DeSantis has made Iowa make or break.
The first for-the-record votes in the 2024 race for the presidency will be cast five days from now in Iowa. Iowa is always first up in presidential election years, and it is always different from the rest of the country.
Iowa voters don’t go to a polling place to cast a ballot. Instead, they go to recreation centers, church social halls and family living rooms and caucus. Webster defines a caucus as, “a meeting of a group of persons belonging to the same political party usually to select candidates or to decide on policy.”
In Iowa, every voting precinct holds a caucus. The caucus goers meet, they discuss, they argue, they advocate on behalf of their preferred candidates and then vote. Those votes are collected at the state level and tallied. In the Republican Party, delegates for each of the candidates to the national convention – to be held in July in Milwaukee – are allocated proportionately to the number of votes that each received.
The Iowa Caucuses are followed closely simply because they are the first live-fire events in the nominating process. But in recent elections, the results in Iowa have not been predictive of the eventual GOP nominee. In 2008, former Arkansas governor Mike Huckabee won the Iowa Caucuses. In 2012 it was former Pennsylvania senator Rick Santorum. And in 2016 it was Texas senator Ted Cruz. None went on to become the nominee.
Nevertheless, Florida governor Ron DeSantis has directed nearly 100 percent of his efforts toward winning in Iowa. Despite that singular focus, he remains in a distant second position to former President Donald Trump in the polls – both in Iowa and nationally.
At a FOX News Channel Townhall last night DeSantis responded to a question on his polling by saying this.
If Iowans come out and vote for me in and caucus for me in large numbers, like we’re building the operation to do that, those national polls will change. You have the power to change those.”
Responding to the elephant in the room, that being Trump’s huge polling lead, DeSantis said:
If Donald Trump is the nominee, the election is going to be about legal issues, criminal trials, January 6th. It’ll be a referendum on him. It’ll be a referendum on a lot of these issues that are not going to put us in a position to hold Biden accountable.”
During last night’s townhall, DeSantis directed most of his fire at President Joe Biden.
I’m not going to let him hang out in his basement. We would run him ragged around this country. I would love to be able to be in a debate with Biden and be able to hold him accountable for his policies.”
When you and I gather here next week at this time, we will know how well DeSantis’s efforts in Iowa have worked. And with Iowa on the books, we will be looking immediately to New Hampshire, to which we will be traveling to bring you the first-in-the-nation Republican primary.
