The Great GOP Realignment

A few days before the Feb. 1 Iowa caucuses, Brad Martsching was barreling down a Pennsylvania highway, hoping to unload his eighteen-wheeler in time to get back home to Indianola, south of Des Moines, and participate for the very first time in the opening ritual of the presidential primary process. Martsching, 46, had settled on Ted Cruz over Donald Trump, but was mostly nursing his disgust at Republican leaders. “I’m a conservative. I want the Constitution to be our law, not political correctness,” he said. “I want a smaller government with less control of our personal lives and more control of our border, our finances, and our safety as a nation.” Republican lawmakers kept frustrating him by ignoring their campaign promises. “We get people that run as conservative and even get Tea Party support—they wear that lapel pin proudly,” he said. “But when they leave for Washington, they leave it on their dresser at home.”

Martsching was fed up. A lot of other Iowans were, too. So they handed a victory to Cruz, who infuriated Republican leaders by engineering the 2013 government shutdown. And they made Trump, who’s equally unpopular in Washington, a close second. Add Cruz’s 28 percent to Trump’s 24 percent, and more than half of caucusgoers supported an outsider openly despised by the GOP establishment. Voters had heeded party elders for decades by nominating establishment figures such as Bob Dole, George W. Bush, John McCain, and Mitt Romney. The Iowa result was nothing less than a revolt, and the message to Republican leaders unmistakable: Drop dead!