A second chance

Iowa GOP leaders should move party away from Trump

Nov 16, 2022

white and black quote board — Photo by Brendan Beale on Unsplash

To nobody’s surprise, Donald Trump announced Tuesday he’ll run for president in 2024.

The question now is this: What will Republican Party leaders do about it? Especially in Iowa.

Many in the Republican Party, including a good share of their leaders, know that Donald Trump is a significant risk for this country. A second term for such an unstable man whose primary goal is revenge rather than the good of the American people would be a disaster for the United States.

I know most Republican rank-and-file don’t see Trump this way, but his approval ratings have diminished. And there are clear signs among some donors and other important figures in the party that they are ready to move beyond Trump, if for no other reason than personal ambition or the widespread belief the former president is largely to blame for Republican under-performance in the 2022 midterms. (Not to mention losing the Senate in 2020).

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, a potential 2024 rival, was a bit cagy comparing his double-digit win in Florida with the failure of Trump-backed candidates. But he got the message across: I won, he lost.

Even some Trump-friendly media outlets are turning on him.

My favorite was the New York Post headline Wednesday that read: “Florida man makes announcement” Turn to page 26.

Still, remember this: While it’s OK to laugh at Trump, nobody should underestimate him. Or more to the point, nobody should underestimate the unpredictability of politics and the overwhelming tendency of a party to close ranks behind its nominee, no matter how dangerous.

That said, a growing number of Republicans want to stop Trump, and it’s more than just Liz Cheney and the long-standing never-Trumpers.

This is a second chance for GOP leaders to do what so many of them failed to do in 2016: Take a principled stand against Donald Trump.

In Iowa, taking this stand is especially important.

Iowa will hold the first-in-the-nation Republican caucuses in a little more than two years, and Trump is banking a lot on this state. He was here shortly before the midterms, and the reason was … well, it wasn’t the midterms.

An Iowa win in 2024 would be a big boost for Trump. He knows that.

Which raises the question: Where will the state’s leading Republicans be in this existential battle for the country and the Republican Party.

What will Chuck Grassley and Kim Reynolds do?

Unfortunately, we all know the answer: They’ll sit on the sidelines.

At a time when America and their party needs them, they will undoubtedly shrink from the task.

Perhaps it’s unfair of me to expect them to stand up. Iowa party leaders have tended to stay neutral (though not always) in the caucuses. Also, Trump remains popular among Iowa Republicans.

Still, Donald Trump has demonstrated how much damage he can do to this country. Republican leaders know this.

Grassley showed a glimmer of hope after the Trump-inspired Jan. 6 insurrection. He called Trump’s post-2020 election remarks “extreme, aggressive and irresponsible” and he suggested Trump was partly to blame for the mob that tried to stop Congress from certifying Joe Biden’s win.

Then, eight months later, he was on a stage enthusiastically accepting Trump’s endorsement.

Grassley squandered his chance to lead. Instead, he did what most Iowa Republican officeholders have done in the age of Trump — stayed loyal and buried their heads in the sand in the face of his worst deeds and instincts.

You might ask: If there’s no chance that Iowa’s leading Republicans will stand up to Trump, why waste time considering it?

Why even entertain the notion that Iowa’s leading Republicans will take on any political risk by standing up for their country and party?

Here’s the reason: A Trump loss in Iowa would be a significant wound to his candidacy. It would signal to the states following Iowa that it is OK to reject him.

Just as Barack Obama’s win in Iowa in 2008 opened the door for him in other states, this could serve to slam the door shut on Trump.

This isn’t a given, of course. We all know that politics is unpredictable. Also, Trump lost the Iowa caucuses in 2016 and went on to win the GOP nomination.

Still, the ground has shifted since then. The country has changed. So many people are weary of the chaos that Trump inspires — and not just Democrats.

If Trump, a former president, were to lose a Republican contest in Iowa, a state that supported him twice in general elections, it would be devastating for him.

It also would be a great service to this country and to the Republican Party.

Kim Reynolds and Chuck Grassley, and others like them, have a chance to deliver this victory.

Will they take this chance? Will they lead?

Unfortunately, they almost certainly won’t.

This is a demoralizing thought, yes. But if politics means anything, it means having hope. Even if it’s in the face of the longest odds.

Iowa Capital Dispatch says new absentee ballot rules worked – for Republicans

The Capital Dispatch’s Kathie Obradovich wrote an important column this week about the impact that Iowa’s new voting rules had on the midterms.

Republicans in the state legislature, led in the Senate by Roby Smith of Davenport, made a number of changes in 2021 to the state’s election rules, the most important reducing the number of days people could vote early and by absentee from 29 days to 20.

Writes Obradovich:

In 2018, voter turnout for the general election was 61%, according to the Iowa Secretary of State’s data. This year, turnout was about 55% in unofficial results. The difference was about 100,500 voters. About 371,000 Iowans voted early or absentee this year, about 30% less than in 2018. The difference was about 164,500 voters. There are a lot of reasons turnout might be down, but less early and absentee voting was certainly one of them.

She also warned that Iowans should be prepared for lawmakers to cut early voting even further.

I wouldn’t be at all surprised if they do. Republicans in Iowa obviously did quite well in the midterms, but a key rule of politics is to consolidate your gains. Democrats rely more on early and absentee voting than Republicans in Iowa and elsewhere, so it wouldn’t be surprising to see further restrictions. Already, some Republicans, including Trump, want to put an end to early voting. (Trump also called Tuesday for only “paper ballots” to be used in the future.)

Republican lawmakers acknowledged that Iowa’s 2020 election had no significant problems. But that still didn’t stop them from responding to their base’s false belief that mail ballots fraudulently cost Trump the presidency, passing a law to make it even harder to vote.

Don’t be surprised to see legislators work to do it again in January.

Roby Smith may be leaving the legislature to become the state’s new treasurer, but his spirit lives on there.

Scott County recount continues

Scott County’s administrative recount of about 23,000 absentee ballots is now going into Thursday. The recount began Tuesday, but Auditor Kerri Tompkins announced today it would continue with a hand count tomorrow at 8 a.m.

Last Thursday, Iowa Secretary of State Paul Pate insisted on the recount after saying “we discovered an error in the tabulation of Scott County’s absentee ballot numbers.”

On Friday, the auditor’s office said the discrepancy involved 470 ballots, and that her staff discovered the problem.

However, Sarah Watson’s report in the Quad-City Times this afternoon mentioned a 19-ballot discrepancy, citing Democrats and Republicans who have been monitoring the process.

The auditor’s news release today didn’t mention a discrepancy figure.

It’s not clear when the recount will be finished. The county board of supervisors had scheduled a canvass for Wednesday morning, but that was postponed.

Two races in the county are still close, according to the unofficial results posted a week ago: District 81 in the Iowa House and the Scott County recorder’s race.

Appeals court sides with Iowa, other GOP-led states over Biden student debt plan

The 8th Circuit Court of Appeals this week sided with Iowa and five other Republican-led states, approving a nationwide injunction on the Biden administration’s student loan forgiveness plan.

The appeals court disagreed with a district court judge, who said the states didn’t have standing to sue.

Iowa Gov. Kim Reynolds joined the states of Missouri, Nebraska, Kansas, Arkansas and South Carolina in challenging the Biden plan.

More than 400,000 Iowans would be eligible for relief under the plan, according to the White House.

The administration said it stands by its belief that it has the legal authority to enact the plan and will continue to fight the lawsuits. However, it stopped taking applications for debt relief last week after a Texas judge ruled against it.

McCombie new Illinois House Republican leader

I mostly write about Iowa politics here, but I want to note that Illinois Rep. Tony McCombie, a Republican from nearby Savanna, has been elected the House Republican leader in Illinois.

Republicans don’t have much power in Illinois (about as much as Democrats do in Iowa), but it is notable that somebody who represents part of the Illinois Quad-Cities now is leading her party in the state House. As the Chicago Sun-Times reported McCombie acknowledged recently, “we certainly have a lot to rebuild, on the official and campaign side.”

Along the Mississippi

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