Donald Trump dominated the January 15, 2024, Iowa caucuses, winning 98 of 99 counties in the state. More telling, he won 51 percent of the vote (56,260 votes). Though only 110,000 people voted, the turnout was impressive considering the weather. The quick-takes across the media predictably suggest the coronation of Trump might be complete by March.
Takeaways from the Iowa Republican Caucuses
https://www.cnn.com/2024/01/16/politics/takeaways-iowa-caucuses/index.htmlBy Eric Bradner, CNN
Fifty-three percent of White evangelical Christians backed Trump, to DeSantis’ 27% and Haley’s 13% — figures that underscore why Trump is the heavy favorite in South Carolina – where evangelicals make up a huge share of the party’s primary electorate – even though it’s Haley’s home state.
College graduates split somewhat evenly between Trump, Haley and DeSantis. But Trump dominated those without a college degree, with 67% support.
Maybe “only” half of Republican voters embrace Trump. That’s unacceptable to me. With this Iowa caucuses, the Republican electorate demonstrated they don’t accept my worldview. The GOP is now, without question, the party of racist, homophobic, Christian nationalism.
How can religious people, especially Christian Evangelicals, not only defend but actively support Donald Trump? I don’t understand how an Ivy League billionaire, a New York real estate developer, became the symbol of working-class resentment.
Reason lost when Donald Trump secured the 2016 Republican nomination.
In 2016 I voted against a Republican nominee. I had voted for other candidates instead of Republicans in state and national elections, yes, but in 2016 voting against Donald Trump was a moral imperative.
As I wrote at the time, I didn’t fear Trump. I understood some reasons for supporting Trump.
Now, we know who Donald Trump is, and it isn’t entertaining. January 6, 2021, should have clarified how dangerous Trump might be if reelected. But, people without a college degree support him, especially white, religious voters. Why? I do not understand this moment in history, despite data and focus groups revealing how partisan and divided we are.
The Democrats have been losing working-class voters, defined as those with hourly wages, since the 2012 election. Once upon a time, Democrats assumed “demography is destiny.” As the percentage of non-White voters increases, Democrats should enjoy an electoral advantage. Yet, that’s not how things are turning out.
Depending on how one looks at the data, we are approaching or have passed a half-century transition of the parties. The Southern Strategy technically began within both political parties immediately after Reconstruction. The parties realized they needed Southern seats in the House and Senate to control Congress. But, the infamous “Southern Strategy” of today’s Republican Party was described in earnest by Richard Nixon’s adviser Kevin Phillips.
Philips died in 2023, having lived to see the lasting consequences of the 1964-68 effort to realign the GOP. The “Party of Lincoln” shifted slowly, as did the Democratic Party. But, after Dwight D. Eisenhower, the Republic Party entered a tailspin.
Ronald Reagan was a temporary, and possibly superficial, reset for the GOP. The party appealed to groups that shouldn’t have been within the same tent: college-educated moderates and working-class social conservatives. Reagan’s speeches would appeal to these dissimilar audiences, carefully crafted to be coded but not offensive.
My first presidential election was 1988. While I was in college, many of my friends identified as “Reagan Revolution” Republicans. Their grandparents and parents supported Reagan. My generation might have belonged firmly to the GOP… had the GOP not slid right back into a Nixonian-Dixiecrat abyss. Some of us clung longer than others to the mythology of Rockefeller Republicans, stories of Nelson Rockefeller and Dwight D. Eisenhower promoting a conservatism that rejected extremism and favored gradual change.
The Republic Party of Generation X was led by a set of pro-market college-educated elites. College-educated? Married? Entrepreneurs? Managers? Suburban? Those were Republican voters.
Though I wasn’t a registered Republican, I often voted for Republicans until California Governor Pete Wilson pushed Prop 187 in 1994. The California GOP embraced anti-immigrant policies and won. Prop 187 was approved by voters, and it was the first of several indications that voters, even in California, respond to fear.
Today, few of my friends consider themselves Republicans or Republican-leaning. The college-educated voters who had been split between the parties now vote for Democrats.
For a long time, we rationalized voting for Republicans. We agreed with them on economic issues and trusted them on foreign policy. Sure, there were social conservatives, but certainly, the GOP wasn’t serious about embracing the far-right insanity.
Whatever Republican candidates said, reason would prevail once they were elected. Surely the Supreme Court would never really alter or overturn Roe v. Wade. Surely the GOP would never embrace isolationism. Surely the party would never….
And now, I will never, never vote for any Republican unwilling to reject and refute Donald Trump.
I remain an (almost) classical liberal, without a political home. I live in Texas, so voting against Trump won’t matter this November. Still, I must vote against what Trump represents.
