Editorial: Exorcizing the GOP

Sometimes you can’t figure out where you’ve been until you come through it. That’s how our politics feels. There was a huge shift as working stiffs woke up and realized they’ve been cut out for a generation. Iowa was swept up by Donald Trump — bamboozled. He tried to overthrow the electoral process. It looked as if democracy might not stand.

Last week we wondered if we were witnessing the implosion of the Republican Party. The majority could not elect a Speaker of the House. Trump declared that the No. 3 man in the GOP caucus, Rep. Tom Emmer of Minnesota, would not stand after Emmer prominently voted to certify the election of Joe Biden as president. The right wing installed Rep. Mike Johnson of Louisiana. When asked what he was about, Johnson told reporters to read the Bible. Johnson led the movement to decertify the election results in the House. He has a couple weeks to unify the caucus around an agenda that can keep the government running and fund two wars.

The Republicans managed to get the House open. The rifts remain apparent and crippling, especially for the Old Guard. At one time, Mike Pence was a character offered by central casting to be an Iowa Caucus favorite with low-tax Main Street Republicans and evangelicals. He’s a Hoosier. He just dropped out of the presidential campaign with less than 2% of the vote. The former vice president was humiliated by Trump. His own partisans wanted to hang him on the Capitol steps.

Into the void stepped Ron DeSantis of Florida. He was Trump except he holds the Bible right side up. Gov. Kim Reynolds sidled up to him and adopted much of the Florida agenda around schools and abortion — which earned Trump’s scorn. He doesn’t need the governor right now, as DeSantis dropped 10 percentage points in the latest Iowa Poll.

Nikki Haley is picking up steam as the main alternative to Trump. She ties with DeSantis at 16% among likely Iowa Republican caucus-goers. Trump is over 40%. With his own lawyers flipping on him. Two-thirds of Iowa Republicans think Trump can beat Biden despite the prospects of being under house arrest for spilling national security secrets or undermining election officials in Georgia.

Clearly, this is not your father’s Republican Party. Certainly not the muscular internationalist party of Reagan, more like the insular and isolationist party of Hoover with a strong tinge of White nationalism. Plus, it is centered around a corrupt cult of personality that does not involve Nikki Haley.

Trump displaced the Speaker, he vetoed nominees and ultimately decided who gets to lead the House majority. He is the party.

He captivates the Iowa electorate.

“Trump has, I think not just the American people, but I think he has God on his side,” Lori Scroggin, a registered Republican from Hartley, told The Des Moines Register at Trump’s Sioux City rally on Sunday. “I think God's going to finish what he started.”

It’s hard to know where that leads, likely to a Trump victory in the caucuses and ultimately the nomination. The rest of the public is tired of Trump. It will get worse as his former lawyers and chief of staff cough up the whole truth. It is underway. He could be wearing an ankle bracelet come election day. At 77, the Good Lord could call him at any moment. If in the custody of Fulton County or the divine arbiter, where does that leave the Republican Party? Who organizes the disaffection? DeSantis can’t even muster 20%. The working class is realizing they are better off with the United Auto Workers than a contemptuous ogre in a red cap.

Iowans will wake up, too. They’re uncomfortable with the Reynolds agenda, drawn from DeSantis, that funnels tax money to school vouchers while depriving rural students of accessibility. The ground will shift as the Republicans continue to overreach on the right. The Tea Party revolutionaries of 2010 remade the party and our politics. They created a perfect opening for Trump and his authoritarian tone. When Trump is defeated by Biden a second time, will it bring the Republican Party back to its senses as a political party that respects the democratic order? The chaos surrounding the House of Representatives was yet another convulsion in our catharsis back to some sort of center and moderation. In Trump’s nomination lies the real potential for his permanent defeat, and a return to a healthy two-party system.