Keller @ Large: Trump's Tactical Shift
BOSTON (CBS) - "I'm not a politician," Donald Trump told the crowd at a Nashua, NH rally Monday night. "I never did this before."
We won't go so far as to suggest this is reminiscent of the card shark sitting down at a poker table and asking for help remembering the order of hands. But all of a sudden, this self-styled non-politician is making some classic political moves, like preparing to flood the airwaves with TV ads ("We're gonna spend a lot of money over the next four weeks. We just don't want to take any chances, we're too close") and pleading with his New Hampshire admirers to turn their support in the polls into votes.
"It's so important that you get there early and on February 9th you get in and vote, because otherwise it's all a big waste of time," Trump said.
With Ted Cruz surging ahead in some recent Iowa caucus polling, "folks that follow Republican politics don't believe Trump will win Iowa, so New Hampshire becomes more and more important to him every day," says veteran GOP consultant Charley Manning. And Manning notes that past New Hampshire primary winners have run well above the 26 percent Trump is now averaging.
The Granite State loves to flirt with anti-establishment outsiders. But from Eugene McCarthy in 1968 to Pat Buchanan in 1992 to Howard Dean in 2004, they rarely wind up winning. And with Ted Cruz running strong against Trump in Iowa, Manning says "New Hampshire is key. He wins New Hampshire, then I think he gets on a roll. If he loses New Hampshire, then he's a two-time loser. And I think it sort of breaks that myth of Trump that we've seen develop."