Trump wins Iowa Caucuses in landslide
The Iowa Caucuses are meaningless. I’ve argued this point for decades. After all, the winner of this lily-White farce hasn’t won the presidency in nearly 25 years.
Case in point, Ted Cruz won in 2016. But Donald Trump won the Republican nomination and the presidency.
As widely expected, former President Donald Trump cruised to an easy victory in Monday’s chilly Iowa caucuses, the opening salvo of the 2024 GOP nominating contest. The rout further cements Trump’s status as the most likely candidate to face off against President Biden, a Democrat, in November’s general election.
The Associated Press called Iowa for Trump at 8:32 p.m. EST — just half an hour after the caucuses began.
(Yahoo! News, January 15, 2024)
So, past being prologue, it seems this win does not bode well for Trump. But, as is his wont, he will spin it as if he had already won not just the Republican nomination but the presidency itself.
Much ado about nothing
Ask Iowans about a presidential candidate, and they might say, “Not sure yet; I’ve only met them five times.” This sentiment underpins Iowa’s justification for its prized status as the first state in the presidential nominating process.
Once again, Republican candidates subjected themselves to Iowa’s “full-Grassley” vetting process. They spent months holding town hall meetings in all 99 counties.
Trump, by instructive contrast, shunned Iowa. Instead, he used courtrooms in New York, Washington DC, and Georgia as campaign venues. Yet polls continually showed that were Iowans hell-bent on snubbing other candidates to vote for Trump.
That should be enough for the GOP to strip Iowa of its status. But it won’t because Trump has already stripped the GOP of all pride and principle.
After all, this is the same Trump who snubbed all GOP presidential debates and suffered no repercussions for doing so. So, this result in Iowa just proves that the more contempt Trump shows Republicans, the more loyalty they show him. Cult worship!
The Conundrum of Participation: Why Do Candidates Bother?
Candidates dedicate inordinate amounts of time, effort, and money to win the Iowa Caucuses. But Ron DeSantis and Nikki Haley’s supporters were probably too sensible to brave deadly weather conditions to participate.
Again, by foreboding contrast, Trump’s supporters had already demonstrated that they would even storm the US Capitol for him. So…
GOP should strip Iowa of first-in-nation-status
In a significant shift last October, President Biden spearheaded the Democrats’ decision to strip Iowa of its prized status.
Iowa botched its Caucuses so badly in 2020 that New Hampshire held its primary before Iowa finalized its results. That was unforgivable enough. But the Democrats also cited Iowa’s lack of diversity for giving this prized status to the more diverse South Carolina.
If the GOP had any respect for the national electorate, it would follow suit. Only Republicans’ embrace of White-supremacy ideology explains not doing so.
But Iowans know what would’ve happened if they had failed to deliver victory for Trump tonight: He would’ve ordered the GOP to strip Iowa of its prized status as the first state in the presidential nominating process. And that’s the last thing these egocentric, political narcissists want.
Media coverage
As indicated above, the weather was so prohibitive that more reporters than voters were bound to show up.
CNN epitomized the spectacle the media made of their coverage. It ran a countdown clock, indicating that its coverage of the Iowa Caucuses would begin at 4 PM today. Except that the Caucuses weren’t scheduled to begin until 7 PM, and CNN had been providing non-stop coverage all day.
Again, the Iowa Caucuses have no relevance in modern American politics. The best thing the GOP can do is follow the DNC and spare us this quadrennial farce.
* This commentary was originally published yesterday, Monday, January 15, 2024 at 8:47 PM
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