You can’t say we weren’t warned. All along, Iowa Republicans told pollsters in no uncertain terms that they wanted Donald Trump. And boy, they weren’t lying.
On a bitterly cold Monday night in the Hawkeye State, the results were so lopsided that several major news outlets projected Trump the winner shortly after 7:30 pm central time—before many caucus-goers even had a chance to vote. The speed at which the results were announced was almost shocking. As Yogi Berra might have said, “It gets late early out there.”
Put aside the ethics of calling an election before many participants have had a chance to weigh in. Believing anyone other than Trump would win Iowa was always the triumph of hope over experience. It required believing that all of the polls were wrong and something magical might happen.
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Now, it’s true that polls are frequently misleading, and Iowa has been known to surprise us (see John Kerry and Rick Santorum) in the past. But Trump’s lead was so insurmountable that anything short of a double-digit victory would require an unprecedented and massive polling failure.
For anyone who was paying attention, Iowa Republicans (who skew heavily evangelical) voted in a predictable manner. They are who we thought they were. Of course, being predictable is not the same as being logical. We can talk about all of the electoral losses Republicans have endured thanks to Trump. We can talk about how Trump is likely to be convicted of a crime between now and November. We can talk about how other Republicans might fare better against Joe Biden, come November.
None of that matters right now. In the immortal words of Ed Koch, “The people have spoken… and they must be punished.”
If Trump was the big winner on Monday night, then Ron DeSantis was the biggest loser. And that holds true regardless of whether he ends up coming in a distant second to Trump; he will have outperformed Nikki Haley (second place is unclear at the time of this writing).
A year ago, DeSantis was seen as something of a political rock star. Now, not only is his presidential campaign over (whether he realizes it or not), but you have to wonder if he even has a future in Republican politics.
DeSantis was endorsed by popular Republican Gov. Kim Reynolds and evangelical leader Bob Vander Plaats. Iowa was supposed to be the state that propelled DeSantis to the GOP nomination. Instead, the nice people of Iowa twisted the knife in his lifeless corpse. (Did I mention he blew through more than $150 million to achieve this result?)
Now, I would be remiss if I didn’t point out that the New Hampshire primaries are next week, and Granite Staters have a habit of course-correcting Iowa. There is still a possible, if dwindling, chance that Haley could win New Hampshire—and then take that momentum to her home state of South Carolina. The stars would all have to align, but there is at least a chance it could happen.
But the magnitude of Trump’s victory in Iowa makes it difficult to imagine that happening.
Even if Haley wins New Hampshire (a contrarian state that allows independents to participate), the scope of Trump’s victory in Iowa suggests that Republican voters in most other states (such as South Carolina and Super Tuesday contests) will be too Trumpy for her to overcome.
This is to say that even if Haley wins New Hampshire on Jan. 23, the most likely outcome is simply postponing Trump’s inevitable victory.
If you’re looking for more data to reinforce this point, consider that (at the time of this writing) Trump is comfortably winning some Des Moines suburbs that Marco Rubio dominated back in 2016.
To be sure, I’m still holding out a glimmer of hope that somehow the Republican Party will find a way to prevent a man who has been indicted four times and who tried to prevent the peaceful transfer of power from once again becoming the nominee of the Party of Lincoln.
The optimist in me believes there is still a chance. But the analyst in me is growing more cynical by the day.
The degree of Trump’s Iowa victory makes the argument that this whole primary process has been a huge waste of time—that it’s all over but the shouting.
This frigid Iowa night has me contemplating the cold hard facts about the future of the Republican Party.
Those of us who keep hoping something will happen to break Trump’s spell in the GOP feel like we are reliving the same day over and over.
So to paraphrase Groundhog Day, I’ll give you a political prediction: It’s gonna be cold, it’s gonna be gray, and it’s gonna last you for the rest of Trump’s life.
