The last remnants of the Republican Party died in Iowa
For the lucky 500 Trump followers lined up for hours, some of them, in the minus-38-degree wind chill, the Trump campaign played a video reminding voters that Trump had already come in first place in the God primary.
“And on June
14, 1946, God looked down on his planned paradise and said, `I need a caretaker.' So God gave us Trump,” the narrator proclaimed.
“God said, `I need somebody willing to get up before dawn, fix this country, work all day, fight the Marxists, eat supper, then go to the Oval Office and stay past midnight. … So God made Trump.”
“`I need somebody with arms strong enough to rustle the deep state and yet gentle enough to deliver his own grandchild.' … So God gave us Trump.”
And then it came to pass, a few minutes later, that this midwife-turned-prophet took the stage in the ballroom, and he spake thus to his flock:
“We've got a crooked country,” run by “stupid people,” “corrupt,” “incompetent,” “the worst.”
Trump, in the gospel according to Trump, was the victim of “hoaxes,” “witch hunts,” “lies,” “fake indictments,” “fake trials,” judges who “are animals,” a “rigged election,” “rigged indictments,” and a “rigged Department of Justice where we have radical left, bad people, lunatics.”
The nation's capital, Washington, D.C., “is a rat-infested, graffiti infested shithole,” he said, with swastikas all over the national monuments.
Immigrants are like a “vicious snake,” whose “bite is poisonous.”
“Our country is dying,” he informed them. And, by the way, “You're very close to World War Three.”
Have a nice day!
It was, in short, a slightly updated version of the rage, paranoia, victimhood, lies and demonization that propelled Trump's popularity over the past eight years. Yet there was something else Trump said in his appearance here at Simpson College south of Des Moines that, I'm sorry to say, seems reasonably accurate.
“MAGA is taking over,” he told his chilled but enraptured supporters. “On the fake news, they say MAGA represents 44 percent of the Republicans. No, no. MAGA represents 95 percent of the Republican Party.”
His numbers might be off, but the observation is true. If the results of Iowa's Republican presidential caucuses Monday night are close to the overwhelming triumph for Trump that the polls suggest, they will show there essentially is no Republican other than a MAGA Republican.
Trump's opponents deserve partial blame for that, for failing to take him on more directly. Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis offered all of the Trump thuggery and culture wars with none of the Trump pizazz. Vivek Ramaswamy promised to be Trumpier than Trump. Even former U.N. ambassador Nikki Haley, who offered the greatest contrast with Trump, was so mild in her critique of the man that she's broadly seen as auditioning to be his vice president.
Haley points out that she polls better against Biden than the others, and it's true. Were she the nominee, Republicans would likely win the presidency in a landslide. But this Republican electorate wants something different.
They want a guy who talks about being a “dictator” on day one, echoes Hitler in his rhetoric about ethnic minorities, demands absolute immunity from legal liability and threatens “bedlam” if he's prosecuted.
Let there be no more excuses made that Republican voters haven't been given an alternative. They had a choice — and they chose Trump.