Donald Trump, by far the Republican Party front-runner, won a quick victory in Iowa, where his campaign’s Christian rhetoric whipped up his fan base but unsettled some evangelical leaders.
The national media barely waited for the ink on the ballots to dry before calling Trump’s race only 30 years old. minutes after the closure of the caucus sites. Some sites were still voting.
Trump won with 51 percent of the vote, more than all other candidates combined. sweeping all but one county in the state. The former president always led polls by about 30 points, largely due to support from evangelical Christians. About half said pollsters, he was their first choice.
That’s a change from the last time Trump showed up in Iowa. Evangelicals in the state were not enthusiastic about the foul-mouthed real estate mogul in 2016 and favored Ted Cruz, viewing Trump as “the lesser of two evils” over Hillary Clinton in the election, Jeff said VanDerWerff, professor of political science at Northwestern College, a Christian college in Orange City, Iowa.
“This has really fascinated me over the last eight years,” VanDerWerff said. Christianity today“There has been this slow migration and now this real embrace, it seems, of Trump. That he has become or is considered this instrument of God.
CNN Early Polls find that 55 percent of white evangelical Christians said they supported Trump.
Despite subzero temperatures, supporters responded to Trump’s call to participate: “You can’t stay home. If you’re sick as a dog, you say, ‘Honey, I gotta make it,'” Trump told the crowd at a rally Sunday in Indianola. “Even if you vote and die, it’s worth it, remember.”
This loyalty comes despite the fact that Trump spends less time in Iowa than his competitors. His campaign on the ground was complicated by the president’s legal troubles that pushed him elsewhere. A week before the caucuses, he appeared in Washington, D.C., for an appeals court hearing on Tuesday and another court appearance in New York on Thursday.
Two-thirds of white evangelicals voting in Iowa believe Trump would remain fit for president even if convicted, according to entrance polls by CNN.
Monday’s results in Iowa give Trump the opportunity to say, “I have all the support and momentum.” Future primaries are kind of pointless at this point,” Daniel Bennett, chair of the political science department at John Brown University, told CT. “He can say that, you know, this is what we thought it would be and that others should rally behind him to beat (President) Joe Biden.”
Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis and former United Nations Ambassador Nikki Haley were competing for a second spot that would allow them to emerge as a clear alternative to Trump, which neither achieved. With 94 percent Of the votes counted, DeSantis led with more than 21 percent, while Haley trailed him with 19 percent.
DeSantis’ close second-place capture comes after hitting all 99 of Iowa’s counties. He also earned top endorsements from Iowa Governor Kim Reynolds, as well as pastors and religious leaders, and on Monday the campaign hosted a call to prayer with one of those leaders, Bob Vandar Plaats.
As the front-runner, Trump’s attitude toward the primary has been one of annoyance that it’s happening. He avoided candidate debates, preferring to hold rallies or town hall meetings as counterprogramming. His camp believes that the former president’s support base is too strong for any other candidate to defeat, that those challenging him for the nomination are disloyal, and that they might as well qualify for the nomination. general elections.
And unlike the sparse organization he had in 2016, his campaign on the ground deployed surrogates to make Trump’s case: South Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem; firebrand GOP Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia; and Arkansas Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders, Trump’s former press secretary, all made stops in Iowa.
At Trump rallies, speakers from pastors to local politicians have framed the 2024 election in spiritual terms: calling Trump’s legal problems persecution, his enemies — the media, Democrats or Republicans who supported his adversaries – as evil forces, and his enemies (from the media, Democrats or Republicans who supported his adversaries) as evil forces. supporters as true believers.
The other GOP candidates “should have all thrown their support behind (Trump),” Iowa voter Craig Fleakei told CT. “And if they didn’t, then they are OK with the 2020 results and they have no backbone,” he added.
Trump made inroads with a different kind of evangelical elector. During his presidency, supporters began to identify as evangelical whether they were regular practitioners or not.
Ryan Burge, a political scientist at Eastern Illinois University who specializes in religion and politics, note in its Substack newsletter, only a quarter of Iowans identified as born-again/evangelical Christians. More than half of Iowans attend religious services less than once a year, and only a quarter of Iowans report going to church weekly. Some of the sharpest declines in religious attendance have occurred in rural areas of the state, he noted.
“There is simply no way to look at the situation and say that Iowa is a bastion of Christian values,” Burge said. wrote. “That’s just not the case.”
Yet Christian imagery and language was omnipresent at Trump campaign events across the state. At a rally last month in Coralville, Iowa, a woman wearing an oversized cross necklace displayed a Trump sign. Another wore a T-shirt that read: “Jesus is my savior, Trump is my president.”
“Whether it’s (pro-life), whether it’s Israel, whether it’s religious freedom, whether it’s the litany of good things that are important to Christians…President Trump promised and then delivered,” said Rep. Bobby Kaufmann, a senior adviser to the Trump campaign in Iowa. CT.
But their use of Christianity led to shaky theological ground.
Maybe inspired by one of DeSantis’ Florida governors campaign advertisements, a video that Trump sharing on his Truth Social account – and plays at campaign rallies – is a prime example. Made by a group that calls himself Trump’s Online War Machine video adapted late broadcaster Paul Harvey’s “So God Made a Farmer” monologue with artificial intelligence to incorporate mentions of Trump.
“God looked down on his intended paradise and said, ‘I need a guardian.’ So God gave us Trump,” the narrator says. said. The video depicts Trump in hagiographic terms: as someone who enters a “den of vipers” and deals with “fake news, with their tongues sharp as serpents” (a reference to Psalm 140), and concludes “a hard week.” work by going to church on Sunday.
“God said, ‘I need someone who will be strong and courageous, who will not be afraid or terrified of wolves when they attack a man who takes care of the flock,'” story, “‘a shepherd for mankind who never leaves them or forsakes them. …So God created Trump.
This rhetoric has troubled some religious leaders in the state.
“I find it absolutely sickening,” said Michael Demastus, pastor of Fort Des Moines Church of Christ. said Desert News. “Trump is not the Messiah.”
Steve Deace, an Iowa-based Christian conservative talk show host who has supported DeSantis, said on social media: “We already have a Messiah in whom to place our hope and faith. What we need is a president who can run this place with some competence until he returns. »
Monday’s results show that, at least in Iowa, the average white evangelical voter was not troubled by Trump’s approach.
“Of course, some pastors…might look at this language and roll their eyes or even be really troubled by it,” said Bennett of John Brown. “But if you consider yourself perhaps culturally Christian or if you have this relationship with Jesus that isn’t taught outside of political echo chambers or something like that, I think you’re going to be more predisposed to that and That doesn’t bother you at all.”
At the Coralville rally, Joel Tenney, a 27-year-old evangelist, told the crowd that the election was “part of a spiritual battle” that included “demonic forces.” Tenney predicted that Trump would win the White House and that when he did, “there would be retaliation against everyone who encouraged evil in this country.”
Trump allies say evangelical voters’ loyalty to Trump stems from the record of his presidential administration.
In September, at a summit hosted by the conservative Family Research Council, Trump made the not that “no president has ever fought as hard as I have for Christians. And I will continue to fight for Christians as hard as I can for four more years in the White House.”
He said his administration has done more for religious freedom “than any other administration in history, according to everyone.” He has pledged to create a task force to combat “anti-Christian” bias if he is re-elected.
“I think the most important thing I’ve heard from Christian voters is ‘Let’s make sure everything the president has done for us is maintained,'” said Kaufmann, a Trump adviser on Iowa. “But also, ‘let’s make sure we can continue to attack to fight for Christianity,’ which is what the president has done and will continue to do.”
The next leg of the primary comes to New Hampshire, where Haley’s survey the numbers grew with the state’s more moderate electorate. But here too, Trump is holding the head.
Haley spent less time in Iowa than the others. His campaign was boosted by support in November from the conservative group Americans for Prosperity Action, which contacted voters in every county.
Meanwhile, the field of presidential candidates began to thin: Former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, the Republican candidate most likely to criticize Trump, dropped out on Wednesday. Political newcomer and entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy took his fourth place in Iowa as a sign of withdrawing from the race. After receiving about 7% of the vote Monday night, he suspended his campaign and encouraged his supporters to support Trump.
