This is
a new tone from Donald Trump:
"Iowa, will you get your numbers up, please?" he pleaded to a crowd in Sioux City, where he made his first stop in Iowa since recent polls showed him falling behind retired neurosurgeon Ben Carson. "I promise you, I will do such a good job." [...]
"I refuse to say get your asses in gear," he said. "I refuse to say it! ... So will you please do me a favor and work with my people and go out on Feb. 1 and vote? And if I win Iowa, we're going to run the whole table."
It's not exactly humility, but ... Donald Trump saying "please"? More than once? And "refusing" to try to bully, but asking for something as "please do me a favor"? Unexpected, to say the least.
Some professionals at dealing with bad poll numbers say Trump made a strategic error all along:
"One of the reasons you don't brag about your standing in the polls is because when it goes down, you look silly attacking the polls you were praising not so long ago," said Eric Fehrstrom, a political communications veteran who served as senior adviser during GOP presidential nominee Mitt Romney's 2012 bid. "You actually sound stronger when you're the poll leader if you dismiss those polls."
Then again, whatever mistakes Trump may be making along the way, I'm not sure Mitt Romney's campaign is where he wants to look for advice.