Ted Cruz delivered Donald Trump a body blow in Iowa, giving him an unexpected smackdown in the first-in-the-nation presidential vote.
Cruz, an anti-Washington crusader and proud thorn in establishment Republicans' sides, won enough support from evangelical conservatives and tea party voters to put him over the top, despite being 5 points down in the final Iowa Poll before the caucuses.
The 45-year-old Texas U.S. senator, who logged more than 150 events over 56 days in Iowa this election cycle, upheld the longtime theory that a traditional ground game and intense one-on-one retail politicking matter.
Iowa, a state where almost half of likely GOP caucusgoers identify themselves as born-again or evangelical Christians, continued its trend of promoting a social conservative rather than the national front-runner.
Cruz's win meant he beat back harsh criticism from popular Iowa Gov. Terry Branstad that Cruz's opposition to the federal renewable fuels mandate was dangerous to the state's agricultural economy, an assault from the powerful ethanol lobby and fierce resistance from establishment figureheads such as former presidential contender Bob Dole and former U.S. House leader Trent Lott.
Cruz also overcame competition from two past winners of the Iowa caucuses (Mike Huckabee and Rick Santorum), rivals with executive experience as governors (Chris Christie, Jeb Bush and John Kasich) and millions of dollars in negative attacks, including some from fellow U.S. senator Marco Rubio, a Republican considered a talented rising star in his party who finished higher than expected Monday night.
And Cruz put to rest his backers' worries that fellow religious conservative Ben Carson was holding him back.
Monday night's victory is expected to give Cruz a boost in New Hampshire, where he trails Trump in the polls, but perhaps even more important in South Carolina, where he's focusing his next effort.
Bagging Iowa doesn't guarantee Cruz will throw Trump off his path to the GOP nomination, strategists said. It means a guy with longhorns on his hood sideswiped Trump's limo and left some paint, and they'll both have to hit the gas in the next states on the presidential voting calendar. But for now, he has fended off Trump, whose entire candidacy has been premised on "winning."
Trump's loss offered proof that he failed to bring in enough new people into the Iowa caucus electorate to overcome his rivals, and upended predictions that the braggadocios New Yorker was a GOP phenomenon never to be equaled.
Cruz was buoyed by the 12,000 volunteers working for him in Iowa, including 164 Iowa pastors, 12 state legislators, 2,426 precinct captains and co-captains, U.S. Rep. Steve King, Christian conservative leader Bob Vander Plaats, radio talk show host Steve Deace, and more than 800 out-of-staters who moved during the final month into temporary housing at a Des Moines apartment building nicknamed Camp Cruz. The Cruz fans made an average of 25,000 volunteer calls each day and knocked on 2,000 doors a day during the final push, aides told the Register.
Cruz strategists were quick to remind reporters that they believe he has the organization and dollars to compete across the nation. He has raised over $50 million and reports $19 million on hand.
Despite his defeat in Iowa, Trump put the exclamation point on a wildly bizarre Iowa caucuses cycle, which saw the rise of two insurgent candidates few national political observers thought voters would take seriously over the long haul — 74-year-old Democratic candidate Bernie Sanders, a gruff-voiced ultra-liberal Vermont U.S. senator, and Trump, a darling of the tabloids who delighted his fans with calls for forcing Mexico to pay for a border wall and outraged his critics by disparaging Mexican and Muslim immigrants.
RELATED: Huckabee ends GOP presidential bid
Both Sanders and Trump drew massive audiences in Iowa by tapping into a burning frustration felt by Americans who believe the system is rigged against all but the very rich and powerful.
"So in Bernie's world, the big banks are out to get you, and rich people are screwing the system so you don't have a chance. In Donald Trump's world, the illegal immigrants (are) going to sell drugs to your kids and rape your wife. Foreigners are going to take your jobs," said South Carolina U.S. Sen. Lindsey Graham after he dropped out of the GOP race due to low poll numbers. "This is not exactly the America that I envisioned for the 21st century. I will tell you this, that we have an election cycle that is beyond strange."
Some Iowa Republicans were unsettled by the fact that Trump, until last year, expressed the views of a liberal Democrat, favoring abortion rights and universal health care. He now gives the speeches of a hard-right conservative.
"Just by judging from what he said a few years ago, I would not have agreed that he was a conservative," Iowa U.S. Sen. Joni Ernst, a Republican, told reporters Monday at the Bloomberg Politics Breakfast Briefing. "There's no proof out there yet. That's the unfortunate thing, that we don't have a record that we can judge him by. So I'm anxious to see if he can stand by that and prove that he really is the conservative that we need."
And it didn't pay off for Trump to break so many of the old rules. He made the pilgrimage to the Iowa State Fair but flew in on a helicopter and wore white leather shoes; he offended some veterans when he declared in Iowa that U.S. Sen. John McCain wasn't a hero just because he got captured in Vietnam; and he started evangelicals when said he'd never asked God for forgiveness for any of his wrongdoings. Instead of doing retail campaigning, he jetted in and out of Iowa, only spending the night during his final push.
Like this story? Like WUSA9 on Facebook.
