A year and two months after he launched his campaign to return to the White House, former President Donald Trump showed again that he is most attuned to Republican voters.
In a historic romp that was called barely half an hour after the doors of caucus sites closed, Trump won the Iowa caucuses to start the 2024 race for the White House and take the first step toward his renomination as the standard-bearer of the Republican Party.
The results provide concrete proof for what has been widely expected for months: Republican voters still stand by the 45th president and want him to be their party’s standard-bearer for a third presidential election in a row.
Despite desperate wish-casting from institutional Republicans and the donor class that either Gov. Ron DeSantis (R-FL) or former U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley could pose a challenge to Trump and deny him a third straight nomination, the fact remains that Trump speaks to Republican voters in a way no one else does.
While Haley is still going to make a play for New Hampshire next week, the clearest evidence for why she did not connect with Republican voters was that registered Democrats in Iowa switched their party registration so they could cast a caucus vote for her.
DeSantis, meanwhile, will likely finish a distant second to Trump. His campaign was always billed as “Trump without the baggage,” and for a while, it seemed like he had a shot to dethrone the front-runner. But as the establishment attacks on Trump built, especially the four criminal indictments against him by the Department of Justice, DeSantis’s polling strength evaporated as voters rallied behind the former president.
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Issues matter to voters, but the messenger on the issues is equally, if not more, important. This is why Haley and DeSantis failed to break Trump’s stranglehold on the Republican base and why the base will be his as long as he is on the political scene.
Taking Trump on in the Republican primary was always a fool’s errand. He will be the nominee. Haley and DeSantis were never going to defeat him. It’s time they recognize that.
