Trump wins big here

They're here for a reason, a reason they explain at the beginning of the night. If Donald Trump can win Sioux County, where he's not won before, then his win is going to be big. Sioux County, they explain, is a hotbed of evangelical Christians, a place where Trump's reputation as a dirty old man has, at least in the past, overcome any hope that he might somehow be a champion--dirty, yes, but a champion nonetheless--of true Bible believers. And, after all, the Bible is full of champions who had their problems. Look at King David.

So the liberal media is here in Sioux County, in Sioux Center, in fact, and they're at the caucus, mikes in hand, camera's churning, when reporter (she's African-American, may well be the only one in the house) asks a guy, just any guy, a young guy, maybe 40, and asks him who he's going to vote for. He says Trump, and she asks what has become an age-old question, why? He says because he himself is a Christian and Trump shares his family values. Furthermore, he likes Trump's policies.

What policies? she says, and he says his family values, and of course he throws in abortion--you know: he got rid of Roe v. Wade. 

And anything else? she says, and he says he also moved Israel's capital to Jerusalem from Tel Aviv. The guy liked that too.

Thank you, she says, and the show goes on.

And I ask myself, "where does this guy go to church?" Trumps's 2017 recognition of Israel's capital as Jerusalem was a popular move with some of America's evangelicals, but I can't imagine where in Sioux County, Iowa, this guy goes to church because that move--restoring Jerusalem as capital of the country--is a event on the list of Things that will happen to signal the end times, the rapture and all of that, the opening bars of Judgement Day. And not too many churches say much about the rapture and all of that.

Lots of folks call all of that "pre-millennialism," and it's rare as moose in Sioux County, where generally churches haven't bought into that kind of theology. But the guy said that one of the reasons he was going to vote for Donald Trump was because Trump moved Israel's capital to Jerusalem. 

He may well go to some mega-church in Sioux City or Sioux Falls, I suppose, but I can't imagine that there are many churches in Sioux County who are pre-mill. Want a better argument? I'm betting that this guy worships at First Church of Fox News. 

MSNBC's announced they were here to check on the counties where Trump hadn't rolled up a win in the past because his score card here looked pretty bad--until last night. While walking away with 51 per cent of the vote throughout the state, Trump tallied 45 per cent of the Sioux County caucus vote last night (five points less than the statewide average), coming in first for the first time.

So now we know what we suspected: Sioux County Republicans love Trump just as much as any county's Republicans. 

MSNBC got an answer to their question--Trump plowed through the county just as he plowed through the rest of Iowa. 

Okay. Now we know.