Des Moines, Iowa
CNN
—
The storied history of the Iowa caucuses has never seen anything like this.
A fateful election year likely to put the country’s institutions to an extreme test opens Monday as the first-in-the-nation state shivers under a blast of perishing polar weather.
But it’s not stopping Donald Trump from telling his voters to go out and caucus even if they’re “sick as a dog” – “Even if you vote and then pass away, it’s worth it,” he said Sunday, darkly suggesting people who were critically ill should get out to caucus – while urging them to punish enemies he branded “cheaters” and “liars.” The former president, who left office in disgrace in January 2021, is seeking a bumper win to set him on the road to a third straight GOP nomination — and a possible return to the White House.
Former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley wants a jolt of momentum ahead of next week’s New Hampshire primary – her best bet for a shock win over Trump. And Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis is battling to keep his campaign alive.
But after months of polls, multimillion-dollar ad blitzes and a collision between an election and Trump’s legal morass, Iowans’ voices are the only ones that matter, although the weather may influence which of them is able to show up.
Blizzards and bone-chilling winds forced candidates to cancel multiple events in the final Iowa stretch. Many churches in the pious state were closed on Sunday, but candidates pleaded with supporters to brave the temperatures on Monday.
Boasting the powerful network he lacked when he finished second here in 2016, Trump – who refused to debate his rivals – spurned one-on-one voter contact in the frigid final days. He substituted outbursts outside New York and Washington courts for intimate meets-and-greets in places like Cedar Rapids, Waterloo and Sioux City that candidates typically use to butter up Iowa’s famously exacting voters.
Trump’s rivals grappled for traction, and not just on the ice-bound roads they traveled to reach small crowds in isolated towns. DeSantis suffered the embarrassment of being awarded a participation trophy by a comedian. And Haley faithfully hammered out the same stump speech at all her stops, ignoring former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie’s prediction as he folded his own 2024 bid last week that she’d “get smoked” in the nominating race.
One candidate, entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy, mocked rivals who postponed events because of weather, warning their timidity showed they’d fold before Chinese President Xi Jinping. That was before hubris steered his SUV into an icy ditch.
Even British Brexit campaigner Nigel Farage popped up Sunday in a spiffy suit at a Trump rally in Indianola, prompting the ex-president – peering from beneath a golden cap bearing the slogan “Trump Caucus Captain” – to break off a rambling speech to note, “They know how to dress over there.” That was just one highlight from a monologue that mixed extreme demagoguery and comedy and included the auctioning of an American flag, hero worship of a wrestler, a cascade of falsehoods about the last election, biting new attacks on Haley, and praise of what Trump called “the best bacon I ever had” for breakfast on Sunday.
Then he told a protester to “go home to Mommy.”
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