So, the Iowa caucuses are now over and ostensibly so is the suspense. The pundits on both ends of the political spectrum want us to believe Donald Trump is the inevitable Republican nominee for President of the United States.
First, in the corner to my left, the Dems so want Trump to be the anointed one, because he’s the only Republican in the field that Biden can beat. They want Trump to be the nominee. They need Trump to be the nominee.
In the corner to my right, the Trumpers are trumpeting the former president’s impressive Iowa win as a knockout blow to the other candidates.
Iowa, they say, showed up Ron DeSantis for what he is, a weak Trump wannabe who was easily pummeled by the former president. They also say Nikki Haley can’t punch above her weight with the mighty MAGA-ites and that she’s too old-school Republican.
DeSantis and Haley’s chances for the nomination, the experts say, are as slim as getting from Manhattan to JFK airport in an Uber in less than an hour. Or, as George Costanza said in the Seinfeld roommate switch episode, it can’t be done!
Hold onto your mansierres my friends and let me remind you, George did figure out how to pull off the switch.
But can DeSantis and Haley pull off a switch and make Republican primary voters abandon Trump?
Yes and no. More precisely, no and she’d better.
The Florida governor spent tons of time and poured tons of campaign cash trying to leave Iowa as the guy to beat. That clearly didn’t happen. He didn’t even come close. Trump smoked him, especially amongst the evangelicals and blue collar voters. DeSantis didn’t win any county in the statewide caucus. Trump won them all save one, where Haley prevailed.
If the MAGA master wasn’t running then maybe DeSantis would have a shot. But the GOP faithful say, why vote for an imitation if you can vote for the genuine article?
And DeSantis is doing so poorly in New Hampshire he says he’s now focusing all his attention on the next primary, the one in South Carolina.
Guess what? He’s going to get creamed there, too.
It’s over for DeSantis. He’s one of the biggest busts since Beto O’Rourke and New Coke.
It’s now as clear as the water in Key West that DeSantis won’t make it to Washington, DC as president. Back to Tallahassee he goes, making sure his state’s New York transplants are happy with their tax brackets.
What about Nikki Haley? She too lost in Iowa, but she did kinda okay for someone who set very low expectations. For her, New Hampshire is where she must trim Trump’s sails.
That state is full of independents who can vote in the Republican primary. She got endorsed by New Hampshire’s popular governor, Chris Sununu. And Chris Christie, by dropping out of the race, gave her a small gift of a couple of votes. Of course, Christie being Christie, he trashed her on an open mic on his way out.
Here’s the bottom line. Haley needs to win the Granite State or come within a strand of Trump’s orange hair to give her momentum going into her home state primary of South Carolina, where the polls right now have her way behind the Donald.
To have any shot at the nomination, Haley must somehow get to Super Tuesday on March 5.
That’s the thumbnail sketch of the state of the Republican presidential race right now. Pretty simple. Of course, the thumb-suckers are trying to mine every bit of minutia to keep the news cycle fresh and their dwindling numbers of viewers tuned in.
As “inevitable” as Trump redux seems to be right now to the rightists and to the leftists, there is a big thing that hangs over his head, like one of his gaudy, gilded Mar-a-Lago chandeliers.
It’s something that’s never happened in a US presidential election. He’s under four criminal indictments, two of them are federal and one of those is likely to go to trial before election day.
No one knows what the effect on the race will be when the Feds lay out their case against Trump allegedly trying to overturn the results of the 2020 election.
There’s a growing number of conservative federal judges who are ruminating that a convicted felon cannot be president.
When it comes to Trump and the unprecedented nature of the legal problems he faces, I say it’s an overreach to say it’s over after Iowa.
For now, permit the pundits to preachify and allow the experts to expound. Let some columnists heap calumny on another Trump candidacy while others crown him king before his coronation.
Time is running out and Haley must convince Republican voters to dump Trump and go out with her.
George Costanza figured out a way for Jerry to do the impossible, to make the big roommate switch. Can Nikki Haley figure out how to make the big voter switch?
Maybe she should hire George.