Goodbye, Iowa. Hello, New Hampshire. Trump scores huge comeback but it's not over yet.
Eight years after he lost the Iowa caucuses ? and three years after his White House tenure ended in electoral defeat and Capitol Hill violence ? Donald Trump on Monday launched the political year by scoring the biggest victory in the history of the Iowa caucuses.
The GOP is Trump's party now.
His striking comeback after the political chaos of Jan. 6 doesn't guarantee he will claim the presidential nomination at the Republican National Convention in Wisconsin this summer. But his unprecedented 51% finish, crushing Ron DeSantis and Nikki Haley by 30 percentage points, left his would-be challengers scrambling to articulate a credible path to slow Trump's roll.
Goodbye, Iowa. Hello, New Hampshire.
"This is really time for our country to come together," Trump said in a victory speech in Des Moines that sounded as though he was turning to the general election against President Joe Biden, the Republican Party already consolidated. "It would be so nice if we could come together and straighten out the world and straighten out the problems."
During the Iowa campaign, he had derided DeSantis and Haley. Now he praised them. "I think they both actually did very well," he said, and he mentioned the number of calls he was getting from Republican officials newly eager to endorse him. "And we love them all," he said.
What gives Haley hope?
There's this: Iowa has a sorry record in signaling the Republican presidential nominee. In the last seven contested caucuses, five of the winners failed to win the nomination, much less the White House. In 2016, for one, Texas Sen. Ted Cruz edged Trump.
That's why Haley told an audience last week that New Hampshire "corrects" Iowa ? a comment she made to a New Hampshire audience, naturally, not an Iowa one.
The former U.N. ambassador finished a disappointing third, at 19.1%, just an edge behind DeSantis, the Florida governor, at 21.2%. His distant second place was disappointing, too, and their near-tie was a messy finish for both contenders. She hopes her competitiveness as a Trump alternative gives her momentum into New Hampshire and its first-in-the-nation primary, which has a history of surprise.
"When you look at how we're doing in New Hampshire, in South Carolina and beyond, I can safely say, tonight, Iowa made this Republican primary a two-person race," she told her supporters, congratulating Trump but not mentioning DeSantis. She then tied Trump to Biden as aging leaders who are "consumed by the past."
"America deserves better," she went on. "Our campaign is the last, best hope of stopping the Trump-Biden nightmare."
The decision last week by former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, a fierce Trump critic, to suspend his campaign could give her a bit of a boost. She's been endorsed by the state's governor, Chris Sununu.
That said, before Iowa's vote, Trump was leading Haley in New Hampshire 43.4% to 30.3% in recent statewide polls averaged by fivethirtyeight.com. He led her 46%-26% in a USA TODAY/Boston Globe/Suffolk University poll last week.
If Trump isn't tripped in New Hampshire, it's hard to spot another potential opening anytime soon. He leads Haley by more than 2-1 in her home state of South Carolina, the next primary. He leads DeSantis by 9-1 in the Nevada caucuses that follow.
DeSantis' dilemma: He bet the farm on Iowa
When he entered the race, the two-term governor of Florida was seen as the strongest prospect to challenge Trump. He repeatedly vowed to beat the former president in Iowa.
As his campaign foundered, DeSantis focused his resources on Iowa. His credentials as a cultural warrior in Florida were considered a good fit with Iowa's conservative electorate, and he was endorsed by Iowa Gov. Kim Reynolds. He made a stop in each of the state's 99 counties in what is known as "the full Grassley," named after the Iowa senator who has made his travels even to the state's smallest and most isolated areas his trademark.
With all that, DeSantis' failure to finish even a decisive second raised questions about how long he can raise money and attract support to keep his campaign alive.
"They threw everything but the kitchen sink at us," he told his supporters after it was clear he would finish second, not third. His manner was ebullient. "In spite of all that they threw at us, everybody against us, we got our ticket punched out of Iowa."
Entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy, a political newcomer with this race, didn't get his ticket punched out of Iowa. After finishing in single digits, at 7.7%, he announced he was suspending his campaign and endorsing Trump. Former Arkansas Gov. Asa Hutchinson fared even worse, at less than 1%. He suspended his campaign Tuesday morning.
Trump's stunning sweep
What made Trump's victory so stunning was not only its size but also its sweep.
The Associated Press declared him the winner just 31 minutes after the caucus had started at 7 p.m. Central time, though the magnitude of the Trump wave wasn't clear until the thousands of paper ballots were filled out, counted and reported hours later.
According to surveys of voters as they entered the caucus sites at community halls and school gymnasiums across the state, Trump led among those who described themselves as "very conservative" ? more than half of the total electorate, higher than in the 2016 caucuses ? and among those who said they were independents. He led among those with college degrees by a small margin and among those without them by a huge one.
Two-thirds said they believed Trump's debunked allegation that Joe Biden wasn't legitimately elected president in 2020.
But there was a warning flag for Trump, too. Nearly a third of Republican caucusgoers said they would view him as unfit for the presidency if he were convicted of a crime.
He now faces 91 felony charges in four indictments, two in federal court and two in state courts, in New York and Georgia.
He left Iowa after claiming victory to fly to New York to attend in person the opening of a trial that will determine what additional damages he must pay writer E. Jean Carroll for defaming her after she accused him of rape. Last spring, another jury awarded her about $5 million for sexual assault.
History's lesson
Since the advent of presidential primaries in modern times, no candidate in either party who has carried both the Iowa caucuses and the New Hampshire primary had been denied their party's nomination.
If Trump manages to complete that one-two punch, the chances of wrestling the nomination from his hands go from being a long-shot upset to a Hail-Mary pass.
Will this race still be meaningfully contested by Super Tuesday on March 5?
Check back next week.
This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Donald Trump scores huge political comeback with historic Iowa victory