Chris Stigall Column: Known Unknowns Are All We Know
Allow me to summarize the results of the Iowa Caucus Monday night through the lens of Republican voters who reached out to me:
Ted Cruz is the only true constitutional conservative in this race, in the spirit of Reagan.
Ted Cruz comes off as a television preacher. He's too rehearsed, too far right, too religious, and unelectable.
Marco Rubio is the only true, electable Republican. All donor money will flow to him.
Marco Rubio is an establishment, RINO (Republican In Name Only) who is the favorite of the Chamber of Commerce.
Donald Trump is the only candidate not influenced by big money and will answer to no one. He's the ultimate outsider we need to shake up Washington.
Donald Trump is a liberal at his core. He will cut deals with Democrats and is unelectable versus Hillary Clinton.
And finally, one caller expressed his hope Michael Bloomberg would get into the race as he's fed up with all of them.
In short, this Republican primary is far from settled in the minds of the party's voters. But here's what we know for certain after Iowa:
Cable news pundits, polls, and "conventional wisdom" about voter behavior should be ignored, as they were almost universally wrong.
The elderly, white party – once thought to be the GOP – is now exclusively the party of Democrats. Three of the top four GOP vote getters were black or Latino. Two of them, the Latinos, are age 40-something.
Young people and committed, liberal-progressives once excited about Obama are not the least bit enthused by Mrs. Clinton. A woman with name ID through the roof and more money than most candidates couldn't do better than a tie with a craggy, unknown, elderly socialist from Vermont. Mrs. Clinton's in trouble.
And finally, Megyn Kelly of Fox News might be the biggest winner. Her profile steadily rises as her "Trump slayer" label is celebrated by the likes of Jimmy Fallon and Stephen Colbert this week. Not something Republicans or Trump supporters are happy about, necessarily. But she and her agent are very happy. And for now, so is Fox.
Donald Rumsfeld said it best. There are known knows and there are known unknowns. Really, all we know is what we don't know. And that's ultimately great for a democratic republic, in my view. It should be messy.
Literally anything can still happen, and probably will.
