Never Trumper Republicans crash and burn in Iowa

Washington Examiner:
For six months, some of President Trump's most implacable foes have invested great hope in two Republicans, former Rep. Joe Walsh and former Massachusetts Gov. William Weld, who are challenging the president for the GOP nomination. Could they do some damage to Trump's reelection prospects?

Tonight, in Iowa, that hope was put to a first test. It failed.

In the state's Republican caucuses — yes, there were Republican caucuses, even though the competitive Democratic caucuses received all the attention — the Walsh and Weld candidacies fizzled.

In the end, Trump won 97.16% of the vote, to Walsh's 1.08% and Weld's 1.27%. Others, write-ins of various people, totaled 0.47%. It was a striking show of strength for the president.

Beyond that, turnout was high for a year in which an incumbent president is assured of re-nomination. In the last election, 2016, about 180,000 Republican voters turned up for caucuses. But that was a highly competitive year in which Trump battled Ted Cruz, Marco Rubio, Jeb Bush, and a bunch of other candidates. The last time there was a noncompetitive GOP caucus, that is, a caucus with an incumbent president, was in 2004, when President George W. Bush was in the White House. That year, about 8,000 Republicans showed up for what were essentially meaningless caucuses.

This cycle, the turnout was 32,004, an impressive number for an incumbent year.
...
The Never Trumpers are unlikely to ever win anything this year.  Like their fellow travelers in the media, there is no viable constituency for them.

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