RUTHFULLY YOURS

The American political revolution appears to be exaggerated. Iowa Republicans played to their social conservative form Monday by vaulting Ted Cruz to victory over Donald Trump in their first-in-the-nation caucuses, while as we went to press Democrats were narrowly turning back Bernie Sanders’s populist challenge in favor of Hillary Clinton’s interest-group machine.

The night’s biggest loser, to borrow a word, was Mr. Trump, who in the end couldn’t turn his large crowds and polling leads into enough caucus voters. There’s no doubt the New York businessman helped to generate higher turnout, which broke recent caucus records for Republicans. But perhaps he should have attended that debate last week after all, or maybe there are limits to his unconventional media-dominated, celebrity politics.

Mr. Trump still leads in the New Hampshire polls, but one question is how he will respond to the uncomfortable reality of second place. His speech on Monday night was, to borrow another phrase, low-energy.

Instead Mr. Cruz prevailed like Mike Huckabee (2008) and Rick Santorum (2012) by mobilizing the state’s cultural conservatives into a 28% plurality. The first-term Texas Senator had the support of Iowa’s conservative pastors network, he spent months organizing across the state, and his campaign invested heavily in voter analytics. The Texan also passed the first test of his theory that he can win the GOP nomination, and then the Presidency, with a hard-edged conservative message.

Ted Cruz did what he had to do. Donald Trump fell well short of the shock-and-awe moment he hoped would set up a blitz through the rest of the country. Marco Rubio bought himself a seat at the big table. And Hillary Clinton flirted all night with disaster.

Those were the big story lines that emerged from Iowa’s caucuses Monday night. It’s early—ridiculously early, actually—to draw too many conclusions. But the results suggested that a fight still lies ahead on the Democratic side, and a potentially much bigger and longer battle is ahead on the Republican one.

Perhaps most important, the Iowa results suggest that those fights will take place in two parties deeply divided between insiders and outsiders, between young and old, and between the most and least wealthy. The situation is volatile, and, as a consequence, unpredictable.

By late last night, it was clear that Mr. Cruz rode his strong support among evangelical conservatives to a victory. He had to do that to be a viable long-term candidate; if he couldn’t charge ahead in a state where evangelical voters traditionally have an outsize influence, his candidacy would have been seriously compromised.

Mr. Trump calculated that he could make a late surge in Iowa, put away Mr. Cruz and pave the way for a big win in New Hampshire to start putting away the competition. That didn’t happen. His brand has been that he is a winner; it remains to be seen what the Iowa outcome does to that brand.

DES MOINES, Iowa—Texas Sen. Ted Cruz outmuscled Donald Trump to win the first-in-the-nation Iowa caucuses on Monday, delivering a stinging rebuke to the celebrity businessman and establishing himself as a leading contender for the GOP nomination.

The results Monday set the stage for a series of high-stakes showdowns in the weeks ahead between the top two finishers and Florida Sen. Marco Rubio, whose appeal as a general-election candidate was good enough for a late surge that nearly overtook Mr. Trump.

“Tonight is a victory for the grass roots,” said Mr. Cruz to a raucous victory party in Des Moines. “Tonight is a victory for millions of Americans who have shouldered the burden of seven years of Washington deals run amok.”

Mr. Trump kept his post-caucus remarks brief, thanking his family and the state of Iowa before turning his attention to contests that follow. “We love New Hampshire, we love South Carolina,” he said.

In 2014 I wrote a book that made the case that the United States, for all of its problems, was not in decline. Now and again I have my doubts.

The results of Monday’s Iowa caucus won’t be known until after this column goes to print. But here’s what we know already about the four top contenders. No prizes for matching names to descriptions:

1) A compulsive liar with a persecution complex, a mania for secrecy, and a bald disdain for rules as they apply to lesser people.

2) A bigoted braggart with a laughable grasp of public policy and leering manners of the kind you would expect from a barroom drunk.

3) A glib moralizer who is personally detested by every single senator in his own party, never mind the other one.

4) A Sixties radical preaching warmed-over socialism to people too young to know what it was or too stupid to understand what it does.
Such are the character traits of the candidates now vying to possess the nation’s nuclear launch codes. This being a free country, they are entitled to their ambitions. This also being a democracy, we are responsible for our political choices. So how is it that we have come to choose this?