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      Ron DeSantis’s Campaign Trail Quirk: The Word ‘Do’

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      All humans have oddities in the ways they speak. But those of presidential candidates are exposed more than most. All day, the candidates talk. And talk. And talk. Sometimes in scripted stump speeches, sometimes in off-the-cuff remarks to voters and the news media.And few talk more than Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida, who, in trying to make up his deficit in the polls, will on a typical day host five events for voters, sit for three interviews on television and hold a gaggle with reporters.Over the weeks and months on the campaign trail, one of Mr. DeSantis’s most curious verbal quirks has become clear: the way he sometimes uses the word “do.”During a CNN debate last week, Mr. DeSantis pledged to help seniors afford prescription drugs.“I want seniors to be able to do,” he said.Not “do” something. Just do. There is no word missing. That’s the full quote. In Mr. DeSantis’s parlance, the verb does not always require a direct object.Similarly, at a barbecue restaurant in Ames, Iowa, the next day, he said that as president he would defund the United Nations. “You’re going to see a lot of changes into how we do,” he vowed.Discussing the freezing weather with a crowd of Iowans, the Florida-born Mr. DeSantis remarked that once the temperature fell below zero, “with the windchill on just your exposed skin, it really, really starts to do.”And when a voter in Decorah asked if he would move the Department of Agriculture’s headquarters to Iowa, the governor said yes — in his typical fashion.“Iowa has first dibs on the Department of Agriculture,” a grinning Mr. DeSantis replied. “You guys want it, we’re going to do!”For Mr. DeSantis, who pitches himself as a take-charge, get-it-done leader, “do” is not just a verb. It can be an idea, a promise, a way to solve the problems that bedevil America. All of us can — and should — do.Of course, Mr. DeSantis also uses the word in the more traditional sense. But ask him if he thinks his rigorous campaigning schedule will help him win the Iowa caucuses on Monday?“I’ve done it right, I think Iowans appreciate that,” he said. “And we’re going to do.” More

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      Asa Hutchinson on staying in the race and the Republican party: ‘We’re in trouble’

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      Asa Hutchinson spent Friday night at a rodeo in Des Moines, watching cowboys ride broncos while holding on for dear life. “You have to only hold on to the horse with one hand and so you’ve always got to be keeping the other hand up, and you’ve got to do that for eight seconds with that bronco bucking like crazy,” Hutchinson explains. “One of them decided to preserve themselves and so grabbed hold with two hands. They’re disqualified.”America in the Donald Trump years can feel like a wild horse trying to throw off its rider but Hutchinson is still clinging on with one hand. He has made around 60 trips to a hundred cities in Iowa over the past year in a long shot bid for the White House. He has embarked on a solemn crusade against Trump in a state where the former president retains a cult-like following.But he enjoys one advantage over his nemesis: whereas Trump has set impossibly high expectations for Monday’s Iowa caucuses, Hutchinson’s performance will disappoint no one: his support stands at 1% in the final NBC News/Des Moines Register/Mediacom Iowa poll. Jonathan Capehart, a host on the MSNBC network, admitted on Saturday: “I’d forgotten that Asa Hutchinson, the former governor of Arkansas, is still in the race.”If life is tough at the top, it can also be hard at the bottom. Over a lunch of chicken and a waffle with syrup at a restaurant in snowy dowtown Des Moines, Hutchinson recalls his struggle earlier that morning for votes in the Iowa caucuses, which require people to show up in person – no absentee voting is allowed.“Somebody said, this lady here is about ready to support you but she has a few questions. So I call her up, spend 25 minutes answering very detailed questions on how I’m going to constrain the growth of federal government and on and on and on, even covering abortion issues and so on. And at the end of it, she says she’s about to get in the car to go to Florida. I said, you mean you’re not going to be in the caucus next week? And she said, no, but I’ll vote for you in November!”They don’t make Republicans like Hutchinson any more. Last year the Politico website called him “the most normal Republican presidential candidate”. He calls himself a “Ronald Reagan conservative”, appointed by Reagan as the youngest US attorney in the country at the time at the age of 31. He served in Congress and was head of the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) in the George W Bush administration. Like Bill Clinton, he had two terms as governor of Arkansas.Now 73, Hutchinson launched his White House bid in April in his hometown of Bentonville, pledging to reform federal law enforcement agencies and “bring out the best of America”. He also called on Trump, who had just been indicted by a grand jury in New York over hush money payments, to drop out of the race, contending that the office is more important than any individual.“I believe in traditional conservative principles and Donald Trump has tried to reshape our party into an ego-driven machine that I don’t think reflects well in our country or our party,” he says.In some ways Hutchinson’s past election campaigns in Arkansas, another agricultural state with a similar sized population, were good preparation for Iowa. He has smaller resources than any other candidate but leanness has an upside: fewer cost overheads and fewer bills to pay. As of last September, he had spent less than $1m.“What has been helpful to us is that we didn’t build a Boeing 737 aircraft to campaign on,” he says cheerfully. “We built a Cessna and so it takes a lot less money to keep the Cessna in the air than it does the Boeing.”Despite the metaphor, Hutchinson has often taken long road trips while rival candidates are flying, sometimes in his own car or the cheapest rental available. The New York Times newspaper noted that once, when his flight from Chicago to Des Moines was cancelled, Hutchinson pooled his money with three strangers to rent a car and drove to Iowa for his campaign stops. Glamorous it isn’t.“If you’re a well-funded campaign you’re going to have advanced teams and support but, if you don’t have mega-donors behind you, you’re driving with volunteers or campaign staff three hours to a city in northern Iowa, making calls as you go to donors across the country, making sure that you can keep a campaign going.“You get there and you might have a small crowd. You might be at a Pizza Ranch and you make your case and you take names and you build your organisation one step at a time.”Still, like others before him, Hutchinson found that Iowans take their first-in-the-nation responsibility serious and ask detailed questions about border security and other issues. “I spoke to a group of law students and one of the questions was, what’s your position on the Jones Act? I hadn’t thought about the Jones Act since I was in law school and I’m not sure I thought about it then because I didn’t study maritime law.”There are also differences from state to state. “Here in Iowa, you don’t get asked about climate change and, if you do it is, ‘You don’t really believe in that, do you?’ But in New Hampshire you campaign and they’re very serious about it and you’ve got to pay attention to the consistency of your answers.”If history does remember Hutchinson’s quixotic campaign, it will be for what he didn’t do one night in August in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. At the first Republican primary debate – the only one for which Hutchinson qualified – moderator Bret Baier asked the eight candidates if they would still support Trump if he is convicted in any of the four criminal cases against him but still nominated.The hands of Vivek Ramaswamy, Tim Scott, Nikki Haley and Doug Burgum rose in unison. Ron DeSantis and Mike Pence appeared to hesitate but then did likewise. Chris Christie made a strange gesture and claimed that he was wagging his finger. Hutchinson alone kept his hand firmly at his side.What did that moment tell him about the Republican party? “We’re in trouble and it’s actually gotten worse since then. I’m the only candidate in the race that hasn’t promised a pardon to Donald Trump and that’s so fundamental: you don’t promise pardons in the middle of a political campaign.“Secondly, it undermines our justice system where a jury’s going to determine this and for pardons to be out there in the middle of a debate diminishes the importance of what’s happening in the courtroom.”Taking such a stand, Hutchinson could be forgiven for feeling lonely. But he says: “It was lonely when I was about the only Republican in Arkansas. It’s a red state now but when I finished law school, I was told if you’re going to have any career in the law as a judge or a prosecutor, you’d better be a Democrat.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotion“It was a totally blue state – Clinton was the governor – and I fought a very lonely battle building a Republican party in Arkansas and we were successful at that. I’m used to fighting battles that are uphill but important and I see this the same way.”Hutchinson voted for Trump in 2016 and 2020 but could not stomach the election lies that came in the build-up to and immediately after the incumbent president’s defeat by Joe Biden. “When I saw his refusal to acknowledge the election, but also even the refusal to go to the inauguration, that was un-American to me.“It’s not leadership. I made sure I was there at that inaugural just to showcase the peaceful transfer of power is important and the fact that, even as Republicans, we want the best for America.”Like many, Hutchinson assumed that Trump was washed up after the January 6 insurrection as senior Republicans including Kevin McCarthy finally appeared to break from him. “But then shortly after those clear statements of rebuke and holding him accountable and indicating he’s finished then all of a sudden you see them running down to Mar-a-Lago and empowering him again and so that was almost as a tragic day as January 6. They went down there and kissed the ring.”Since then Trump and his allies have spent three years rewriting the history of January 6. Republicans filibustered the creation of a 9/11-style commission to investigate it and dismissed a congressional committee as a partisan exercise. When Trump was indicted over his part in the insurrection, Republicans bought into his claim of a “weaponised” justice system. He has recently taken to describing rioters who were prosecuted and imprisoned as “hostages”.Hutchinson reflects: “It’s shocking and troubling because this is not something we have to wonder about what happened. We all saw it with our own eyes. It was an attack on police. It was an attack on the rule of law and it was an attack on the Congress.“There’s no doubt what that was and it was not a patriotic act and for Donald Trump to put forth that lie is dismaying, but it’s even more troubling that so many are buying into that language. Whenever I think of hostages, I think of our American citizens and other world citizens that are hostages right now in the tunnels in Palestine by Hamas. What happened that day was not patriotic and those people who did it are not hostages.”As former congresswoman Liz Cheney and others have discovered, such expressions of dissent are regarded as heresy in the Make America great again universe. But on the campaign trail in Iowa, Hutchinson’s conversations with Trump supporters were cordial.He found that they compare the ex-president’s economy favourably with Biden’s and regard him as the unfairly treated victim of a politically biased establishment. But they also expressed concern about his legal woes and whether he can win a general election.“Many of them said, ‘Yeah, I’m for Trump, I know he’s got real problems but I like his policies, I just wish he’d keep his mouth shut.’ You hear that a lot and that reflects to me some very weak support for Trump, that he’s sort of in a default position as an incumbent but if someone else surfaces that can convince them they’ve got the right policy direction for the country and is not chaotic, then those votes can be changed.”Hutchinson adds: “You’ve got Trump at 50%. There’s a question as to whether he’s going to meet those expectations on Monday night and then, secondly, you’ve got probably half of those that are subject to change as you go into this year.”Burgum, Scott, Pence and other candidates have come and gone before Iowa. Even Christie, more pugilistic in his anti-Trump mission, bowed out this week. Yet Hutchinson dutifully marches on. What will count as a good result on Monday, predicted to be the coldest caucus day ever?“You’ve just got to beat expectations. A lot of people have counted us out and so if we can exceed those expectations that should be a storyline. We’ll just have to measure wherever we finish here and see whether we’ve got a sufficient boost to create more momentum for New Hampshire and further down the line.“It’s important, particularly when the number of voices out there is diminished, that there’s someone that speaks clearly who’s in the race because this year is very unpredictable.” More

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      The Iowa Caucuses Are Not a Delightful Game

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      Ah, the Iowa caucuses. So much drama. So much antici … pation. So much money and energy spent on an antidemocratic process in a state with a pretty dismal track record of picking presidential nominees.And yet! Just because the system is flawed doesn’t mean the stakes aren’t real — and brutal. The outcome of Monday night’s Republican vote will be pounced on by the political world and instantly shredded, devoured and digested like a rump roast tossed into a gator pond. It might not change anything. But it also might turbocharge or deflate this or that candidacy as the whole primary pageant barrels toward New Hampshire and beyond.Even before the official results start being reported, the campaigns and their allies will crank the spin energy up to 11. Because Iowa is never really about who wins the actual caucuses so much as about who wins the Expectations Game. And that game comes with a host of ultra-fuzzy question cards: How many “tickets” are there out of the state — meaning, should the third-place finisher be taken seriously? What counts as a second-place victory? What if the first-place finisher wildly underperforms? What if a blizzard or minus 30-degree wind chills keep most people home? (Someone remind me why a state like Arizona can’t go first.)As you can imagine, this is not a lighthearted game like, say, charades or Hungry Hungry Hippos. It is complicated and grinding, the rules shift, and victory is highly subjective, relying on the savvy of the players’ pre- and postgame spinning. And this election, with Donald Trump dominating the race as a quasi-incumbent cult-of-personality leader, the known unknowns are even knottier.What if Mr. Trump cracks 50 percent? (I’m guessing he will but am hoping to be wrong.) If so, is the race basically over? What if he pulls only 45 percent? 40? If Nikki Haley squeaks past Ron DeSantis, should he drop out? What if she smokes him? Could any third-place showing count as a win for Ms. Haley? And my obsession: What degree of belly flop could persuade Vivek Ramaswamy to leave politics forever?The top contenders have approached the expectations game differently. Heading into the final stretch, Mr. DeSantis has been all sass and swagger, predicting total victory. “We’re going to win here in Iowa,” he assured Fox News shortly before Christmas. Bold strategy, but bluffing is perhaps his only hope. The guy has bet everything on the caucuses. If he goes down hard, and certainly if Ms. Haley bests him, you will hear the sound of pundits, political opponents and quite possibly the rest of his disgusted party pounding nails into the coffin of his candidacy. Even so, raising the bar leaves him even less wiggle room to recover from anything other than a first-place showing — which pretty much no one expects.Mr. Trump has been a bit cagier. He has been crowing about crushing it in the polling, pushing the expectations bar ever higher. “The poll numbers are scary because we’re leading by so much,” he bragged at a rally in Waterloo, Iowa, last month.But the man is no idiot. He has been hedging his boasts, telling Iowa fans he is a little nervous that he is so overwhelmingly popular that they might feel comfortable skipping the caucuses. “You got to show up,” he urged supporters at the Waterloo event. “Even if you think we’re going to win by a lot.” In case things go sideways, he has laid the groundwork for a quintessentially Trumpian message: I am such a huge winner that I (almost) lost!Ms. Haley is attempting a more complicated game plan. Her politics aren’t well suited for Iowa, where the G.O.P. is dominated by white evangelicals. She hasn’t spent as much time in the state as Mr. DeSantis or built a ground game anywhere nearly as elaborate. Instead, she has gone with a classic Iowa move: making clear that she expects to lose the race. That way, no one expects much from her, and even a lackluster showing can be brushed off or even spun as a win. Thus, we see her spreading the word that she is looking beyond Iowa to the broader playing field — at times perhaps a bit too aggressively, as when she quipped to a crowd in New Hampshire that their job was to “correct” Iowa’s vote.Note: A candidate needs to keep a tight grip on her spin machine at all times lest it bite her on the butt.This is not a new strategy, and Team Haley isn’t lowering the Iowa bar as far as some past campaigns. In the 2000 Republican contest, Senator John McCain, with his maverick brand, opted to officially skip Iowa altogether and insisted that it would be a miracle if he got any support there at all. I still have fond memories from that race (my first presidential campaign) of tracking down Team McCain’s quasi-official point person in Iowa, who was clearly nervous that I might get the impression the senator actually cared about the state.It’s not just the candidates who have a lot riding on Iowa this year. As usual, Mr. Trump is disrupting all the norms and rules, and a Trump blowout would be an embarrassment for some of the state’s traditional power brokers. Notably, Mr. DeSantis worked his boots off to score the backing of the state’s popular Republican governor, Kim Reynolds. He won over Steve Deace, a prominent conservative radio host there. And he went hard after the evangelical kingmakers, securing the endorsement of the most prominent, Bob Vander Plaats, the head of the Family Leader. But the party faithful, especially the evangelical grass roots, may very well go all in for Mr. Trump, dismissing the influence of their usual influencers.A Trump rout would also raise questions about the fetishization of Iowa’s retail politics. Iowa trumpets its image as a state that expects personal attention from presidential wannabes, big and small. Witness Mr. DeSantis boasting endlessly about how he has been to “all 99 counties.”But Mr. Trump? He has spent little time in the state, mostly headlining the big, impersonal pep rallies his ego so craves. He has relied heavily on surrogates, and his team didn’t bother fielding a big door-knocking operation. Indeed, it didn’t focus on its ground game much at all until relatively late. Like any entitled celebrity, the MAGA king jetted in and out of the state, in between his courthouse visits and Mar-a-Lago conclaves, leaving the tedious unglamorous stuff to his courtiers.Although it’s not as specifically Iowa-focused, the notion that political debates matter will suffer further decline if Mr. Trump steamrolls the field. It was painful enough watching the non-Trump contenders tear into one another through five debates and 10 hours. The very real possibility that it was all for naught is enough to make one question the entire system.This could be a bad, even dangerous year for the Iowa caucuses in general. Why should Republican presidential contenders lavish all that love on the state just to get thrown over for a guy who couldn’t be bothered to do more than the minimum? The caucuses already have faced criticism in recent years because of operational glitches, the unrepresentativeness of Iowa’s electorate (too white, too old, too rural …) and the exclusionary nature of the process. The Democrats got fed up enough to kill their caucuses this election. What if Republicans start thinking along the same lines?As someone who doesn’t care for the caucuses, I won’t shed any tears if that happens. But I’m guessing plenty of other folks feel differently — especially in Iowa.And so here we go, with so very much at stake. Once more unto the breach.The Times is committed to publishing a diversity of letters to the editor. We’d like to hear what you think about this or any of our articles. Here are some tips. And here’s our email: letters@nytimes.com.Follow the New York Times Opinion section on Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, X and Threads. More

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      It’s Dangerously Cold in Iowa. What Does That Mean for Voting?

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      Vishakha Darbha and Iowa is in a deep freeze. Subzero temperatures — and a blizzard — have thrown many of the weekend’s highly choreographed events into question, leaving observers wondering if the weather could alter the election results. In this audio report from the frozen Hawkeye state, Opinion writer Katherine Miller describes what it’s like to cover the historic caucus and considers how the inclement weather might affect voting.(A full transcript of this audio essay will be available within 48 hours on the Times website.)Illustration by Akshita Chandra/The New York Times; Photograph by Maksym Kapliuk/Getty ImagesThe Times is committed to publishing a diversity of letters to the editor. We’d like to hear what you think about this or any of our articles. Here are some tips. And here’s our email: letters@nytimes.com.Follow the New York Times Opinion section on Facebook, X (@NYTOpinion) and Instagram.This episode of “The Opinions” was produced by Vishakha Darbha and Jillian Weinberger. It was edited by Alison Bruzek and Annie-Rose Strasser. Mixing by Efim Shapiro. Original music by Carole Sabouraud. Fact-checking by Kate Sinclair. Audience strategy by Shannon Busta. More

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      Republican Presidential Primary: 7 Numbers That Tell the Story

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      There’s $46,499,124.63. There’s 3 percent. Here are five other figures that shed light on the dynamics at play before Monday’s caucuses.The only numbers that will truly matter in the Iowa caucuses on Monday will be the number of votes tallied for Donald J. Trump, Ron DeSantis, Nikki Haley and Vivek Ramaswamy.But there are a number of, well, numbers that help explain the Republican nominating contest. In most polls, Mr. Trump holds a solid lead, while Ms. Haley and Mr. DeSantis are battling it out far behind in a fight for second place.Here are seven numbers that show how we got here — and what comes next.28 percentage pointsMr. Trump’s lead in the Iowa Poll The bar has been set.In the Iowa Poll released on Saturday evening by The Des Moines Register, NBC News and Mediacom, Mr. Trump was winning 48 percent of likely caucusgoers. It’s a dominant showing that’s more than the total support measured for Ms. Haley (20 percent) and Mr. DeSantis (16 percent) combined.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber?  More

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      ‘A sad circus’: Iowa caucuses arrive with little doubt over likely Republican victor

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      Few people relish the Iowa caucuses, the first act of the greatest political show on earth, more than Mike Draper. Since 2008 the Iowa native has hosted US presidential candidates at his novelty retail store and made tongue-in-cheek political merchandise. But this time, he feels, something is missing.“We’ve always had a fairly good finger on the pulse and it’s normally a circus but this year is just a sad circus,” said Draper, owner of Raygun in the state capital, Des Moines. “People are still going through the motions but there’s no real drama to it.”That is because Donald Trump, a twice-impeached former president still facing 91 criminal charges, is poised to complete his political resurrection on Monday with victory in the first nominating contest to decide which Republican takes on the Democratic incumbent Joe Biden in November’s election.Opinion polls show Trump casting a giant shadow over the sparsely populated, snow-swept state despite campaigning far less there than his rivals Ron DeSantis, the governor of Florida, and the former UN ambassador Nikki Haley. Most analyses say the question is not if he will win but by how much.It is a rare anti-climax for political aficionados in Iowa, which takes its outsized role in vetting the world’s most powerful person very seriously. Draper, 41, who votes Democratic, reflected: “We make a lot of shirts about sports and it’s tricky because it’s hard to make product that sells for a losing team but it’s also hard to make product that sells for a team that’s blowing everybody out.“This year, even on the Republican side, it’s almost like an incumbent is running uncontested and then you had DeSantis and Haley having a two-person debate in Des Moines while the guy who’s blowing them out of the water doesn’t even show up.”Such is the lack of engagement that, when Draper’s staff mounted a display to celebrate the caucuses, curious onlookers assumed it must be related to Presidents’ Day in February or Independence Day in July. The store responded with characteristic dry wit on a T-shirt: “Election 2024: You’d think battling a fascist takeover of America would spark more interest from people.”Another T-shirt, based on a snatch of conversation overheard on the New York subway, says: “What the hell is a caucus? And where the hell is Iowa?” These are questions that get asked every four years. A caucus is a gathering at a neighbourhood location, such as a school, church or union hall, where representatives make speeches on behalf of their favoured candidates. People then vote by secret ballot.Iowa is a midwestern state with the same population size as Wales (3.1 million). Hogs outnumber people by more than seven to one. It is whiter and more rural than most of the US. It has hosted the official start of every presidential campaign for the last half-century, offering a test of humility as candidates brave the icy plains to visit churches, diners, farms and school gyms, look voters in the eye and make their pitch.But the old maxim that “all politics is local” applies less in today’s nationalised, media-driven political landscape. Trump, 77, is the first loser of a presidential election to compete in Iowa four years later. He has the infrastructure and money to run the organised ground game that caucuses demand. His celebrity status has overwhelmed his hard-toiling opponents and enabled him to campaign at arm’s length.He held only 24 events in 19 counties in Iowa between 1 January 2023 and 4 January 2024, according to data collected by the Des Moines Register newspaper. This was far fewer than DeSantis (99 events in 57 counties), Haley (51 events in 30 counties) and Ramaswamy (239 events in 94 counties). Even Trump’s campaign surrogates have been drawing bigger crowds in the state than actual candidates.Wendy Schiller, a political science professor at Brown University in Providence, Rhode Island, said: “For people like Nikki Haley or Ron DeSantis, first-time candidates, Iowa’s important to be there in person but Trump is campaigning on the persona and mythology of Trump as much as anything else.“People don’t even feel like they need to meet him in person. He’s become a standard bearer for people who feel disenfranchised by whatever they view as the establishment and, even though they get a lot of benefits from the Biden administration programmes, Biden has been terrible at selling them.”A recent survey put Trump 34 percentage points clear of the field, suggesting that voters here care little for warnings that he is a nascent dictator ready to shred democracy. One major reason is born-again or evangelical Christians, who made up nearly two-thirds of caucus-goers during the 2016 Republican presidential primary, according to exit polling.This group seems willing to overlook his moral shortcomings if it means electing a perceived fighter who will deliver its objectives. Karen Johnson, a 67-year-old evangelical Christian, told the New York Times: “Trump is our David and our Goliath,” – neatly capturing his combination of sacred and profane.Art Cullen, editor of the Storm Lake Times newspaper, said: “North-west Iowa, where I live, is the most conservative part of the state and it’s just very solidly pro-Trump, including a lot of evangelicals who Ron DeSantis has been trying to court.“Trump is just dominant in Iowa. It’s going to be a good night for him.” But elections are also an expectations game and, if Trump dips below 50% of the vote in Iowa, it will be seen as a disappointment. In recent days his advisers have been reminding reporters that no Republican presidential candidate has won a contested Iowa caucus by more than 12 points since Bob Dole in 1988.There is another wild card: weather.During the weekend, extreme weather made Iowa’s roads dangerous and wreaked havoc with the final sprint of the caucus campaign. On Friday the state patrol posted a warning on social media that said: “Please, don’t put yourself or others in danger.”Trump’s campaign was forced to cancel three out of four in-person rallies over the weekend, opting to hold tele-rallies instead “out of an abundance of caution amid severe weather advisories”. Haley, who cancelled all three of her events on Friday, quipped to voters during a virtual town hall: “I definitely know I’m not in South Carolina anymore.”DeSantis did manage to hold an event on Friday morning in Ankeny, close to Des Moines, and said of the caucuses: “I know it’s gonna be cold. I know it’s gonna be not the most pleasant, but I don’t think you’ll ever be able to pass a vote that has more impact.”Iowans are famously hardy but Monday is forecast to be a record cold caucus night with temperatures predicted to dip as low as -14F (-26C). Biting winds could make it feel as cold as -45F in some places.This could reduce turnout but again might favour Trump because he has a fiercely loyal base. He confidently predicted last weekend: “We won’t lose one vote, because our people, they’re going to walk on glass.”Two subplots of this year’s caucuses are the implosion of DeSantis, 45, and the rise of 51-year-old Haley. A year ago the Florida governor was being hailed as a new Republican saviour who could offer Trumpism without Trump: rightwing populist policies without legal baggage or crass antics. Tens of millions of dollars, countless air miles and several staff departures later, he has little to show for it.Bill Galston, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution thinktank in Washington, said: “The biggest surprise in the past 12 months politically has been the steady weakening of the DeSantis candidacy. He was presented to the world as a person who had just about all Donald Trump’s virtues – as Republicans define them – with none of his vices and look at what’s happened to him.”A third-place finish for DeSantis on Monday could end his bid for the White House. Galston added: “Ron DeSantis has bet the farm on Iowa and, if he finishes an ignominious third, he will be a dead man walking and the only question is how long will he walk before he collapses. If he finishes a stronger than expected second, which you can’t rule out based on the amount of ground-level work he and his team have done there, that would be a surprise.”DeSantis has been criticised for lacking charm and charisma, more naturally predisposed to a scowl than a smile. One commentator memorably described him as the kind of guy who might unplug your life support to recharge his mobile phone.Schiller of Brown University said: “He’s not quite as good in person on the stump as people had hoped he would be and that was a problem. DeSantis tried to be Trump version two but the problem for him is that version one is running. At the end of the day, people like the original.“That happens in American politics: if you are unique – and Trump is, we can argue safely, unique – it’s hard to imitate it. You’ve seen all these candidates who try to imitate Trump fall flat on their face. Ron DeSantis is just an extended example of what happened to Senate candidates in 2022. As long as Trump is out there and is walking, talking and breathing, nobody wants the imitation.”Despite a recent gaffe over the cause of the civil war, when she failed to mention slavery, Haley has donor money and momentum on her side. A strong finish in Iowa would set her up well for New Hampshire, where some polls show her cutting Trump’s lead to single digits, and where the anti-Trump candidate Chris Christie’s recent decision to drop out could give her a further boost in support.John Zogby, an author and pollster, said: “She’s run the best campaign and she’s also the best candidate in terms of the tools and the rules. She is very good on her feet most of the time and she has a cheerful personality and is very subtly appealing to moderate and independent voters.”Normally, victory in Iowa is a step, not a leap, towards the White House. In 2008, Mike Huckabee won and John McCain trailed in fourth, but McCain became the nominee. In 2012, Rick Santorum edged out Mitt Romney but it was Romney who became the party’s standard bearer. And in 2016, Ted Cruz beat Trump into second place, only for Trump to secure the nomination and the presidency.But a big win for Trump on Monday will imply that his iron grip on the Republican party endures and a third consecutive nomination is his to lose. It will also signify a remarkable comeback for a man who suffered a crushing defeat by Biden in the 2020 presidential election, instigated a riot at the US Capitol in a desperate bid to overturn it and became the first former president hit by criminal indictments. And it will serve as a warning against complacency for Democrats and anyone around the world who fears a second Trump presidency.Joe Walsh, a former congressman who challenged the incumbent Trump in the 2020 Iowa caucuses and polled at 1%, said: “I expect him to win big. I expect Haley and DeSantis to be very distant. I expect maybe Haley to end up ahead of DeSantis and I wouldn’t be surprised if DeSantis gets out before New Hampshire and endorses Trump.”Walsh has not been surprised to see few Republican candidates directly attack Trump for most of the campaign. “Both Ron DeSantis and Nikki Haley, everybody in this primary, it’s been fucking mission impossible. This is Trump’s party and none of them have been trying to beat him. If you attack Trump, you’re done as a Republican. There’s no anti-Trump lane in that party. Period.” More

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      Trump Turns on Ramaswamy Just Days Before the Iowa Caucuses

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      Former President Donald J. Trump attacked Vivek Ramaswamy, who is most closely aligned with him in the race for the Republican nomination, accusing the wealthy entrepreneur of engaging in “deceitful campaign tricks.””A vote for Vivek is a vote for the ‘other side’ — don’t get duped by this,” Mr. Trump said on social media, adding that “Vivek is not MAGA.”An hour earlier, a senior adviser for Mr. Trump, Chris LaCivita, also attacked Mr. Ramaswamy on social media as a “fraud” in response to a photo showing supporters of Mr. Ramaswamy wearing shirts displaying Mr. Trump’s mug shot that said “Save Trump, vote Vivek.”The attacks from Mr. Trump and one of his top aides in quick succession suggest that the Trump campaign has deliberately shifted toward attacking Mr. Ramaswamy in the final days before Monday’s Iowa caucuses.In a video posted to social media that appeared to be an indirect response to the attacks, Mr. Ramaswamy offered effusive praise for Mr. Trump, though he argued in conspiratorial terms that “the system” would keep Mr. Trump out of the White House and instead elect former Gov. Nikki Haley of South Carolina, whom Mr. Ramaswamy called a “puppet.”Mr. Ramaswamy, who ostensibly is running against Mr. Trump despite having been the former president’s most enthusiastic defender on the campaign trail, has long been in a peculiar entente with the primary’s front-runner. Though Mr. Trump has gleefully mocked his opponents in the race on social media, he has held his fire against Mr. Ramaswamy and even praised him as a loyal supporter.The change in strategy from Mr. Trump may reflect a calculation from his campaign that Mr. Ramaswamy, who is in a distant fourth place in the polls in Iowa, is taking some support — however small — from his campaign. Mr. Trump is hoping for an overpowering win in Iowa to shut out his strongest competitors and demonstrate that he has already all but secured the nomination. More

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      Subzero Temperatures Are Set to Make Iowa’s Caucuses the Coldest in History

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      When Iowa voters brave frigid weather to caucus on Monday, they will be participating in one of the coldest caucuses in decades — perhaps ever. A brutal combination of prolonged, below-freezing temperatures and strong winds have created conditions for a biting cold on Monday that looks worse than any previous caucus night in the Hawkeye State. Temperatures are not forecast to rise above minus 2 degrees all day, and by the time caucusing begins on Monday evening, the wind chill could drag temperatures to what feels like 35 degrees below zero — an extreme level of cold for even the heartiest of Midwesterners. “If someone is extremely lucky, they might get to zero,” said Allan Curtis, a meteorologist for the National Weather Service in Des Moines, referring to the best-case scenario for warmth in some parts of the state on Monday. He added: “No matter how you look at it, it’s going to be a bitter one.” The coldest caucus before this year was in 2004, when temperatures did not rise above 16 degrees, according to National Weather Service data. But it’s not the first time that Iowa caucusgoers have had to brave subzero temperatures. During the 1972 caucus, temperatures in Des Moines dipped to a low of minus 4 degrees, though they later rose into the 20s. In Waterloo, roughly two hours north, thermometers that year read as low as minus 11 degrees. This year’s weather has turned what is usually a frenzied and well-funded caucus weekend into a far more subdued affair. Blizzards and icy roads scrambled candidates’ schedules late into the final stretch of campaigning, leaving reporters marooned in hotels and candidates with precious little time to talk to voters with fewer than 72 hours before caucusing begins. It has also stirred some anxiety within the campaigns, as strategists speculate over how the deep freeze could affect turnout. Former President Donald J. Trump, who canceled a majority of his rallies through the weekend because of the weather, said during a radio interview on Friday that he expects “great turnout” from his supporters despite Monday’s arctic temperatures. Nikki Haley, who canceled in-person events on Friday in response to blizzards across the state, asked her supporters during a virtual town hall for Council Bluffs voters to turn out in the cold weather and dress warmly in case there are lines outside of caucus sites. “I know it is asking a lot of you to go out and caucus, but I also know we have a country to save,” she said. “And I will be out there in the cold.” And on Saturday, campaigning in person in Cedar Falls, she was. More