I did my part in Iowa's MAGA caucus!
Very shortly after the January 15 Iowa caucuses that accorded Republican icon Donald Trump historic 51% support, seething liberals rushed to keyboards to spew antipathy toward our state and its traditional caucuses.
"The Iowa caucus has become an outdated relic," hissed Bloomberg columnist Patricia Lopez, perhaps through gritted teeth. She dismissed the value of personal interaction to the process of choosing leaders, and asserted technological advancements had rendered the downhome method in which neighbors meet obsolete.
She quoted the University of Minnesota's Larry Jacobs as slurring our state's caucus system as "one that's far outlived even its most modest claims." He later added "The people who show up are so unlike the rest of America...It's just not reflective."
(That assessment reminds that the Biden-era Democrat Party urges Iowa's first-in-the-nation status, which President Trump safeguarded, be abolished and replaced by the "more diverse" South Carolina.)
Early in his undisciplined stream-of-consciousness account of caucus attendance, Salon's J.M. Norris boasted: "As an American, I want to do everything possible to prevent Trump from returning to the White House."
Acompanied by his wife, Norris temporarily switched his affiliation so as to participate. He littered his diatribe with tiresome finger-wagging of racial nature (and went so far as to count heads on that score), conceded that the event was more orderly than Democrat ones, but was not swayed from liberal prejudices.
The Salon scribe derided Trump backers' presentations as "when the train left for crazy town." His characterizations of MAGA attendees and the candidate they'd braved inclement elements to endorse tended toward the mocking.
Norris ended the piece by recalling that he'd laughed when his wife declared "I need a shower to get the conservative off me."
Iowa's largest paper, the Gannett-owned Des Moines Register, is notoriously left-sympathetic. The paper's reporters and opinion writers savaged Trump throughout his presidency, not giving a damn that a majority of Iowa voters had helped elect him.
Register columnist Lucas Grundmeier waved a dismissive hand. The headline for his post-caucus piece (which also ran on Yahoo! News) slighted Iowa caucuses as "redundant," and "alarming" given that they had boosted Trump.
"The oft-explained virtue of Iowa is supposed to be the opportunity for lesser-known candidates to speak face-to-face with voters and gain a foothold without having to raise a prohibitive amount of money," Grundmeier wrote.
He complained that caucus-goers had given Trump overwhelming support despite the MAGA figure's eschewing such usual politicking.
Comes now a clear-headed perspective, one properly respectful of our caucuses and the grassroots folks who rally to them.
In such gatherings, everyday Iowans hash out our country's electoral direction. Our caucuses are quintessentially democratic and allow regular citizens an opportunity to participate in the Great Conversation.
Workaday Iowans battled through unexpectedly harsh winter weather to assemble in churches, voting places, gymnasiums, and school rooms to take part in the electoral process and make our common voices heard. We refuse to be talked down to by disengenuous "experts" who would cancel out our pivotal role in America's course, were they able.
Their hostility toward us is evidenced by their determination to crush our homespun caucuses.
In progressive Democrats' thinking (and that of RINOs), regular Americans' ideas and values are unimportant. Iowa's time-honored caucuses, where average citizens help chart our nation's course, are antithetical to the ambition of top-down political authority over all facets of people's lives.
As is now well known, Trump carried 98 of my state's 99 counties. My Black Hawk County precinct delivered him whale-sized majority endorsement. Already, he is rallying New Hampshire throngs.
I was proud to march in Trump's MAGA movement and play a role in its historic victory!
Postscript: Lest my earlier allegations re many progressives' ambition for top-down authority seem exaggerated, consider that numerous Americans of lofty position attended the recent World Economic Forum in Davos. Featured guest Klaus Schwab touted the predictive potential of Artificial Intelligence. "But then the next step could be to go into prescriptive mode, which means you do not even have to have elections anymore because you can already predict. And afterward, you can say 'Why do we need elections?'"