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Why the Average Republican Voter Hates the GOP. . . Batya Ungar-Sargon

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Trump looked untouchable in Iowa. (Photo by CHRISTIAN MONTERROSA/AFP via Getty Images)

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To the surprise of no one and the dismay of the liberal commentariat class, former president Donald Trump has crushed the first GOP primary election. 

Iowa, which voted twice for Barack Obama before flipping to Trump in 2016, gave Trump a decisive win Monday night. And in Iowa, as in the Republican Party and the country more generally, the class divide was the defining feature of the night. 

According to MSNBC’s early entrance polls, Trump won voters without a college degree by 65 percent, to Florida governor Ron DeSantis’s 17 percent and former UN ambassador Nikki Haley’s scant 8 percent. Trump won college grads, too, but by a much slimmer margin—just 35 percent caucused for Trump. Haley, meanwhile, got nearly as many—33 percent, with DeSantis trailing at 23 percent. The AP had a similar breakdown.

That’s a 30-point gap in support for Trump—and a 25-point gap for Haley. It’s the gulf separating the college-educated from the working-class, who don’t just have different candidates of choice but different concerns, different struggles, and different priorities. 

Working-class Americans are worried about the economy, immigration, our foreign entanglements, and the disappearing American Dream—all issues Donald Trump not only talks about but has a solid record on. Haley represents the GOP that Trump replaced—the free-market, chamber-of-commerce, nation-building version of the party that is dominated by a donor class whose interests are completely at odds with those of the working class.

Unfortunately for Haley, her party is now the party of the working class. In 2020, Bloomberg found that truckers, plumbers, machinists, painters, corrections officers, and maintenance employees were among the occupations most likely to donate to Trump (Biden got the lion’s share of writers and authors, editors, therapists, business analysts, HR department staff, and bankers.) As much as the Republican donor class wishes Haley were the party’s nominee, there’s no going back for your average corrections officer. 

The thing liberals don’t understand about the average Republican voter in 2024 is that they hate the Republican Party. The average liberal feels well-represented by the Democratic Party because the Democrats’ base, like the party leadership, are college-educated elites. They share the same list of priorities. But the average Republican voter is working class and truly loathes the Bush-era version of the Republican Party, which meant tax cuts for the rich, failed wars, and an economic agenda that outsourced jobs to China.

Whether they realize it or not, this is why Democrats truly hate Trump. Without him, the left would soon have had a pretty permanent monopoly on power. 

But if Iowa is any indication, not so soon after all. 

Batya Ungar-Sargon is the deputy opinion editor of Newsweek. Follow her on X @bungarsargon and read her last piece for The Free Press, “The January 6 Hearings Changed My Mind.”

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Inside Assad’s ‘Human Slaughterhouse.’ Plus. . . Oliver Wiseman

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It’s been nearly a week since the stunning collapse of the Assad regime.

The end of more than half a century of brutal dictatorship in Syria is—to state the obvious—a major geopolitical moment. It has embarrassed Tehran; caught Washington off guard; and upended many assumptions about the region.

The fallout is only beginning. In Damascus, the victorious Islamist rebels are attempting to consolidate political power. In a video message Friday, their leader Abu Mohammad al-Jolani, congratulated “the great Syrian people for the victory of the blessed revolution” and invited them “to head to the squares to show their happiness without shooting bullets and scaring people.”

But there’s more to the story than simply a nation rejoicing—however welcome Bashar al-Assad’s departure may be. Many are worried that the latest chaos could allow for the reemergence of ISIS—which explains why America hit ISIS camps in Syria with airstrikes earlier this week. Meanwhile, in the north of the country, Turkish-backed rebels are fighting U.S.-backed Kurds. And in southwestern Syria, Druze villages are voting to request that Israel annex their territory. Indicators of a nation—and a region—in flux.

Inside Assad’s ‘Human Slaughterhouse.’ Plus. . .

Worshippers attend mass at the Roman Catholic Church of Saint Francis of Assisi in Aleppo, Syria, on December 12, 2024. (Ozan Kose via Getty Images)

Among those anxiously wondering what comes next are Syria’s 500,000 Christians.

For her report for The Free Press today, Madeleine Rowley spoke to Syrian Christians who are worried about the future. One of them is Elias, a 21-year-old living in Berlin but whose family is in Damascus. “If anything happens to us, do not come back to Syria,” his mother told him in a voice message earlier this week. “Do not come to bury us.”

Elias fears the worst. “We have no reason to trust al-Jolani,” he tells The Free Press. “He is a terrorist.”

Read Madeleine Rowley’s full story on what’s next for Syria’s Christians here.

Many of those looking forward with trepidation are also looking back with horror. In the days since the fall of Assad, the extent of the evil of his regime has come into focus. Nowhere is that clearer than in Sednaya—the regime’s most notorious prison, torture complex, and death camp.

This week, Syrians flocked there to search for missing loved ones—and for a full accounting of the regime’s violent brutality. Our cameraman was among those crowds and, in collaboration with The Center for Peace Communications, we gained unprecedented access to Sednaya and heard from survivors of this factory of death.

Click here to watch our exclusive, firsthand look inside Assad’s most notorious prison.

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December 12, 2024 Heather Cox Richardson

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WATCH: Inside Assad’s ‘Human Slaughterhouse’ Tanya Lukyanova

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In the days since the fall of the Assad regime, throngs of Syrians have been making their way up the steep hill just north of Damascus. Their destination is Sednaya—the regime’s most notorious prison, torture complex, and death camp that has long been a symbol of the regime’s brutality. They come searching for loved ones among the thousands of newly released prisoners.

Our cameraman was among those who made this pilgrimage. In collaboration with The Center for Peace Communications, we gained unprecedented access to Sednaya, capturing exclusive footage from inside its underground dungeons and recording the unvarnished testimonies of survivors—those lucky enough to emerge alive from what many have called a human slaughterhouse.

“They would call out names at dawn, strip the prisoners of their clothes, and take them away,” recalls Ahmed Abd Al-Wahid, a former inmate who endured years of captivity. “We knew from the sound of chains on the platforms that these were executions. Condemned prisoners wouldn’t be fed for three days prior. Once a month, they would search us. During one such search, an officer declared, ‘We’re not here to inspect; we’re here to kill.’ ”


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