DES MOINES-- Marco Rubio won’t finish first in Iowa's caucuses six days from now, but he and his allies have increasingly positioned him to make a third-place showing look like the victory they always wanted.

Like a contestant on a Republican version of “Survivor,” Rubio has long been content to hang with the pack and avoid elimination. For months he has been playing the expectations game—and hearing a chorus of conservatives carping about his campaign’s cool, confident approach. But now, with Donald Trump taking the lead back from Ted Cruz in Iowa, Rubio’s team says the caucuses are setting up to give their candidate the boost he needs to sideline rivals in New Hampshire.

“Marco’s goal all along has been to survive, wait for other people to get kicked off the island and pick his moment – and that’s what you’re seeing in Iowa,” said one Republican familiar with the campaign’s approach. “The only thing that has changed is the staying power of Donald Trump. And that might be a good thing for Marco.”

Indeed, Rubio’s campaign is now casting Trump as an enabler in Iowa. If the New York billionaire wins there, it means Rubio’s biggest rival, Ted Cruz, does not—and a second place finish, even though it puts Cruz ahead of Rubio, would be viewed as a disappointment for the candidate who held a double-digit lead in the state just weeks ago.

Cruz’s end-of-year Iowa surge came after Ben Carson flunked a foreign policy test and lost most of his support, largely from the state’s social conservatives. Winning the coveted endorsement of evangelical leader Bob Vander Plaats in December cemented Cruz as the candidate to beat in Iowa. But the Texas senator, whose campaign is now relying on its superior organization and army of volunteers, may have done the one thing Rubio has sought to avoid: peak too early.

Now, under attack from a feisty Trump, who has won endorsements in the last week from important figures in conservative circles – Sheriff Joe Arpaio, Jerry Falwell Jr. and Sarah Palin – the Texas senator is desperately clinging to support from grassroots conservatives. He’s gone so far as to attack Iowa’s popular governor and rallied religious conservatives behind closed doors, warning that Trump might be unstoppable if he takes Iowa and New Hampshire.

As the top two candidates duke it out, Rubio appears increasingly confident as he closes out a week of campaigning across Iowa. With his establishment rivals seemingly ceding Iowa and campaigning in other states and the two candidates in front of him focused on one another, Rubio suddenly has more space to maneuver. He is amping up his Iowa schedule, holding three or four events a day. While he presses his case for generational change, Rubio is openly relishing the damage Trump is doing to Cruz, whose Iowa support has dipped five points since the start of the year, according to the Real Clear Politics average.

"I think Ted is under a lot of pressure over the last few days," Rubio told reporters after a Marshalltown rally. "People are learning more about his record and it’s hurting him and he’s dropping in the polls. He’s losing to Donald."
Rubio wouldn't comment about whether Trump besting Cruz in Iowa would help the Floridian.

"I feel very good about what the results are going to be [in Iowa] and we’re going to move onto New Hampshire and do well there as well. And we’ll be the nominee," Rubio said.

But make no mistake: Cruz and Rubio have long eyed one another as their most dangerous opponent, each being the likeliest second choice of most of their supporters. Following a contentious exchange over immigration in the December debate, their sparring dominated coverage of the race through the end of the year. Now, Trump and Cruz are going at it—and no one is happier about it than Rubio.

“Iowa’s going to play an important role in helping America begin to narrow its choices. And Iowa’s always done that,” Rubio said. “Then as we move on into other states, obviously, the election will take different twists and turns. It’s been an unusual year.”

Particularly so for Rubio. His strategy—straddling the primary’s conservative and establishment lanes, competing in all four early voting states and refusing to focus on one as a must-win—and his inability to fully consolidate establishment support despite his consistent prowess on the debate stage and Jeb Bush’s inability to enthuse voters, has long confounded many mainstream conservatives eager for a clear alternative to Trump and Cruz. In the last month, allies of Rubio’s three main establishment rivals—Bush, Chris Christie and John Kasich—have successfully planted news stories aimed at questioning his campaign’s strategy, organization and Rubio’s individual work ethic and commitment to Iowa.

Rubio has drawn the most negative fire from his fellow Republicans, especially the team backing his longtime friend and Miami-area neighbor, Bush. The Right to Rise super PAC backing Bush has accounted for more than $20 million of the nearly $25 million in negative TV ads trained on Rubio. Just Tuesday, the group quietly went up with a new ad attacking Rubio for his use of a Republican Party of Florida credit card over a decade ago.

All of the negative ads and press helped keep expectations for Rubio low. While the onslaught of negative ads have likely kept him from expanding his support and consolidating the anti-Trump/Cruz vote, his very survival underscores the characteristic that matters most to pragmatic, establishment Republicans: electability.

"If he can withstand all of that and be the mainstream alternative, that's a pretty powerful position to be in," said Doug Gross, a Romney campaign co-chair in 2012 who remains undecided. “They always say, 'Get hot at the end,' and he is. I think he’s in a position potentially to finish a strong third in Iowa, and if he does, he becomes the mainstream Republicans' consensus alternative to Trump and Cruz going into New Hampshire, and that's a strong position to be in. If he's a strong third in Iowa, I really think he's likely going to be our nominee.”

In Iowa, Rubio's super PAC and campaign are now bragging that Democrats and Republicans share the view that Rubio is the most formidable GOP contender as evidenced by the amount of money spent attacking him and statements from Democrats about the young, Florida senator being the nominee who scares them most.

And Iowa's Republican stalwarts are helping Rubio close the sale, directly and indirectly. 

Gov. Terry Branstad has urged Iowans not to support Cruz; and Sen. Chuck Grassley provided Trump with an important stamp of approval by introducing him at a recent rally. Sen. Joni Ernst tacitly but unofficially backed Rubio by virtue of campaigning alongside him last weekend. “She’s such a normal person from here," said Shelly Whalen, of Cumming, Iowa, one of roughly 500 people who attended Rubio's event in West Des Moines Monday night. "It’s just nice to see him relate to someone like that, a real person.”

Rubio is speaking to growing, standing room only crowds this week, just days after he won the endorsement from the state's biggest and most influential newspaper, the Des Moines Register, which wrote that Rubio "has the potential to chart a new direction for the party, and perhaps the nation." Meanwhile, his establishment rivals have yet to show up. Christie and Kasich have remained in New Hampshire, while Bush, after fundraising events Monday and Tuesday and a rally in Elko, Nev., made his first caucus week appearance in Iowa just last night.

"We feel very good about how we are closing here in Iowa," Todd Harris, Rubio's senior strategist, told reporters Monday night. "There's real movement that we're experiencing on the ground here and that's why we feel confident that on caucus day we're going to do what we need to do here in Iowa, and I think we're going to surprise a lot of people."

A sense of momentum at the right time offers validation for Rubio's brain trust, which has long plotted for him to expand his support as the field shrinks and eventually become the GOP's alternative to Trump. But Trump's dominance remains the elephant in the room.
Unlike in past months, though, the Trump-bashing wing of the Republican Party now sees Trump as a likely nominee. If Trump wins Iowa and New Hampshire he’ll have not only a formidable number of delegates needed to secure the nomination, he’ll benefit from the growing aura of invincibility around his candidacy.

Rubio isn’t the first candidate to see Trump’s candidacy as an assist to his own, however. In August, one consultant who has worked for Bush summed up Bush World’s thinking this way: “It’s going to come down to Trump v. Somebody and Jeb is the somebody.”

But Bush only got weaker; Trump stronger.

Cruz, too, thought he could use Trump to his advantage – but by praising him for a time in the hopes that the frontrunner would implode and send his supporters to Cruz. Florida-based Republican consultant Rick Wilson said the tactic was akin to “feeding the alligator in hopes that it eats him last.”

In Team Rubio’s thinking, Trump’s elimination of Cruz in Iowa will send many of the Texas senator’s supporters to the Florida senator, who has a similar conservative voting record as Cruz – except for immigration. Under their theory, Cruz will be damaged goods heading into New Hampshire and that will help Rubio bounce into contention for second place with Kasich. Most consultants, including Rubio’s team, say they can’t see Kasich expanding his appeal beyond New Hampshire until March, when Ohio holds its primary. And, they say, Christie won’t survive past New Hampshire if he remains stalled in single digits despite spending more time there than in his home state of New Jersey.

So just as Rubio’s backers hope Iowa kills off also-rans like Mike Huckabee and weakens Cruz, they’re counting on New Hampshire to do the same to Christie and Kasich. Bush, Rubio’s team thinks, hangs on to compete in South Carolina, where he has the added benefit of the support of Sen. Lindsey Graham, whose home state infrastructure could give Bush a boost in a state his family has never lost.

“What will make post-New Hampshire different is that Bush will be out of money and he won’t have finished ahead of Marco or in the top three in Iowa and New Hampshire,” another Rubio backer familiar with the campaign’s thinking said. “So Marco sees this as a chance to make South Carolina a real two-man race, if not a three-man race with Trump and Cruz.”

Though Rubio, too, could be cash poor coming out of the Iowa. His team pulled back advertising and the Florida Republican has tried to keep up his fundraising even holding an event at a local country club Tuesday evening.

Rubio’s team has been adamant in pushing back at one storyline gaining traction among reporters: the “3-2-1” strategy, outlined by the National Review, in which Rubio would take third in Iowa, second in New Hampshire and first in South Carolina.
While Rubio’s campaign would love that, no one associated with it would venture to set expectations that high this far out. Many say Rubio has a far better shot of winning Nevada outright, but the team’s challenge is to make this smallest of the four early states appear as if it matters heading into the March contests.