The 2024 Republican Iowa Caucus is now history. Donald Trump scored a decisive victory, capturing 98 of 99 counties and winning 51 percent of the vote. Trump’s opponents — Nikki Haley and Gov. Ron DeSantis (R-Fla.) — find themselves struggling to continue.
Haley jetted off to New Hampshire where she hopes to get enough support from independents to either win or finish a close second. DeSantis decamped to Haley’s home state of South Carolina hoping to appeal to that state’s evangelicals.
But the reality is that Donald Trump has an unshakeable base of support and is all but certain to be the 2024 GOP presidential nominee. As Donald Trump, Jr. bragged on Jan. 6, 2021, “This is Donald Trump’s Republican Party!”
But several warning signs spell trouble ahead.
In Iowa, turnout declined by a precipitous 76,576 votes from 2016. Of the 718,901 registered Republicans in the state, only 110,298 bothered to vote, and Donald Trump won just half of those. Moreover, one-third of caucus-goers said that if Trump was convicted of a crime, he would be “unfit” to serve as president. And half of Nikki Haley’s voters said that if Trump became the nominee they would vote for Joe Biden.
Should Republicans sustain yet another presidential loss, it would mark a string of poor showings that began in 1992. From 1992 to 2020, the Republican Party won the popular vote just once in a presidential election, in 2004. Instead of winning majorities, the GOP has relied on a skewed Electoral College that favors rural states.
In the Senate, Republicans have been aided by a Constitution that gives each state two senators (including the Republican-dominated least populated ones). Aggressive gerrymandering has skewed many congressional districts to produce GOP wins.
The last time the GOP had such a poor showing was during the 1930s and 1940s. Beginning in 1932, the party lost five straight presidential elections. Franklin D. Roosevelt, whom Democrats nicknamed “The Champ,” won four victories while Harry Truman added a surprising fifth in 1948.
By 1952, Republicans were desperate to win. Back then, the party faced a difficult choice: Follow its heart which would lead them to nominate “Mr. Republican” a.k.a. Robert A. Taft, who disparaged the New Deal and warned of a “reign of socialism.” Or choose a World War II hero Dwight D. Eisenhower, whose immense appeal transcended party lines.
After a bitter fight, the party decided it liked Ike. So did the voters. Eisenhower’s 1952 landslide put the GOP back in control of the White House and Congress.
But Eisenhower did more than just win. He made the Republican Party competitive by accepting the broad outlines of the New Deal and expanding it under the umbrella he called “Modern Republicanism.”
Under Eisenhower, the federal highway system was created, the Department of Health Education and Welfare was established, the minimum wage was increased, the first civil rights bill since the post-Civil War era was passed and the National Defense Education Act began an infusion of federal dollars to train more math and science teachers.
Winning another lopsided victory in 1956, Ike gloated: “I think Modern Republicanism has proved itself. And America has approved of Modern Republicanism.”
But Eisenhower did something even more important — namely, to steer the GOP away from those who embraced conspiracy theories. Those voices became louder during the two decades Roosevelt and Truman occupied the Oval Office.
In 1940, Republican presidential nominee Wendell Willkie charged that Roosevelt conspired with Adolf Hitler and Benito Mussolini to “sell Czechoslovakia down the river.” Four years later, Thomas E. Dewey maintained that Roosevelt knew about Pearl Harbor in advance and “instead of being reelected, he ought to be impeached.”
By 1950, Sen. Joe McCarthy (R-Wisc.) charged that at least 205 communists were working within the State Department. Eisenhower despised McCarthy and vowed, “He’s the last guy in the world who’ll ever get [to the White House] if I have anything to say.” Later, Eisenhower joked that during his watch McCarthyism had become “McCarthywasm.”
Dwight D. Eisenhower set the Republican Party on a different course that paid political dividends. From 1952 to 1988, Republicans won seven of the 10 presidential elections held. Any thought that the GOPs would go the way of the Whigs disappeared.
But Donald Trump has brought the Republican Party one defeat after another. Republicans lost in 2018, Trump lost the presidency in 2020 and the supposed Red Wave of 2022 never materialized. In 2023, abortion rights became a motivating issue for Democrats after the Supreme Court’s decision in the Dobbs case, and in 2024, it is Joe Biden who is seizing the GOP mantle of freedom to make it his “sacred cause.”
Donald Trump’s promise to “Make America Great Again” relies on an idealized vision of the past. But while looking backward has its appeal, Americans are always looking ahead.
Eisenhower did that and steered the GOP toward a new path. Republicans need another one to do the same and move past Donald Trump.
Alas, there is no Eisenhower in sight.
John Kenneth White is a professor of politics at The Catholic University of America. His forthcoming book is titled “Grand Old Unraveling: The Republican Party, Donald Trump, and the Rise of Authoritarianism.” He can be reached at johnkennethwhite.com.