Why that 'landslide' win in Iowa could spell trouble for Trump
Opinion: Donald Trump solidly won the Iowa Republican caucus. But it's not the landslide victory that many seem to think.
The Democrats’ and mainstream media’s choice for Republican nominee cleaned up in the Iowa caucuses on Monday night.
He is, and I'm a Democrat. I feel exposed.
...
“The Most Durable Force in American Politics” is “Trump’s Ties to His Voters,” crowed a New York Times headline.
“Trump’s landslide Iowa win is a stunning show of strength after leaving Washington in disgrace,” read a CNN.com headline.
Newsweek was also upbeat: “Donald Trump surged to a historic win in the Iowa caucuses, securing the largest margin of any non-incumbent in the modern era.”
But is Donald Trump really a non-incumbent?
Technically, yes. Joe Biden is this year’s incumbent.
Practically speaking, however, Trump was the last Republican to serve as president of the United States before losing reelection in 2020.
Oh bullshit. He's not an incumbent!
Three legitimate challengers, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley and business executive Vivek Ramaswamy...
"Three legitimate challengers," huh? Have it your way Boas...the Swami just dropped out and endorsed Trumpie. So now that's tyoo "legitimate challengers". You think DeSantis is a legitimate challenger? He's politically-challenged is what he is.
...have cut into Trump’s support, signaling some serious discomfort with Trump in the Republican base.
Taken together, the “not Trump” coalition of candidates won nearly half the vote ...
Okay, that's a point.
...in a state that ABC News calls “overwhelmingly white and rural.” In other words, these were ideal conditions for a Trump landslide.
...Trump’s Iowa triumph can hardly serve as a bellwether for the fall.
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Nikki Haley, who is polling strongest among Republicans in head-to-head matchups against Joe Biden.
A recent Wall Street Journal poll shows her defeating Biden by 17 points.
WIN TRUMPIE WIN! (Whoops, I slipped again.) Seriously, that poll does not worry me. She is not the nominee, is never going to be the nominee, and any hypothetical match up is what most hypothetical mathch ups are, meaningless. Ten months from the election people are not paying attention to anybody but Trumpie and Biden. Nobody knows who Nikki Haley is. "Nikki Haley, that the new stripper down at Solid Gold?"
Haley is a magnet for independents...She has begun making a sophisticated argument that as Trump drags all of his chaos, indictments, hearings and high negatives into the general election, he won’t just risk losing his own race.
I don't know how "sophisticated" that is but it is an argument that I believe.
He’ll put in jeopardy every down-ballot Republican in every state in the country.
Yes.
Such is Trump’s power to motivate Democrats to vote.
Indeed.
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The risk is high that Trump will lose the general election and take down the rest of the Republican ballot.
In 2022, MAGA-endorsed candidates lost elections all across America. Democrats understood this. They spent millions boosting MAGA candidates in the primaries so they could face them in the general.
Yep, they did. Yep, we did....Sorry, are you kidding me? Trumpie is my worst nightmare opponent!
...while Trump competes for the Republican nomination, Biden is building a massive war chest to unleash hell on Trump once he’s the nominee.
If there is a fatal flaw in Make America Great Again, it’s this.
MAGA is unteachable.
"MAGA is unteachable", don't know what that means. Nontransferable, does he mean? Agree. It's a cult.
In Arizona, the MAGA architects of Arizona’s remade Republican Party inherited a red state and handed much of it over to the Democrats.
They have lost in recent years the state’s two U.S. Senate seats; the governor’s office, the secretary of state and the attorney general. The biggest prizes in Arizona politics.
The problem with the MAGA movement
On Monday night they were celebrating Trump’s win.
“WE DID IT, IOWA!” Kari Lake screamed in all caps on X, formerly Twitter. “We showed the world that the #MAGA movement is stronger than ever.”
And just to show that victory brings out the best in Trump Republicans, GOP and Turning Point operative Tyler Bowyer retweeted his own previously published threat to fellow Republicans:
“Those who choose to attack our own side ... are going to expose themselves. Much different world than 2016. Can’t get away with it now.”
Charming.
Makes you long for the good old days when they merely told McCain Republicans to thump sand.
This could be a Republican Chernobyl
Maybe I’m wrong. Maybe we’re witnessing the rebirth of Donald Trump’s movement after losing three straight cycles.
But what if I’m not?
What if MAGA is a sure-fire formula for losing a fourth cycle?
Conservatives in this country will look at the smoldering ruin of successive Republican defeats authored by the Trumps and Lakes and Bowyers and know that this wasn’t merely a lost decade.
It was the Republican Chernobyl.
