Of Course It Was Trump

The wretched and inevitable in Iowa.

Photo by Jon Tyson on Unsplash

Just as widely predicted, Donald Trump won the Iowa Republican primary. Barring some major act of God or the criminal justice system, he will almost surely secure the Republican nomination for the presidency. In 2016, Trump’s ascent came as a shock, but there was some plausible naïveté among Republican voters: This guy is an outsider, he’s new, he promises to shake things up, let’s see what happens. He won, he shook things up, we saw what happened. Then, in 2020, he lost, and we saw the extend to which he would go to grab power, even at the cost of the nation. And now, Republican voters want him back.

These voters want chaos. They want cruelty. They want vengeance. They want power-grabs. More than anything, they want a sense that people like them are in control — and people who are not like them are being put back in their place.