The following is a transcript from the Pro America Report.
Welcome. Welcome to the Pro America Report. I’m Ed Martin, great to be With you, we’ve got a lot to cover today, let me. Let me talk. I want to talk about Iowa. I’m talk about Iowa. Tell you two things about Iowa, two things that you need to know.
One, I’ll make a prediction about what’s gonna happen in Iowa. And two, I’ll tell you why Iowa is such a problem. And you’re seeing the. You’re seeing the Democrats actually react first to the problem of Iowa, and the problem is Iowa is uncontrollable, uncontrollable by the elites in Washington by the elites in media. And so they they they’re starting to say maybe Iowa is not as useful as we thought, but we’ll get to that in a moment.
Welcome. It’s Ed Martin here on the Pro America Report. Don’t forget go to proamericareport.com, Tune in there and check out what’s going on. You could see this. I will be posting this over there at Pro America Report. Excuse me? Proamericareport.com. It’s a substack. You can pass this on to your friends and others. And and be sure to check out my writings there. I’m going to be doing a lot more. You can also sign up for the daily e-mail, the WYNK at PhyllisSchlafly.com. I know it’s a lot to do, but PhyllisSchlafly.com sign up at Daily WYNK. What you need to know, that’s what we get To today, what you Need to know, what you need to know.
First of all what you know is Vivek Ramaswamy Is playing a role. Exactly like Donald Trump would want. Now, what do I mean by that? I don’t know if Donald Trump and Vivek Ramaswamy ever met, let alone I do. I think. I don’t think that they ever coordinated. But what Vivek Ramaswamy has done in the last day and 1/2 or two days up in Iowa has become a target of Trump. Trump said, you know, Vivek’s not real MAGA. I don’t know what he’s doing. I liked him better when he was on my side and what has happened in Iowa is the conversation has been from lots of people. Hey, hey, hey. What if we get that on the on the Vivek train, and you know who’s not moving? There’s no one moving from Trump voter in Iowa to Vivek voter in Iowa. That’s not happening. If you’re Trump, you’re already Trump and you’re locked in and he’s about 50% of all Iowa caucus goers. No matter all the rest of them will talk in a minute. All the rest of the money and time spent by other candidates. So Trump is locked in and winning. What Vivek is doing is pulling people away from not Trump. So there’s people that are looking up and they’re saying, you know, I thought DeSantis would be more energetic. He’s not. I’ll go over here with Vivek. I thought Haley was conservative. She’s not. I’ll go over here. What Vivek Ramaswamy is doing. Is ensuring that the headline out of Iowa is Trump wins huge. And the second headline will be Vivek is surging, which means it’s the end of the candidates that the establishment in Washington and the establishment in the in the party in the Republican Party the that’s the the end of the the end of Nikki Haley. And it’s the end of Ron DeSantis because Vivek surges. Only a little bit he only has to surge a little bit. Even if Nikki Haley or Ron DeSantis come in second, if they come in second at lower levels than they were supposed to they’re over they’re over.
So Iowa is playing out again perfectly for Trump. Absolutely, perfectly. And when I say again, I mean it seems like he has this knack for turning whatever situation he’s got into the into the thing that works the best for him. So you know, you you have had. So let’s pause for a second and say what’s going on.
Iowa will have under 200,000 Republicans caucus. Later today in the evening on Monday, less than 200,000, in fact, with the weather, it’s probably gonna be like 160, 170, but it’s high. It could be 200,000. And there’s some rumor that the Democrats and Independents will try to cross over. Who knows? But you have seen candidates spend about six or eight months. In Iowa, spending money on everything from hot dogs at the State Fair to TV ads on local TV and everywhere in between – hotel rooms, restaurants, automobiles, gas stations, repair shops, ice cream huts, whatever you pick it, go one after another, one after another, one after another, Iowa experiences every four years by being the first in the nation. They experience a massive massive. Economic stimulus. And the Democrats gave up on it, by the way. You know, Joe Biden has given up on it. He’s forcing his way. They didn’t like it, but they didn’t like it because what happened was Donald Trump. So usually in order to compete in Iowa, you have to have, I don’t know, $50,000,000. $25 to $50 million spending on how you look at it. So you’ve gotta have big donors. You gotta be a governor that can shake down donors or you have to be someone who’s charismatic and can get a bunch of money. You have to have a grassroots operation that could pop. Santorum had that. But he was a senator. He was a US. Senator who got a lot of money. Even though he didn’t have enough and he he got, you know, he sort of got beat. Romney. That was a money guy. McCain. These are money people. These are people that have the ability to get establishment money or have their own money and be able to carry the day. So you know, Scott Walker, he didn’t even stay in long enough to run but he was raising $100 million, a $150 million. Same thing with Jeb Bush because they were governors. So Iowa is this sort of amazing place where $150 million will be spent in order for a. 150. To 200,000 people to caucus, and they will win over the field. And the same thing happens in North, New Hampshire and South Carolina and Nevada. Somehow these four states are positioned at the front.
Now, there’s an article in Politico that describes how it was a Democrat who set up this system and basically broke the corruption of the smoke filled room, picking the candidate and forced it out to the primary process. But like anything else where there’s power and money Involved the money that’s involved. We’ll figure out how to steer it. And now the primary process. And I sat on the Republican National Committee for a couple of years. I was inside it.
The primary process is rigged because in order to Compete in these Four very different states, Iowa, New Hampshire, South Carolina and Nevada, and then on to Super Tuesday. You have to have Hundreds of millions of dollars. Because you’re not doing. You’re not doing it. You’re doing it by direct mail and and radio and TV. And So what happens is the only people that can compete at that level are people who have massive amounts of money. Or and the ability to get massive amounts of money, usually governors, sometimes senators, sometimes independently wealthy people. And Trump shattered this system because he was a master at earned media. He had 90 plus percent name ID and he knew how to play the game. He still does.
And so everybody else is stumbling along, trying to raise 10s of millions of dollars. It’s why Nikki Haley had to take the Koch network support. It’s why Ron DeSantis had to have a super PAC set up with a massive amount of money in it. The system doesn’t allow you to you, you can’t go in and be a grassroots candidate and succeed unless you have. A a a hook. A way to get there and the but.
But the way to. Get there is usually Money. I mean, you know Rick Santorum again, he was a US senator for two terms. He had been a congressman for, I think, 3 terms. He was a well known, you know, a commodity in terms of people could talk to him. He could talk to donors. He could raise money. And he had an energetic base. Huckabee was an exception, but Huckabee couldn’t get it done. And you know, Huckabee didn’t have as big a money thing, although little little known people, Sarah Huckabee Sanders was running his super PAC. Or maybe, say differently, she I think she was a consultant to the campaign. So she was in between both worlds.
But here’s my prediction. Here’s my prediction. That Vivek Ramaswamy will do better than expected but still not very good. But more importantly, it will make it so that DeSantis and Nikki Haley underperform and they’re over. Then the game is over and Trump will do just what Trump does because Trump supporters aren’t leaving because of Vivek. They’re not leaving because of of Nikki. They’re not leaving because they’re they’re with Trump.
And when Trump says you gotta, you know, fight through the snow, Trump supporters are there and they’re clear. They see what’s at stake. They’re not going away.
So watch in Iowa, that dynamic and then say to yourself. The Democrats have already dumped Iowa. They won’t. They don’t count Iowa. They don’t want to count it. They’re going to go to New Hampshire and South Carolina.
And eventually I think you’re going to see other other, you know, when the Republican party’s wide open, you might see a movement to say, you know what, we cannot have it be that once one place gets all the benefit. You know, early benefit, money wise and gets all the ability to push to preference because what happens is the big money means that the big money picks, picks who got gets dropped out, who gets knocked out and again that’s why Vivek is so interesting. He’s not one of the establishment lanes in terms of money. I don’t really. I don’t really like him or trust him, but that’s because I’ve heard a lot about his some different things. I’m not sure I don’t trust him. I certainly think he’s been extraordinary communicator and anytime. You can have a. A dark skinned American entrepreneur talking about the Republican Party and ending Wokeness you have to tip your hat and say this is not bad. For the Republicans, in terms of messaging, messengers.
So the the reality is the reality is that Iowa will be a winner again and it may become going forward something of a problem for Iowa to sustain that. But we’ll see. We’ll see. So watch for that tonight. Watch that tonight, Vivek Ramaswamy and and again, Trump. What Trump did was when he saw Vivek say something that was a little off key for Vivek about, you know, vote for me. I’ll protect. Trump, he jumped on it. And what Trump did was signal to people if you hate me, Vivek is someone I don’t like. You can go to him and those people, as I told you are are less energetic than they want than they expected over De Santis and and De Santis has been spending 10s of millions of dollars to make you think Nikki Haley’s terrible and she is pretty bad, in my opinion. She’s not my favorite. So you’ve got a dynamic where all the forces have have arrayed. So that that nobody’s leaving Trump to vote for Vivek, nobody’s. So it’s gonna be Trump. It’s gonna be Trump big and more importantly, the back end is going to clear, what has happened is going to make sure that people that don’t want Trump are splintered between the three candidates that are left. And that will be to the detriment of Nikki Haley and Ron DeSantis. Watch for it.
All right, we’ll take a break. Be right back. It’s Ed Martin here. On the Pro America Report back in a moment.
