Does anyone believe that Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis or former governor of South Carolina. Does Nikki Haley really have a chance to become the Republican Party’s 2024 presidential candidate? It’s a scenario that’s becoming increasingly difficult to imagine.

That’s because the Iowa caucuses went almost exactly as predicted, with former President Trump wiping the floor with his rivals as the two of them battled for second place. DeSantis, despite his lead in that battle, is looking at the end of his presidential ambitions.

As has become the case with today’s Republican Party, reality took a back seat to fantasy. Everyone declared themselves the winner.

Despite everything they threw at us, everyone against us, DeSantis said, we got our ticket punched out of Iowa. (There’s a brick wall waiting for him in New Hampshire.)

Tonight, Haley told her supporters, Iowa was turning this primary into a two-way race.

Did you succeed?

Haley is expected to do better next week in New Hampshire, where the conservative electorate is less ideologically rigid than in Iowa, and of course in South Carolina, where she is a native daughter. Even if Haley miraculously beats Trump or comes close to beating Trump in New Hampshire, his iron grip on the party will be difficult to shake. Every indictment, every court hearing seems to reinforce his perceived status as a persecuted victim of the Democratic Party in general and President Biden in particular.

While Haley and DeSantis at least acknowledged that they were still vying for a presidential nomination, Trump, in his typically grandiose style, behaved as if he had already won the general.

Monday

in

In his victory speech, he called for national unity, just as he called on the January 6 protesters to remain peaceful

,

that is to say, completely disingenuous.

This is now time for everyone, our country, to come together, we want to come together, he said as he launched into his rambling, off-the-cuff remarks. Whether Republican or Democrat, liberal or conservative, it would be so great if we could come together and put the world on the right track.

he said.

But Trumps have to be Trump. He simply couldn’t keep up the unity theme: I don’t want to be too harsh on the president, he said, but I have to say he’s the worst president we’ve had in the history of our country. He is destroying our country.

Trump’s outburst in Iowa all but answered the question Haley asked her supporters late Monday night: Do you want more of the same? Or do you want a new generation of conservative leaders?

Sorry, Governor, but it seems they want more of the same.

They want more of Trump’s lies about the 2020 election, more of his immigrant bashing, more of his fantasies about how Russia, on his watch, wouldn’t have dared to invade Ukraine and Hamas wouldn’t have dared to invade Israel. They want more of his apocalyptic rhetoric across the border, about how mental institutions and insane asylums are being emptied in our country. They want to hear more about the January 6 hostages and how, on Biden’s watch, the United States is being invaded by terrorists, some of them very bad.

Trump’s grip on the imaginations, not to mention the moral compasses, of his supporters shows little sign of weakening. Entrance polls for the major television networks showed that nearly two-thirds of Republican caucusgoers in Iowa do not believe Biden won the 2020 election. About the same percentage said they would vote for Trump even if he were a convicted felon.

On Tuesday, as Haley appeared in New Hampshire and DeSantis briefly touched down in South Carolina before heading north, Trump appeared in a federal courtroom in New York.

There he was again confronted by the writer E. Jean Carroll, who accused him of raping her years ago in a Bergdorf Goodman dressing room. She has already won a civil case against him and $5 million in damages for the lies he told about her before he became president. This trial will determine how much he must pay for defaming her

while

he was chairman. (She’s asking for $10 million.)

The fact that Mr. Trump did in fact sexually assault and rape Ms. Carroll has been conclusively established and binding in the case, U.S. District Judge Lewis Kaplan said.

The process has an ouroboros quality. On Monday while

Trump

was in court, his Truth Social account published claims that he had never met Carroll. As long as Trump continues to deny that he raped Carroll, or even knows her, she can theoretically continue to sue him for damages indefinitely.

Not that the base cares. As polls show, his legal votes are a big part of his political appeal. If Haley or DeSantis could get themselves arrested for anything,

something,

they might have a chance against him.

@robinkabcarian