Bad judgment kills the caucuses

The Iowa caucuses is dead. What the Iowa Democrats couldn’t kill in 2020 with incompetence, the majority of caucusing Iowa Republicans have terminated with bad judgment. By voting for Donald Trump in the face of good alternatives, Iowa Republicans have shown that we do not deserve to be first in the nation.

That Iowa Republicans could not see former President Donald Trump as he truly is — a charlatan and a demagogue — shows bad judgment. My father spent most of his life as a small-town West Texas banker and firmly believed that you hire a person based on their ability to use good judgment.

Iowa Republicans had an opportunity to show good judgment. Ron DeSantis was a strong candidate and Nikki Haley was a breath of fresh air. There were other candidates who didn’t make it as far, but they weren’t bad either.

Gov. Kim Reynolds had the guts to look beyond Donald Trump by endorsing Gov. DeSantis. Any chance she had of being Trump’s VP was thrown out the window with that endorsement. And even Bob Vander Plaats, the evangelical leader of Iowa, had the sense to realize something was wrong with Trump and stood with DeSantis. Yet neither of those Republican stalwarts had any sway over the stranglehold that Donald Trump has over the Republican Party.

But bad judgment follows bad judgment. The bad judgment Donald Trump showed and continues to show is the Big Lie: that he won the 2020 election. If you support Donald Trump, then you support this lie as well. And there is not one scintilla of proof that corroborates it. Sadly, it’s the never-ending reassertion of the Big Lie by Donald Trump that continues to dupe people into believing it.

Donald Trump can’t stand being a loser because it is the worst thing he can imagine. But the United States is built on a history of the humility of people who lost an election, and who still went on to have a positive impact in our world. Jimmy Carter comes first to mind.

Those of you in Iowa—Republicans and Democrats — who have the courage of former Republican Congresswoman Liz Cheney to acknowledge demagoguery when you see it: stand up and oppose Donald Trump in all the ways you can.

And those of you in New Hampshire (and South Carolina and beyond, if we get that far), find the courage of your conviction and deliver us from the hands of someone who does not really care about democracy.

Charles R. Crawley lives in Cedar Rapids.