THE Iowa caucuses—the first electoral contest of the 2016 presidential cycle—saw the race’s two loudest populists suffer setbacks. Donald Trump was pushed into second place in the Republican field, leaving him standing on a stage in a hotel ballroom in Des Moines, flanked by his family like a conventional politician, ploughing his way through a flat-sounding speech of congratulations to the victor, Senator Ted Cruz of Texas. On the left, Senator Bernie Sanders, a self-proclaimed democratic socialist from Vermont, had to settle for a tie with the Democratic front-runner, Hillary Clinton, after some of his ardent young supporters failed to turn out in quite the numbers he had hoped.
Yet even if individual populists suffered disappointments, the same Iowa caucuses showed that this election continues to be powered by forces of populist anger and contempt for those with governing experience. Mr Cruz is hardly a mainstream moderate. The first-term senator won in Iowa by campaigning among evangelical Christians like a fire-and-brimstone preacher, by denouncing Republican Party leaders as traitors to the conservative cause and by adopting...Continue reading
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