DES MOINES, Iowa — Within a half hour of Iowa’s first-in-the-nation caucuses, it was becoming clear who Monday night’s big winners and losers were going to be.
Former President Trump marched out of the frigid Iowa night with a historic victory, a strong case for inevitability, and a jet plane of momentum heading into the second GOP presidential nominating contest in New Hampshire in a week.
The night’s biggest loser was arguably the life-support notion that Republicans en masse are looking for an alternative to Trump in what’s shaping up to be a rematch of 2020 and that Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis and former U.N. Ambassador Nikki Haley are such “viable alternatives.”
A close second in the loser column was the Democrat Party of Iowa, ignominiously forced to sit out the opening caucuses for the first time in 52 years and watch their GOP counterparts operate a functioning caucus — something state Democrats had a hard time doing four years ago.
Trump hammered his remaining rivals, winning by a record-smashing 51 percent of the vote. DeSantis finished a distant second, with roughly 21 percent support of caucusgoers. Haley, a former South Carolina governor who served as Trump’s U.N. ambassador, looked to finish in third with about 19 percent of the vote.
Ohio biotech entrepreneur and political newcomer Vivek Ramaswamy received less than 8 percent support, finishing a faraway fourth. Ramaswamy announced he was ending his campaign for the White House and backing Trump, the man the millennial Ramaswamy has frequently called
