Iowa Republicans would prefer to return former President Donald Trump to the White House — if the choice is between that and sending Ron DeSantis, Nikki Haley, or Vivek Ramaswamy. That is technically the only conclusion that the frigid Iowa Caucuses proved on Monday, as Trump won 98 of 99 Iowa counties against the aforementioned GOP hopefuls.
It was a predictably dominant showing for Trump over three textbook submissives, none of whom ever really confronted the party frontrunner during their cautious campaigns. (In today’s GOP, fear of alienating a reactionary MAGA base hamstrings challengers to Trump’s position at the top.)
But the Iowa wipeout that’s being touted as political renewal for the legally challenged, twice impeached former President is largely proof only that Trump’s main strategy has worked effectively on its acutely targeted audience — that is, conservatives in red states on a steady diet of conservative media.
The main strategy Trump used to emerge victorious in Iowa was not blasting President Joe Biden‘s economy or even trolling the current administration over the situation at the U.S. Southern border, though Trump did both of these things. What won him Iowa was a strategy that predates those complaints and, indeed, the Biden presidency.
Trump’s self-dealt winning hand started taking shape in November 2020 — and even beforehand — with his relentless questioning of the legitimacy of the U.S. elections — dubbed the “Big Lie” by his opponents and by the courts. It is a strategy that has been advanced and enabled by a deeply entrenched conservative media that continues to amplify Trump’s story of a “stolen” election, even if promoting parts of the narrative would cost them, in the case of Fox News, $787 million in damages.
[NOTE: Writing about the power of the debunked election narrative, NPR said “call it an insurrection or a coup attempt, it was fueled by what’s known as the ‘Big Lie’: the verifiably false assertion that Trump won. Joe Biden won 306 votes in the Electoral College, while Trump received 232. In the popular vote, Biden won by more than 7 million votes.”]
The importance and effectiveness of Trump’s “Big Lie” in the Hawkeye State results was reflected in polls of caucus voters revealing that 66 percent of them believed the 2020 election was “stolen” from Trump and that Biden did not win legitimately. Trump’s strategy may work well beyond this core of believers — or non-believers — but the Iowa vote doesn’t offer evidence of that.
