Donald Trump more than doubled the tally of the runner-up in the Iowa caucuses, despite frigid temperatures 15 degrees colder than its prior record. Trump proved his mastery of grassroots politics better than his rivals, and this bodes well for him in the general election.
Trump won Iowa outright with 51% of the vote, which was really 59% when combined with the votes for Vivek Ramaswamy who promptly endorsed Trump. The globalist candidate Nikki Haley garnered a meager 19%, a pathetic voter showing for the Never-Trumpers despite nearly unlimited funding for their America Last agenda.
Trump has a far stronger campaign operation than in 2016, as his opponents begrudgingly concede now. To win Iowa so decisively, Trump developed a formidable boots-on-the-ground army of volunteers who are essential to winning elections today by getting out the vote.
Trump overcame both the popular Iowa Republican governor, Kim Reynolds, and the king of the evangelical grassroots there, Bob Vander Plaats, both of whom endorsed Ron DeSantis as he campaigned hard in every one of Iowa’s 99 counties. Trump triumphed against the relentless barrage of Leftist lawfare, which has failed to deter anyone from voting for Trump.
Iowa was the Waterloo for the Never-Trumpers, who have failed miserably in their vindictive attempts to stop Trump. Liz Cheney, Karl Rove, Mitt Romney, and their comrades should accept their crushing defeat not only in Waterloo, Iowa, but virtually everywhere in this bellwether midwestern state.
Trump’s spectacular victory was also a triumph for grassroots politics against the overpaid political consultants who wasted millions of dollars on television ads and so-called messaging. Trump built a crackerjack ground game that enlisted precinct captains who could identify at least ten Trump supporters promising to show up and vote at the caucuses.
The Trump campaign provided training to his precinct captains, which other Republican candidates typically fail to do, with the honor of receiving gold-and-white “Trump Caucus Captain” hats. These volunteers were offered the opportunity to be invited to a special Trump event at the upcoming Republican National Convention in Milwaukee in mid-July.
Joe Biden’s approval rating has fallen to 33% in the recent ABC News/Ipsos poll, the lowest recorded in 15 years. Like an aging athlete whose performance sharply declines near retirement, there is no viable way for the 81-year-old Biden to improve and no incumbent would ordinarily be reelected with such a low rating.
But Biden Democrats are counting on exploiting early and mail-in voting to reelect him no matter how low his approval rating plummets along with his mental capacity. In his victory speech Monday night, Trump vowed to end the easily corrupted early voting and more than half the state legislatures could do this prior to the general election this fall.
A Democrat-appointed federal judge in Ohio recently upheld election integrity reforms enacted a year ago by that state’s legislature. On January 8, Judge Donald Nugent ruled in favor of a photo identification requirement, a reduction in the number of drop-boxes for ballot dumps, and a tightening of rules for in-person and mail-in voting, in Northeast Ohio Coalition for the Homeless v. LaRose.
“That the State accommodates some voters by permitting (not requiring) the casting of absentee or provisional ballots, is an indulgence — not a constitutional imperative,” declared this federal judge while quoting the words of Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia from the seminal decision upholding voter ID. Nothing requires states to allow the vast periods of early and mail-in voting and the use of numerous drop-boxes for ballot dumps, which blight elections.
“Maintaining confidence in the integrity of our electoral processes is essential to the functioning of our participatory democracy,” the federal Judge Nugent emphasized, again quoting precedent by the Supreme Court. States have a compelling “interest in deterring, preventing, and identifying voter fraud,” and proof of the occurrence of voter fraud is not necessary before a state legislature acts to prevent it.
Relying on a 6-3 Supreme Court decision from less than three years ago, the federal court noted that “Supreme Court precedent also instructs that States are not required to wait for voter fraud — and the ensuing damage to public confidence in the electoral process — to occur before taking efforts to protect their elections. States are permitted to regulate prophylactically to prevent voter fraud before it occurs, or public confidence in elections is damaged by it.”
All states should make their elections more like the just-concluded Iowa caucuses: in-person voting on the day of the election, with all ballots counted at the polling place so that results can be announced by 9 p.m. the same evening. Republican state legislators should act swiftly in their new sessions, many of which have just begun, to adopt voter integrity laws to safeguard the upcoming presidential election against fraud.
John and Andy Schlafly are sons of Phyllis Schlafly (1924-2016) and lead the continuing Phyllis Schlafly Eagles organizations with writing and policy work.
