Earlier this week, Republican caucus-goers endured life-threatening cold and dangerous driving conditions to get to their meeting places and deliver a record-setting 30-point win for Trump.
Florida Governor Ron DeSantis finished a distant second, just ahead of former U.N. Ambassador Nikki Haley. Finishing fourth, businessman Vivek Ramaswamy subsequently suspended his campaign and endorsed Trump.
Now the GOP candidates' trains are pulling into New Hampshire and South Carolina, the first primary states.
"I honestly don't think President Trump will have as much success in New Hampshire and South Carolina as he did in Iowa, but I don't think he'll be stopped, either," columnist Robert Knight predicts. "This was the largest margin of victory in Iowa caucus history. That's quite a message to the voters in other states."
Though it looks like Trump will be this year's GOP nominee, Jenna Ellis, a radio host and former attorney for President Trump, believes many conservatives will instead support the independent candidacy of Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
"The question then will become will 2024 show a shift in the two-party system? And because of the Democrat base and the GOP base really not preferring a repeat of Trump versus Biden, will that carve a new pathway now for a potential third-party candidate?" she poses.
Ellis, who left the GOP in 2021 "until the Republican Party comes back home to conservatives," believes RFK Jr., officially an independent candidate as of late last year, can attract the conservative voters who do not support Trump.
"RFK genuinely represents a lot of what genuine conservatives stand for in terms of being willing to call out the COVID-19 vaccine narratives," Ellis observes. "He's willing to hold big government accountable."
He does , however, present a challenge on the issue of abortion. But now that it is primarily a state issue, which means Congress will not be issuing legislation on it in the foreseeable future or the next four years of a president, Ellis thinks conservatives "may be willing to overlook that issue."
She believes those voters are more concerned with the overall future of the GOP, and Knight argues that the media continues to be wrong about Trump's part in that.
"They think of Trump as a giant poison pill for the GOP, when, in fact, he may be the cure," the columnist submits. "People are fed up with what Biden has done to the country, and they want somebody strong enough and dedicated enough to do what it takes to undo all the damage."
In his recent rant against progressives and the Democratic Party, former Fox host Bill O'Reilly said he is in that category. He is pining for what America was like before Biden came into office.
"Trump governed this nation in a responsible way, where everybody prospered," O'Reilly said. "If you don't believe that, you're a moron."
"All the working people, no matter what color they were, were making more money, and there were more jobs," he recalled. "We didn't have inflation. We didn't have supply problems. We didn't have any of it. Now, we got all of it, in addition to an open border. Criminals running wild, murdering people because progressive DAs funded by George Soros don't want to punish the violent criminals."
And O'Reilly warned that there is little time for correction.
"We gotta stop this now," he said. "Biden is not gonna get any better. The Democratic Party has to get destroyed next November. I don't care whether you like Trump or not."
