With what looks to be an almost unprecedented margin of victory in the Iowa caucuses, former President Trump startled the American political community on Monday.
Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich, who previously served as a representative for Georgia, a state that is now a crucial swing state, claimed that Trump’s victory was unexpected given the efforts of the mainstream media and their predictions of a crushing loss.
“[D]espite every lawsuit, despite every effort to destroy Trump, the people of Iowa have stood up and said, ‘No, he is our candidate’,” Gingrich continued on “Hannity.”
“He is the candidate. He’s the nominee, so move on. He will secure the nomination. The reason the news media won’t say that is because they have to somehow promote “watch us while we put on this charade.”
The former speaker, who led the House Republicans from 1995 to 1999, asserted that a “number two” candidate was no longer a realistic option.
“[Y]ou get to be the leading ‘irrelevant’ or the second ‘irrelevant’ or the third ‘irrelevant’, but nobody is going to be number two because [Trump] is going to dominate totally if you look at the country at-large.”
Rather than just another presidential contender, he described the former president as the head of a national political movement opposed to the status quo.
Gingrich said that Iowa, which is currently seen as a consistently conservative state, was once a major swing state. The state’s final Democratic senator, Tom Harkin, departed office in 2015, and the last Democrat to win the presidency was the former president Obama.
The former speaker acknowledged that Trump’s victories over President Biden and Hillary Clinton in the most recent general elections in the Hawkeye state contributed to making that a reality.
Brit Hume, the chief political commentator for Fox News, stated on Monday that Trump’s wide victory margin demonstrates his “enduring appeal” to Republican voters.
He claimed that GOP voters want a political “upheaval” of the status quo and that Trump is the most qualified candidate to effect one. This is supported by Fox News voter analysis polling.
Hume went on to say that Trump’s supporters in the caucuses probably cast their votes partly because of their memories of America before Biden took office:
“I believe that a large portion of his appeal’s power stems from people’s recollections of life under his presidency, before COVID. They recall the economic boom,” he remarked. “They remember the fact that we weren’t in any wars or even indirectly funding wars overseas that they knew about.”
“President Biden frequently emphasizes how jobs have been growing recently, and he is right. And that the economy is still expanding, which it undoubtedly has; yet, the severity of the inflation that ruled under him and Biden for a considerable amount of time has poisoned people’s perceptions of this economy.”
In this sense, he said on “Jesse Watters Primetime” that millions of Americans wished the nation had fallen into dire circumstances before the election of the incumbent.
Following the widespread calls for Trump at the caucuses, Sean Hannity of Fox News observed that the former president is still “defying all conventional political gravity.”
“Usually you would think that if somebody gets arrested, if somebody gets indicted, that their poll numbers would go down,” he stated.
“They have increased in each instance. And I wonder if it’s been overkill, considering that this all began on the day that he and Melania Trump descended the escalator into three arduous years of what ultimately proved to be fake news-pushed lies and conspiracy theories,” Hannity remarked.
The host went on, saying, “They all were wrong – And I wonder if, in some strange way, they took a man like Donald Trump and they actually have turned him into a victim.” She also mentioned that some people might back him because they believe that the nearly ten years of criticism he has been receiving is abuse and “fundamental unfairness.”
According to Ari Fleischer, a former press secretary for George W. Bush, the biggest divide in the nation right now is between the working class and “college educated Democrats who are really [news] reporters in the mainstream media.”
Fleischer said that Trump’s popularity with people in the former group is probably due in part to his comprehension of their day-to-day lives and living circumstances. He also described the mainstream media as a group of politically liberal individuals living in “elite bubbles” who essentially swoop into Middle America to conduct in-depth interviews with locals at strategic junctures in the calendar, then depart without giving such people much thought.
“Of course, the majority consists of Americans who are not college-educated Democratic reporters. And for that reason, they were blind to the 2016 tale. And for that reason, in my opinion, there are still a lot of individuals who are out of touch with a significant portion of this nation who are applauding for Donald Trump’s failure,” Fleischer stated.
To his credit, Donald Trump has an innate ability to connect with people. And that’s what you’re witnessing in Iowa tonight. If these outcomes continue to be true for President Trump, they are very astounding.”
Fleischer did point out that the GOP electorate in New Hampshire, which is up next on the political calendar, is very different from that in Iowa. Like its bluer neighbors, the New England state is notably moderate, he added, and a candidate such as Nikki Haley might have some advantage there.
Haley’s issue, though, is that she needs to defeat conservatives [as a voting bloc], according to tonight’s findings. With a little assistance from independents, she cannot win on the basis of liberal, moderate Republicans alone,” he declared.
“And that’s where, in Iowa at least, there’s no evidence that anybody can run against Donald Trump.”