OPINION:
IOWA CITY, Iowa — The worst part about all of this for Democrats today is that if they had just let Donald Trump serve his second term in the White House starting Jan. 20, 2021, their whole big nightmare would be drawing to a merciful close this year.
It’s like the country song says: If I had shot her when I met her, I’d be out of jail by now.
Mr. Trump would now be a lame-duck president in a worn-out White House, and Democrats would be swooning over their superhero Pete Buttigieg, prancing around in a cape, a leotard and a hard hat and promising to fill America’s potholes.
Instead, Democrats must embark on yet another four-year death march against the MAGA king in which they are sure to lose.
The big question going into the caucuses here was whether there is room in the Republican primary cycle for an alternative to Mr. Trump.
There is not.
No matter how the media tries spinning it, Mr. Trump notched a historic victory here this week.
He did not just win Iowa. He won by the largest margin in history of any Republican candidate in a contested caucus.
He broke the 50% threshold, which means all the other contenders combined could not beat Mr. Trump. The margin by which he beat Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis and former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley was larger than the total support for either of those doomed candidates.
Vivek Ramaswamy, meanwhile, ran on the Trump agenda and vowed to defend Mr. Trump from the unconstitutional and undemocratic attacks by partisan Democrats to jail Mr. Trump or do whatever they have to do to kick him off the ballot before November’s election. By night’s end, Mr. Ramaswamy had quit the race and endorsed Mr. Trump, and he is now campaigning for him.
If Mr. Ramaswamy had quit earlier in the day, his 8% of the caucus voters surely would have accrued to Mr. Trump, meaning the former president would have been kissing 60%.
Similarly, Mr. DeSantis is also running on Mr. Trump’s America First agenda, though doing a feeble job of it. If he quit the race, at least half of his support would go to Mr. Trump.
Anyway, it is worth noting that Mr. Trump’s agenda collected more than 80% of support in the Iowa Republican caucuses. So, no, there is no room in the Republican primary campaign for an alternative to Mr. Trump, according to this first contest.
One final, crucial detail out of the Iowa caucuses spells certain defeat for Ms. Haley, who spent more money on advertising than any other candidate — only to finish a distant third.
As terribly as she performed in the Iowa caucuses, she did as well as she did only because droves of Democratic voters came out to the caucuses and switched their party registration so that they could vote for her.
This phenomenon is not new. Shrewd voters in early primary states often stage these “chaos” operations by playing in their opposing party’s contests. But here is where it gets interesting.
Whenever voters switch parties to play in the other party’s contest, it’s always to ensure the other party picks the weakest general election candidate. In other words, even Democratic voters realize that Ms. Haley would be the Republican Party’s weakest candidate come November.
Her whack-a-doodle speech in Iowa on Monday night declaring this a “two-person race” after she finished a distant third gives you a glimpse of how politically delusional she is.
Sorry, Ms. Haley, but math does not lie. A former accountant should know that. You spent the most of three to finish last — even with a major assist from Democratic voters.
And Democratic voters will do the same thing in New Hampshire next week. That is how terrified they are of facing Donald Trump in November.
They really should have just let him win in 2020.
• Charles Hurt is the opinion editor at The Washington Times.
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