. – Newt Gingrich was the last pure one on this issue. He said, “We built a fence, 106-mile fence “and it worked great for 106 miles.” You know, he was the last, so go back and see if Newt can get into this race, but– – All right, last question before we go. – Okay. – Mike Huckabee is out, Rand Paul is out. Are we gonna see another Republican candidate drop out before New Hampshire? – Before New Hampshire? – Before New Hampshire. Or is everyone gonna wait until after New Hampshire. – Santorum would be the only one. I know that Kasich and Jeb

and Christie, they’re all hanging their hats on New Hampshire, so they’re not gonna go early. So, if we do, it’ll be Santorum. That he hasn’t done it yet leads me to believe no. So, we won’t. – Scott? – Gilmore? Is Gilmore still in? (laughs) – Hey, he hit 12 votes! – I have to Google that every time I wanna make a Gilmore joke. (Scott laughs) Is Jim Gilmore still running? – There’s probably an IsGilmoreIn.com that you can go to and the page just says (laughs) yes or no. I don’t know if anybody else gets out before New Hampshire, but I think after New Hampshire they’re gonna start dropping like flies, with the exception of the people who have nothing better to do and have decided that it will help their public profile to remain in the race. – All right. That’s all the time we have for today, but now it’s your turn. Was there dirty pool in Iowa? If you supported Mike Huckabee or Rand Paul, who does your vote go to now? Tell us what you think in the comments section below. I’m John Phillips. Thanks so much for watching The Rundown. (rapid percussion drumming)