Donald Trump’s runaway victory in the Iowa caucuses means the race for the 2024 Republican presidential nomination has pretty much ended on the day it began.
The scale of Trump’s triumph is historic. Just about everything went right for him.
Whether it’s right for America and the rest of the world is another matter.
After Iowa, America seems condemned to a re-run of the Trump-Biden contest of 2020, a repeat a majority of Americans have made clear they do not want but seem powerless to stop.
For America’s allies, the increased prospect of a Trump presidency brings nothing but dread, even among conservatives-minded governments. For its enemies, the risk is that opportunities for them to sow mischief will abound.
Trump won 51 per cent of the vote, a record-breaking 30 points ahead of his nearest rival and more than his two main challengers combined.
Donald Trump’s runaway victory in the Iowa caucuses means the race for the 2024 Republican presidential nomination has pretty much ended on the day it began. The scale of Trump’s triumph is historic. Whether it’s right for America and the rest of the world is another matter.
Until Tuesday, Bob Dole had held the record in a contested Republican Iowa caucus with a 13-point victory margin in 1988. Trump smashed that.
He also won 98 of Iowa’s 99 counties, with the only hold out, Johnson County, home of the University of Iowa, going for Nikki Haley by – at the time of writing – one vote.
No doubt Trump will be looking for a recount!
He swept all before him, winning not just a majority of evangelicals in rural areas and small towns but with clear leads even among more moderate suburban Republicans, who didn’t fall for former UN ambassador’s Haley charms to the extent she needed. Just about everything went right for Trump.
Not only did he win by a landslide but Florida governor Ron DeSantis scraped into second place with 21 per cent of the vote, only two points ahead of Haley.
This suits Trump because Haley is a bigger threat to him in New Hampshire, whose primary is next Tuesday (January 23). But she now heads there without the momentum of a strong second-place Iowa finish on which she was counting.
Instead, DeSantis takes the second-place honours as the contest heads to the Granite State.
The only problem: he is nowhere in New Hampshire. Nor is he anywhere in South Carolina, where Trump is also well ahead of Haley, even though it’s her home state where she was once a reasonably successful governor.
DeSantis thinks he lives to fight another day – but only as the walking wounded. He spent tens of millions in Iowa, which paid for his people to knock on one million doors, he visited all 99 counties (doing the ‘Full Grassley’, named after the state’s senior senator) and he had the backing of Iowa’s popular governor and its leading evangelical. Yet all he could manage was a distant second.
That will be the acme of his campaign. When he goes down in flames in New Hampshire and South Carolina it will be all over for DeSantis.
Once seen as the best hope of beating Trump, he’s now lumbered with a reputation for running a lacklustre campaign no matter how much money is thrown at it and with the unenviable reputation of being a politician who, the more people see of him, the less they like him.
Haley is only slightly better placed.
The most recent polls put her within shouting distance of Trump in New Hampshire, where independents and crossover Democrats can vote in the Republican primary.
But Trump now heads there with what George HW Bush used to call the ‘Big Mo’ and he will be hard to stop. The latest average of polls for New Hampshire by RealClearPolitics gives him a 14-point lead.
Not only did he win by a landslide but Florida governor Ron DeSantis scraped into second place with 21 per cent of the vote, only two points ahead of Nikki Haley.
This suits Trump because Haley is a bigger threat to him in New Hampshire, whose primary is next Tuesday (January 23). But she now heads there without the momentum of a strong second-place Iowa finish on which she was counting.
The Trump strategy is to have the nomination sown up by early March. After Iowa he looks on target to do just that.
Of course, Iowa is hardly representative of America and some will claim you can read too much into Tuesday’s result. But it is representative — largely white, rural, small town, evangelical, blue collar, not college educated — of the Republican Party base on which Trump has such a grip and which will deliver him the nomination.
The issues – in so far as they mattered (these nomination contests tend to be more about personalities than policies) – also played into Trump’s hands.
For months, the economy mattered most in Iowa and Trump scores high on that. But in the final weeks, as the chaos on America’s southern border became ever more apparent, immigration became the top issue for Iowa caucus voters, which was a gift for Trump’s hard line on immigration.
The icing on his Iowa cake was Vivek Ramaswamy’s decision to pull out of the race and back him.
An opportunistic charlatan, his glib, grating campaigning (he promised to fire 75 per cent of federal employees) had no traction with the solid folks of Iowa. He came a poor fourth. He was the most ‘Trumpian’ of the challengers though never a threat to Trump. Now he is one less person for The Donald to worry about.
Ramaswamy’s demise merely capped what was a pretty perfect night for Trump — and the beginning of a new nightmare for the rest of America and its allies across the world.
As Trump luxuriated in his impressive victory, President Zelensky in Kyiv must be wondering what progress he can make against Russia in Ukraine before a Trump presidency 2.0 threatens to undermine his war effort.
The chancelleries of Europe woke up Wednesday morning to the harsh reality that the potential next president of the United States could bring the whole edifice of NATO crumbling down at a time when Europe needs the American-led alliance more than ever.
America’s allies in the Middle East and Asia are contemplating new years of confusion and uncertainty, which is Trump’s governing modus operandi.
Of course, winning the Republican nomination is not the same as winning the White House. But the most recent ABC News poll gives President Biden a record 58 per cent disapproval rating. There is a lot of water to pass under the bridge between now and November 5, when American will chose its next president. But as things currently stand, Trump must surely be regarded as favourite to win.
The icing on his Iowa cake was Vivek Ramaswamy’s decision to pull out of the race and back him. He was the most ‘Trumpian’ of the challengers though never a threat to Trump. Now he is one less person for The Donald to worry about.
For America it threatens a return to division, chaos, even violence. For if Trump does not abide by the country’s democratic rules why should his opponents?
As America is forced to face up to the new challenges of the 21st century and a world which suddenly looks a lot more dangerous than it did even a decade ago, the last thing it needs is a geriatric contest between two of yesterday’s men.
America’s great strength has always been its ability to renew itself, to pass the baton on to new generations and new thinking. That’s what’s kept it top dog for so long and thwarted so many false predictions of its demise. That cannot happen in 2024 if the choice is Trump or Biden.
For the rest of the world dependent on American protection, the prospects are just as scary. Trump and his supporters have every reason to celebrate this week. The rest of us have just as many reasons to be fearful.