The Week: Trump’s Iowa Romp

• Trump’s goal for January: win more primaries than he loses court cases.

• Donald Trump romped in Iowa, as widely expected and projected in every single pre-caucus poll. He is well on his way to a third consecutive Republican nomination and is duly vacuuming up endorsements from GOP officials. Ron DeSantis banked everything on Iowa and, while he managed to beat out Nikki Haley for second place after a long war of attrition, he lost to Trump by 30 points. It’s hard to see a plausible path ahead for him. Obviously, running against Donald Trump this year was always going to be difficult, but the DeSantis campaign still has to count among the most disappointing and poorly run in recent memory. Nikki Haley didn’t get the second place she hoped would generate momentum going into New Hampshire, where Trump leads in almost every poll. She has sometimes looked competitive in the Granite State, though, and has a (slight) chance of catching Trump there. But everything suggests her coalition is too dependent on moderates and independents to be built for victory in a Republican-nomination battle. The party has better options than Donald Trump, but, if the Iowa results are any indication, it is not interested in them.

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• Trump’s goal for January: win more primaries than he loses court cases.

• Donald Trump romped in Iowa, as widely expected and projected in every single pre-caucus poll. He is well on his way to a third consecutive Republican nomination and is duly vacuuming up endorsements from GOP officials. Ron DeSantis banked everything on Iowa and, while he managed to beat out Nikki Haley for second place after a long war of attrition, he lost to Trump by 30 points. It’s hard to see a plausible path ahead for him. Obviously, running against Donald Trump this year was always going to be difficult, but the DeSantis campaign still has to count among the most disappointing and poorly run in recent memory. Nikki Haley didn’t get the second place she hoped would generate momentum going into New Hampshire, where Trump leads in almost every poll. She has sometimes looked competitive in the Granite State, though, and has a (slight) chance of catching Trump there. But everything suggests her coalition is too dependent on moderates and independents to be built for victory in a Republican-nomination battle. The party has better options than Donald Trump, but, if the Iowa results are any indication, it is not interested in them.