What if Iowa doesn't matter?

A radical proposal

(Iowa/Image created by Dall E)

By traditional campaign logic, Donald Trump did something very dumb this week: He attacked Iowa Republican Gov. Kim Reynolds.

“I opened up the Governor position for Kim Reynolds, & when she fell behind, I ENDORSED her, did big Rallies, & she won,” Trump wrote on Truth Social. “Now, she wants to remain ‘NEUTRAL.’ I don’t invite her to events!”

Trump’s outburst came in response to a New York Times piece over the weekend that seemed to suggest that Reynolds is growing increasingly closer to Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis.

That story included this key paragraph:

Ms. Reynolds has said — including privately, to Mr. Trump — that she does not plan to formally endorse a candidate in the presidential race, in keeping with a tradition that the Iowa governor stays on the sidelines, keeping the playing field level for the first G.O.P. nominating contest. But through her words and deeds, Ms. Reynolds seems to be softening the ground in Iowa for Mr. DeSantis, appearing to try to create the conditions for an opening for him to take on Mr. Trump.

Given that, pissing off Reynolds — the popular incumbent who was overwhelmingly reelected in 2022 — seems to be a dumb strategy. Why push Reynolds further into DeSantis’ camp, and give him a chance to actually win Iowa?

Like I said, from a traditional campaign approach, it makes no sense. Unless, that is, if you believe that Iowa’s caucuses — set to kick off the nominating contest on January 15 — don’t really matter all that much.

Which may be exactly what Trump thinks.

Consider the 2016 race. People forget but Donald Trump lost the caucuses to Texas Sen. Ted Cruz who, like DeSantis, had staked much of his campaign on winning there.

But, Cruz got no meaningful bump from his Iowa win; he placed a distant third behind Trump and then-Ohio Gov. John Kasich.

And the reason — or one of the main reasons WHY Cruz got no bump is because Trump refused to concede the caucuses to him.

“Ted Cruz didn’t win Iowa, he stole it,” Trump tweeted within days of the result. “That is why all of the polls were so wrong and why he got far more votes than anticipated. Bad!”

And Trump went even further — calling for the entire result to be thrown out.

“Based on the fraud committed by Senator Ted Cruz during the Iowa caucus, either a new election should take place or Cruz results nullified,” he tweeted.

The strategy was simple: Muddy the waters so much that it’s impossible for Republican voters to know what really happened in Iowa and, therefore, impossible for Cruz to build any momentum coming out of the state.

Do you have ANY doubt — based on what Trump has gone on to do and say since then — that if he loses Iowa to DeSantis this time around that he will use the exact same blueprint he used in 2016?

Of course he will! He will say that DeSantis stole the vote, that the whole thing was rigged. And, if past is prologue, plenty of voters will believe him! Which means that Trump will head to New Hampshire a week later not looking like a loser but rather playing the role he was born to play: victim.

Should he go on to win New Hampshire — as appears likely given his lead in polling there — Trump will, again, be on a glide path to being the nominee.

Iowa then is a win-win for Trump. If he actually wins the caucuses — a very real possibility — he will claim that the race is effectively over, and it likely will be.

If he loses Iowa, he will never admit he lost, claim the result was rigged and rally his base behind that idea, which, again, will likely work.

There’s one other angle to think about here too: Trump has effectively nationalized the presidential nominating process.

In years past, how a candidate felt about ethanol — a mainstay of the Iowa economy — would be critical to their success in the state.

Not it feels like those sort of state-focused conversations and issues are totally out the window. It’s all about rogue prosecutors and stolen elections these days. And Trump isn’t even trying to fake it; unlike all of his Republican rivals who flooded Iowa and New Hampshire to campaign and walk in parades over July 4, the former president did nothing of the sort.

That sort of focus on national issues — and I use that word very loosely — takes away the importance of any one state in the nomination fight. There’s no state that Trump HAS to win, therefore, because is running a sort of national campaign aimed at accruing delegates all the way through March and April of next year.

Now, make no mistake: If DeSantis — or Tim Scott or anyone other than Trump — wins in Iowa early next year, they will do their damndest to spin that victory as a pivot point in the race for president, a sign that Trump isn’t as strong as he says he is.

But, again, that’s exactly the argument Cruz made in 2016. — to no avail. Because Trump is Trump and never admits either failure or defeat.

I am not sure Trump’s split with Reynolds is part of a concerted strategy to make Iowa matter less. I think he just got pissed off and popped off.

But, I am more and more convinced that even a defeat in Iowa won’t stop or even slow the Trump train.