About Last Night: Trump Wins Iowa

Screengrab from FoxNews coverage of Iowa Caucuses (NewsCorp)

Years worth of narrative building, hundreds of millions of dollars, countless hours of media time, massively manned and funded campaign operations, and all the bombast and trappings of promising presidential campaigns built up to the first counting of votes, and for everyone not named Donald Trump all was lost 31 minutes into the process. Trump didn’t just win Iowa, he dominated without even really trying.

Des Moines Register:

Trump and his campaign effectively turned the traditional Iowa Caucus playbook on its head, continuing to aim to define the Republican Party and election cycle on his own terms.

He spurned some of the most prominent conservative leaders in the state, attacking Gov. Kim Reynolds for remaining neutral early in the race and then endorsing DeSantis, soon followed by Family Leader CEO Bob Vander Plaats. Trump dismissed the endorsements as inconsequential, even as he attacked Reynolds for disloyalty.

He largely shrugged off the retail politicking made famous by the caucuses, making just 22 scheduled public visits the entire cycle, according to the Des Moines Register’s Candidate Tracker. Almost all of them were campaign-organized rallies in population centers, while his challengers shook hands at Pizza Ranches and visited as many counties as possible.

At all but a few “cattle call” events, where prominent organizations or elected officials invite the entire slate of candidates, Trump was absent.

And pressed on key conservative issues like abortion, Trump toed the line on policy in ways that frustrated evangelical leaders, calling a six-week abortion ban like the one passed in Iowa a “horrible thing” and insisting that Republicans who took a hard-line approach to the issue would lose elections.

None of it appeared to matter.

Florida Governor Ron DeSantis finished a distant second 30 pts behind Trump. After months of crowing about their forthcoming historic ground game in Iowa that had by some reports more than $100m price tag, a campaign full of former Ted Cruz operatives did seven points worse than TrusTed managed. Brutal.

Nikki Haley finished third, two points behind DeSantis, and bizarrely declared afterwards that Iowa had made the GOP primary a two-person race. Which, being in a “I can’t see the winner from here” third place pretty much sums up the then end of the mostly-online “Haley Surge” narrative the American news watching public was subjected to the last few weeks.

That jackass Vivek finished a distant fourth and promptly dropped out of the race and endorsed Trump, the candidate Ramaswamy was a surrogate for in all but name. Thanks for coming, Vivek Ramaswamy.

So much of what was said over the last few months of campaigning died a cold death in frigid Iowa. No, the polls weren’t inaccurate. No, there was no momentum by any candidate. No, most of the Republican Party doesn’t want a more socially acceptable version of Donald Trump when Donald Trump himself is on the ballot. No, the GOP base isn’t going to be dissuaded from Trump by indictments, losses, or anything else. This has been a Primary In Name Only all along. The pre-polling data showed 70-30 splits within caucus goers that yes, they think the 2020 election was stolen and yes, they will still vote for Trump even if indicted tell the story. This isn’t a primary at all; two-thirds of the Republican Party are all in on the Donald Trump vengeance ride that is going to prove that they were right all along, and the other third are having a group struggle session through the stages of grief that savvy campaign pros are making a fortune off of.

Graphic from University of Pennsylvania

Competition brings clarity, and folks who were paying a lick of attention have known for months that Trump was going to steamroll this primary. So now some might go through the motions like New Hampshire, Nevada, or South Carolina might change the reality that now is upon the political process. Don’t bother. The vast majority of the Republican Party still wants Donald Trump no matter what, and they are going to get him good and hard in 2024 no matter what, no matter what that might mean in the future.

You can skip all this, check in for when DeSantis and Haley concede and endorse Trump in a few weeks, and start looking ahead to Biden-Trump 2.

Anything else is just ignoring reality.