Suggestions for Iowa’s GOP national convention delegates

Surely the G.O.P.’s goal at its 2024 Republican National Convention is to choose as its presidential nominee a person with great integrity and moral character. Someone who can be trusted and respected. Someone who understands the U.S. Constitution and respects the rule of law. Someone who can be a role model young people can look up to … someone like John McCain or George H.W. Bush or Ronald Reagan.

The leading candidate, Donald Trump, may lack some or all of those qualities.

Iowa will send 40 delegates to the July confab in Milwaukee. Twenty of them are pledged to support candidates who have dropped out of the race but are only bound to support them on the first ballot. Could some brave Republicans, perhaps Iowa Republicans, find a window of opportunity to look beyond Trump?

After all, several state and federal grand juries have indicted him on a variety of charges.

• In December 2022, a New York jury found two Trump companies guilty of 17 felonies related to tax evasion.

• In March 2023, a New York grand jury indicted Trump on 34 felony counts of falsifying business records to conceal damaging information (known as the “Stormy Daniels Hush Money Case”).

• In May 2023, a federal grand jury found Trump liable for sexual abuse and defamation in a lawsuit filed by E. Jean Carroll and ordered him to pay her $5 million.

• In January 2024, another federal jury found Trump liable for defaming Carroll and ordered Trump to pay her another $83 million.

• In February 2024, the judge in the civil fraud case ordered Trump to pay the state of New York $354 million plus interest. Judge Engoron: “The frauds here leap off the page and shock the conscience.”

• In the Mar-a-Lago case, Trump is charged with 40 felony counts of mishandling of classified documents, obstructing justice, and making false statements. No trial date is set.

• In August 2023, a grand jury indicted Trump and 18 allies for violating 12 Georgia statutes in 161 actions that attempted to overturn the 2020 presidential election. No trial date is set, but several of the 19 have pleaded guilty.

• In August 2023, Trump was indicted on felony charges for working to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election in the run-up to the violent riot at the U.S. Capital on Jan. 6, 2021. No trial date is set.

• And several of Trump’s current or former allies including Michael Flynn, Paul Manafort, Rick Gates, Rudy Gulliani, Mark Meadows, John Eastman, Alan Weisselberg, Sydney Powell, Kenneth Chesebro, Steve Bannon, Peter Navarro, Michael Cohen, Roger Stone, and Jenna Ellis have been found guilty, pled guilty, or been indicted on a variety of charges.

There is also the matter of Trump admitting that he would like to be dictator on “day one,” and openly admiring strongmen Xi of China, Erdogan of Turkey, and Putin of Russia.

And, if any of the delegates have grandchildren, they may be concerned about Trump’s pledge to reverse all Biden environmental actions and to not implement any new environmental protections.

Is Donald Trump really the best presidential candidate the Republican Party can find?

Ralph Plagman served as a teacher and administrator for 49 years in the Cedar Rapids Community Schools.