Tamara Keith and Amy Walter on the final week of the GOP campaign in Iowa

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• Amna Nawaz:

  For analysis of this final week of the Iowa campaign, we turn to our Politics Monday team. That's Amy Walter of The Cook Political Report With Amy Walter and Tamara Keith of NPR.

  Great to see you both.

• Amy Walter, The Cook Political Report:

  Hello.

• Tamara Keith, National Public Radio:

  Hello.

• Amna Nawaz:

  So let's look at where the landscape is right now for the candidates in Iowa as we talk about this last week of Iowa campaigning.

  The latest Des Moines Register/NBC News Iowa poll shows Mr. Trump with a commanding lead. There's 51 percent of likely GOP caucus-goers saying they will support him, 19 percent for Mr. DeSantis, 16 percent for Haley, 5 percent for Vivek Ramaswamy, and 4 percent for former Governor Chris Christie.

  Amy, we talk a lot about DeSantis and Haley and what's at stake here for them in this first contest. What does a win look like for them in Iowa?

• Amy Walter:

  Yes.

  Well, obviously, a win at this point doesn't look like an actual win.

• Amna Nawaz:

  Right.

• Amy Walter:

  Not only is Trump ahead, it looks like by about 30 points, in all the polls that we have seen for these last few weeks, but if he won by that margin, that would be the biggest margin that any competitive Republican caucus winner has come out of Iowa with.

  Fifty percent would also be a statement, because for weeks — now, well not for weeks — for the entire campaign, his rivals have made the case that there is a base of support for Donald Trump, but there's a bigger base of support for people who are willing to look beyond Donald Trump, whether they are truly voters on the Republican side who don't want to see Donald Trump or people who are ready to maybe turn the page, even though they do like Donald Trump.

  With 50 percent of the vote, that would sort of close the door on that. And folks I talk to in this state, they do see a real fight for second place, that Nikki Haley has had a great deal of momentum. We haven't seen polls since the holidays, so it's unclear whether some of this back-and-forth that we're seeing with she and Trump is having an impact.

  But I think that, for Ron DeSantis, he has the most at stake, certainly, because he has the endorsements and he's really banked his entire campaign on doing well in Iowa. Losing whether it's by 10 or 20 or 30 points, it's hard to turn that into a win.

• Amna Nawaz:

  Tam, is this existential for Ron DeSantis?

• Tamara Keith:

  He has done the full Grassley. He's gone to all 99 counties. He has moved most of his campaign operation to Iowa. He came in with such incredibly high expectations that, if he then comes in third place in Iowa, that is existential.

  That is a major problem for his going campaign. Now, he had a press call with reporters today and he said, I have got plans for things that I'm going to be doing in New Hampshire. I have got events in New Hampshire. I have got events in South Carolina. I have got events in Nevada.

  He's got plans, but plans can change. Absolutely, plans can change if it doesn't go well for him.

• Amna Nawaz:

  One of the keys…

• Amy Walter:

  And he doesn't have money, by the way.

• Tamara Keith:

  Right.

• Amna Nawaz:

  Right.

• Amy Walter:

  He's not investing money in the ads in the states in the way that the Haley campaign and her supporters are.

• Amna Nawaz:

  Another key part of any campaign.

  But one — the huge lead we see Mr. Trump having right there is in large part due to this key bloc we talk a lot about in Iowa, which is those white evangelicals in the state. It hasn't always been that way, though. He hasn't always had their support. Back in 2016, it was about 22 percent of evangelicals said they would support him. That is now up to 51 percent.

  Tam, how do you look at those numbers? How did he get that kind of support growth?

• Tamara Keith:

  OK, so in 2016, he was talking about 2 Corinthians and it sounded like a not a Bible verse, but like a joke about a bar.

  And now he is the person who put on the Supreme Court a conservative majority that overturned Roe v. Wade and gave evangelical Christians the Dobbs decision. I mean, what more does he need to do? And also I think that, absolutely, as that one voter said, they're not looking for him to be their pastor.

  But part of Christianity is forgiveness. And I think that a lot of his sort of personal sins have been forgiven by these voters.

• Amna Nawaz:

  Amy, how do you look at that?

• Amy Walter:

  It's also that when we talk about being evangelical, for many folks who describe themselves as evangelical, it's less about the religious views than their political views.

  And being white evangelical and being a supporter of Trump have now become synonymous, so that, yes, I do think the Dobbs case and delivering on some of those issues matters a lot, but it's also the fact that they see that their identity, their cultural identity, somebody who's fighting for them.

  We talked — you talked, I think, in the piece about grievance politics, the sense that this is a group of people who are under siege by the left, and the only person standing up for them is Donald Trump.

• Amna Nawaz:

  That's a message that resonates.

• Amy Walter:

  Right.

• Amna Nawaz:

  Among the other messages that resonate that we have seen from Mr. Trump, this sort of strain of revisionist history in these closing messages before Iowa, not just looking back to three years ago and the January 6 insurrection.

  He calls the people who carried out the violent attack patriots and hostages and said they should all be pardoned, but going back to the Civil War, and we are now talking about the root cause of the Civil War. Somehow, that's up for debate. You heard Mr. Biden, President Biden, reference this explicitly in his speech in South Carolina at the Mother Emanuel AME Church today.

  Just take a listen to what he said.

  Joe Biden, President of the United States: Let me be clear, for those who don't seem to know. Slavery was the cause of the Civil War.

  (Applause)

• Joe Biden:

  There is no negotiation about that.

  Now — now we're living in an era of a second lost cause. Once again, there are some in this country trying, trying to turn a loss into a lie.

  a lie which, if allowed to live, will once again bring terrible damage to this country.

• Amna Nawaz:

  Amy, this conversation is not about policy or politics. We're talking about whose version of history you're going to believe.

• Amy Walter:

  That's exactly right, and that's the through line that the president was trying to make here between a debate about the Civil War, which seems like that had been delegated many years ago, or the fight had been over many years ago, to now, which is his point being, if you're going to lie about the cause of the Civil War, as had — we had seen, whether it's calling it the noble cause, and you're going to lie about the election results, lie about what happened on January 6, those things share one thing in common, especially for Black voters.

  They are denying your voice. What the president was saying from the pulpit today was, when he says that the election was stolen, what Donald Trump is telling you, the voters in these pulpits, many of whom saw your grandparents and your parents denied the right to vote, he's saying your voice and your vote doesn't matter.

• Amna Nawaz:

  Tam, that's why we hear this as a centerpiece of his campaign, not necessarily his record, right?

• Tamara Keith:

  No, he — certainly, he is going to talk about his record. Don't worry. We're going to hear a lot more about Bidenomics or whatever they call it next.

  However, his campaign is very much centered on, what America do you want? What America do you want to see? And he is making an argument that Donald Trump and other Republicans, the MAGA Republicans, as he calls them, that they have a different vision of America and that it is antidemocratic.

  And so that is very clearly becoming the centerpiece of President Biden's campaign. He is drawing a through line from Charlottesville and what happened at Mother Emanuel right through to January 6, saying it's about extremism and political violence and that that isn't something that Americans should stand for.

  And there is some indication that, actually, a lot of Americans agree with that. And he is trying to build a coalition of people who don't want the history of January 6 revised. They may not necessarily want the policies he is selling. And that's what he's trying to thread.

  And also it's worth noting that he went to South Carolina. That's the state that will hold the first Democratic primary.

• Amna Nawaz:

  Right.

• Tamara Keith:

  It's all about Black voters, which are a group of voters that he needs in his base, and that he has struggled with somewhat, though you wouldn't know it from the call and response there at Mother Emanuel.

• Amna Nawaz:

  Well, let's remember caucuses are different than like showing up to vote or rallies. It's all about who turns up on the day.

  Just in the last few seconds we have left, what's the one thing you're watching for?

  (Crosstalk)

• Amy Walter:

  Well, the weather is important. It's supposed to be very, very cold there. I know Iowans are very, very hardy.

  But when you look at the last poll, say, that FOX News did, the people said they were most committed to showing up and voting were Ron DeSantis supporters, actually. This could matter in terms of who comes in second is folks who are willing to brave really, really cold weather.

• Amna Nawaz:

  What are you watching, Tam?

• Tamara Keith:

  Yes.

  I'm watching the ground game and what they do to get people to turn out in that very cold weather. What I'm also watching is, let's say Trump does win, which, by all indications, he will. Does he win by a lot, or does he win by a small enough margin that it gives Nikki Haley and Ron DeSantis some jet fumes to go on?

• Amna Nawaz:

  We will know in a week.

• Amy Walter:

  Yes.

• Amna Nawaz:

  Tamara Keith, Amy Walter, thank you both.

• Amy Walter:

  Thank you.

• Tamara Keith:

  You're welcome.

• Amy Walter:

  You're welcome.