The courts are already part of Donald Trump's campaign strategy. The former president of the United States voluntarily attended two hearings in Washington and New York this week to portray himself as a martyr to the most loyal Republican voters, participants in the primary elections. In Washington, his lawyer argued – with his approval – that the president should have immunity even if he ordered a special forces team to assassinate a political rival. Trump, who is charged with 91 crimes in four separate cases, has not yet been accused of killing anyone. However, he has a murderous – political – instinct. When the Republican Party's nomination race for the 2024 presidential election officially begins this Monday in freezing Iowa, he is obsessed with eliminating his rivals before a viable alternative becomes apparent.
Trump is a formidable rival. Like a schoolyard bully, he loves to insult and mock his opponents. When he perceived Florida Governor Ron DeSantis as a threat, he attacked him mercilessly. Now her arrows are pointed at Nikki Haley, proving her upward trajectory. One of his favorite hobbies is giving nicknames to his rivals – a Wikipedia page compiles them. For him, DeSantis is DeSanctus or DeSanctimonious, the self-righteous or the prude. And the former South Carolina governor and former UN ambassador is “the badass Nikki Haley.” The candidate tweeted that some Trump supporters left a cage and bird seed outside the hotel. The former president has spoken against her of the false report previously spread against Barack Obama that she was not born in the United States, which would prevent her from becoming president.
Following Chris Christie's withdrawal to avoid splitting the anti-Trump vote, the Iowa caucuses (a type of primary that is more caucus-based, although voting is secret and in a ballot box) are less crowded than expected. Also staying on the road are Miami Mayor Francis Suárez; former Vice President Mike Pence; Senator Tim Scott and Governor Doug Burgum. In addition to DeSantis and Haley, Millennial Trumpist Vivek Ramaswamy is the other candidate with a modicum of appeal. In any case, Trump's lead in the polls is enormous, both nationally and in Iowa.
Among Republican voters across the United States, Trump has a vote intention rating of 60.4%, compared to 12.1% for DeSantis; 11.7% for Haley and 4.3% for Ramaswamy, according to FiveThirtyEight polling averages. In Iowa, his margin is smaller but solid: 51.3%, compared to Haley's 17.3%; 16.1% for DeSantis and 6.6% for Ramaswamy.
In this rural and conservative state of 3.2 million inhabitants and an area of 146,000 square kilometers, the most active Republican voters will meet this Monday from 7:00 p.m. (2:00 a.m. on Tuesday in mainland Spain) to vote for the 40 delegates vote, which Iowa is presenting to the party convention that will name the Republican Party's candidate for president in July.
The 40 delegates are distributed proportionally to each candidate's vote. Its share of the nearly 2,500 total delegates in the convention is minimal (1.6%), but Iowa's influence is much greater because it is the first state to speak out. It brings momentum to the campaign, additional funding and media coverage. For this reason, the candidates have been traveling there for months and mingling with the residents of this huge corn barn, at the state fair and at political events of all kinds. Without the caucuses in Iowa, it is possible that neither Jimmy Carter nor Barack Obama would have become president.
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“Iowa votes first, and nomination campaigns run sequentially from state to state. “This sequential electoral process has important implications for who ultimately wins and who ultimately loses,” argue political science professors David Redlawsk, Caroline Tolbert and Todd Donovan in their book Why Iowa? (Why Iowa?).
At the same time, meetings are not infallible. Since George W. Bush won in 2000, no winner of a Republican competitive election has advanced to the nomination. Mike Huckabee, Rick Santorum and Ted Cruz won Iowa in 2008, 2012 and 2016, but the final nominees were John McCain, Mitt Romney and Donald Trump. The latter came second in the 2016 election with 24% of the vote, compared to 28% for Ted Cruz. Trump initially congratulated Cruz but later said the election was “stolen” from him and called for a re-vote.
Democrats are also holding caucuses and rallies this Monday, but have admitted that voting is by mail and is open until March, so all the attention is on the Republican side. There are approximately 750,000 registered Republican voters who are eligible to vote. In 2016, when the record was broken, there were 187,000 votes. A turnout of 20% is usually the norm, but with snow-covered Iowa, temperatures expected to reach 28 degrees below zero and a no-win result, people are at risk of staying home.
Trump and other candidates have held their recent campaign events virtually due to travel difficulties. From the start, the former president spent far fewer days campaigning in the state than his main rivals. While DeSantis has visited all 99 counties in the state, Ramaswamy has visited all of them twice. The Des Moines Register candidate tracker this week listed 25 Trump rallies in the state since March, compared to more than 125 for DeSantis, 79 for Nikki Haley and more than 300 for Ramaswamy.
Iowa is a state with a predominantly white and conservative population in which evangelical Christians have the decisive weight. Despite Trump's amorality, the evangelical vote was the key to his entry into the White House eight years ago. Kristin Kobes du Mez, author of Jesus and John Wayne. How white evangelicals corrupted a faith and divided a nation, he explained in his book as “the culmination of evangelicalism's embrace of militant masculinity, an ideology that enshrines patriarchal authority and condones a ruthless display of power.” He drew a parallel between Trump and the Actor John Wayne, “an icon of American masculinity for generations of conservatives” and, over time, “of Christian masculinity” with his “rudeness and boastfulness.”
This time Trump is doubling down. He released a video (God made Trump) in which he is portrayed as a true Messiah sent directly by God to save the United States, using the voice of a famous deceased announcer recreated using artificial intelligence. The video, with its biblical-like language, has angered evangelical pastors in Iowa.
Trump is running his campaign as if he were a sitting president. He did not take part in the candidate debates. While Haley and DeSantis were at each other's throats on CNN this week, he countered with a soft interview on Fox News in which he tried to soften his message by disavowing his own words. When he returns to the White House, he said, he will not be a dictator and will not dedicate his presidency to revenge – not for lack of desire, but for lack of time, he explained. 4.6 million viewers watched it, compared to 2.6 million for the debate.
Such a clear victory at home is what Trump is aiming for before doubts arise about whether he can ultimately win the presidential election, where moderates and independents dominate and Haley appears to be the candidate with fewer contraindications. However, the primary election calendar will prevent him from completing the debate soon. Iowa will be followed by the New Hampshire primary on January 23rd, where Haley enjoys strong support but only elects 22 delegates. In February, numerous caucuses (Nevada) and primaries (Virgin Islands, South Carolina and Michigan) leave everything open so that the nomination can be decided in March.
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