The Results-- Iowa Republicans Pick Right Wing Lunatic Ted Cruz; Democrats Tied

TRUMP = LOSER

Yesterday Dave Weigel tweeted that far right racist Congressman Steve King told him the polls may be wrong about Trump. "You can't say 'Two Corinthians' and be winning evangelicals." Well... looks like King knew his state's Republican voters better than most of the pollsters did. I wonder if Herr Trumpf laying some greasy bills on a silver communion plate at a church he was using as a prop for his campaign yesterday was the last straw. It looks like the Our Principles PAC-funded voters guide that tens of thousands of homes got in the mail warning them that Herr Trumpf isn't a real conservative-- three decades of Trump’s apostasies from the conservative movement-- may have worked. Trump voters-- in Iowa and beyond-- are angry, frustrated, paranoid, xenophobic, bigoted, prone to crave authoritarianism, intellectually low-functioning... but not really ideological or even aware of what the "conservative movement" is all about or who Grover Norquiest is. But they didn't show up to vote in big enough numbers. By the way, the Des Moines Register had predicted the GOP voter turnout would be 368,000; only 187,000 bothered to come out for the Deep Bench. Anyway, expect a gun fight in Cleveland on the floor of the Republican convention in July.

It looks like the Romney staffers behind Our Principles PAC spent some time reading Timothy Egan's How Stupid Is Iowa? over the weekend. "It was Donald Trump who first raised the issue of Hawkeye State imbecility," he wrote for the NY Times, "in a mocking reference to a crush that Iowans had on Ben Carson last fall. And it’s the odious Ted Cruz who has been using Trump’s very words to goad Iowans into proving that they are not, in fact, so stupid as to back an ego-inflamed reality television star who makes fun of them... You’re supposed to be vetting, Iowa. You’re supposed to be culling out the crazies. You’re supposed to recognize the fraud of Ted Cruz and how Donald Trump is playing you. For all your touted small-town verities, you’re not doing your job. Your bull manure detector is broken." An amusing Establishment hack of the first degree, Egan disqualifies Iowa voters not because they're too stupid but because they're too white and too old.

Consider that half of all the babies born last year in the United States were nonwhite. Not in Iowa, of course, one of the whitest states in the nation. On Monday, if the Republican caucus is anything like the 2012 turnout, 99 percent of the attendants will be white. That’s not even the United States of 1816, let alone this year.

We’re a young nation, though you won’t see much of that fresh blood when Republicans gather on Monday night. Iowa is the fourth oldest state in the nation: In 2012, nearly seven out of 10 Republican caucusgoers was older than age 45.

And Iowa women are not leaning in, at least in one party, where a majority of Republican caucusgoers are men. As for religion, 57 percent of 2012 Republican caucusgoers were evangelical-- more than twice the percentage of the electorate nationwide.

What do these demographics do? They produce candidates who deny that climate change even exists, who favor total bans on legal abortion, who are opposed to the most common-sensical reforms in gun laws, and who would require a religious test for entry into the country. All of those positions are out of step with the views of a country that’s supposed to reflect majority will.

Trump can call for a police state pogrom against 11 million people and be rewarded, because a majority of Republican caucusgoers are white, native-born and believe that electing a demagogue will make American white again.

The evangelicals, in particular, deserve Trump’s taunt at their intelligence. Devout Christians profess a belief in piety, humility and sacrifice. The thrice-married Trump says he’s never asked God for forgiveness. His entire campaign is about pride, ego, solipsistic excess. He can’t even fake evangelical speak. For this, he’s their favorite. As he said, he could shoot somebody on Fifth Avenue and not lose supporters.

It’s time to rotate. Imagine Trump making his racially incendiary remarks in the most populous state, California, where Latinos outnumber whites. Or think of the ideas that could emerge from a focus on how the least populous state, Wyoming, could build a more sustainable economy beyond oil and gas. Missouri could bring its raw racial troubles to the table for a larger national debate.

None of this is discussed in the gloomy chill of Iowa. Instead, we have the stupidity question. Trump raised it. And if he wins on Monday, the people of Iowa will have answered him.

I'm not saying Matt K. Lewis is stupid, but he is a conservative... and author of Too Dumb To Fail: How the GOP Betrayed the Reagan Revolution to Win Elections, about the grifters who run the GOP and who are in the process of being displaced by a higher level grifter, crooked New York billionaire Donald J. Herr Trumpf. Expanding slightly on philosopher Eric Hoffer, "Every great cause [which, obviously conservatism never was] begins as a movement, becomes a business, and eventually degenerates into a racket." Conservatism started as a racket and degenerated from there. A year and a half ago Lewis, writing for the Wall Street Journal, exposed the conservative PACs trolling for your money. His Salon post this weekend, like his Journal OpEd from 2015, is about how suckers give their money to the Republican grifters.

In order to raise money from the masses, organizations and consultants are also helping dumb down conservatism. In some cases, this consists of rhetoric about taking down the establishment and the “ruling class.” In other cases, it is accomplished by stirring up paranoia and anger among the base, often to get them to sign petitions (and almost every online petition is a ruse to get you on e‑mail lists that can then be sold) or to clog the phone lines of House members so that reasonably conservative Congressmen can be lectured to about why shutting down the government is, in fact, a good idea that will work “if only they have the guts and courage to try.”

The irony is that the people who tell the base what they want to hear are characterized as courageous, while the people willing to stand up to them are labeled cowards. And some of us have our conservatism questioned and are labeled RINOs (Republicans In Name Only).

But it’s not just outside groups and venders pocketing money that should be spent on candidates. In 2013, a reporter for ProPublica, a nonprofit organization that specializes in investigative journalism, alleged all sorts of unethical practices by a group ostensibly set up to help support the troops. According to reporter Kim Barker, “an examination of its fund‑raising appeals, tax records, and other documents shows that Move America Forward has repeatedly misled donors and inflated its charitable accomplishments, while funneling millions of dollars in revenue to the men behind the group and their political consulting firms.” One of the men behind the group is Sal Russo, a longtime political consultant who is chief strategist for the Tea Party Express.

Time for honest and sincere Republicans to give up on their tattered and disheveled party and rally behind Bernie's campaign-- for the sake of the country we love and for the families who live here? Martin Luther King, Jr.: "The gospel at its best deals with the whole man, not only his soul but his body, not only his spiritual well-being but his material well-being. Any religion that professes to be concerned about the souls of men and is not concerned about the slums that damn them, the economic conditions that strangle them, and the social conditions that cripple them is a spiritually moribund religion awaiting burial."

Bernie battled the entire establishment to a tie and O'Malley, like Huckabee, dropped out. Have you contributed to Bernie's campaign? Thank you; you can do it again-- and to the congressional candidates who have endorsed him and are running on his platform. Conservatism is wrong for America, the radical conservatism of Cruz, the establishmentarian conservatism of Clinton and the faux-conservatism of Herr Trumpf. In his concession speech tonight, Rubio pointed to the Declaration of Independence and the Revolutionary War as the beginning of what makes the U.S. special. What he didn't mention is that conservatives opposed both the Declaration and the Revolution itself. Many conservatives fought on the side of the British and fled to Canada, the Caribbean and to England once the British and their German mercenaries were defeated by the progressives. Conservatives never understand their place in history. But Thom Hartmann does:

Tonight in Iowa we see the beginning of the political revolution so many progressives have worked to ignite and that Bernie Sanders has embraced as his campaign's central theme. It is not a revolution fueled by those already invested with money and power but one built with and for people who believe we can and must do better.

Ever since PDA began its Run Bernie Run petition drive in 2013, we have stayed dedicated to the core issues that we can now legitimately claim have the attention and energy of this presidential race.

Bernie Sanders expresses it best when he uses his now familiar cry, "Not me, us." Whether we are talking about creating a more just, improved and expanded Medicare for all healthcare system, providing access to a college education for all, addressing the climate crisis, or ending the death grip of Citizens' United on our democracy, Bernie Sanders gives us reason to unite.