I am sitting here in Greece on a balcony overlooking Corfu and watching Grassroots Iowa blow itself up over a governor’s race.
As someone who cares deeply about Iowa, conservatism, and the grassroots movement, I find that both fascinating and disappointing.
What makes it even more disappointing is that the people at the center of this race are, by all accounts, good people. Eddie Andrews, Brad Sherman, Adam Steen, and Zach Lahn are all decent men trying to serve their state. They may have different strengths, different weaknesses, and different visions for Iowa, but none of them are villains.
Yet many within the Republican Party and Christian conservative circles are unintentionally creating deep schisms within the grassroots movement by the way they engage in political discourse.
There are three major trends I am seeing.
First: The Politics of Vilification
People from multiple camps have participated in this, but one camp in particular has embraced it with remarkable enthusiasm.
Rather than discussing policy differences, some supporters rely on lies, half-truths, innuendo, selective outrage, and character assassination to tear down opposing candidates and the people who support them.
One example is the frequent use of phrases like, “He drank the Kool-Aid.”
Do people even know where that phrase comes from?
The expression traces back to the 1978 Jonestown massacre, where more than 900 followers of cult leader Jim Jones died after consuming poisoned Flavor Aid, commonly misremembered as Kool-Aid.
Think about what that means when applied to political supporters.
When someone says a voter “drank the Kool-Aid,” they are essentially saying that person is gullible enough to blindly follow a dangerous leader. In practice, they are implying that voters supporting another candidate are incapable of independent thought.
When the phrase is directed toward Zach Lahn supporters, the implication is not only that those voters are foolish, but that Lahn himself must be some sort of dangerous figure leading people astray.
That is an extraordinary accusation.
And frankly, it is neither charitable nor Christ-like.
Another tactic has been attacking the integrity of people who change their minds.
But people are allowed to change their minds.
In fact, changing your mind in light of new information is often evidence that you are thinking carefully rather than blindly following a tribe.
The dishonest action would be privately changing your position while publicly pretending otherwise.
Take Steve Deace as an example. He has received criticism because he has indicated support for Zach Lahn while still intending to vote for Adam Steen.
Yet what many critics call inconsistency looks a lot like integrity.
He publicly committed to voting for Steen and intends to keep that commitment. Simultaneously, he has been honest about how his thinking has evolved regarding the race.
Whether you agree with him or not, that is not deception. It is transparency.
Ironically, some of the same people attacking others for lacking integrity have spent months accusing every candidate except their own of being dishonest.
That strikes many observers as the political equivalent of the pot calling the kettle black.
The reality is simple: if you dig deep enough, you can probably find examples of mistakes, poor judgment, inconsistency, or questionable decisions in every campaign.
Why?
Because every campaign is made up of imperfect human beings.
Second: The Double Standard Problem
In the Gospel of Luke, Jesus teaches, “With the measure you use, it will be measured to you.”
Every time I think about that passage, I think about this governor’s race.
One of the biggest problems in modern politics is not disagreement. It is applying one standard to your opponents and another to yourself.
I have watched people criticize a candidate’s donor list as though their own preferred candidate has never accepted support from outside Iowa.
I have watched people condemn integrity issues in other campaigns while refusing to acknowledge similar concerns in their own.
I have watched people dismiss polls as illegitimate after spending months sharing polls that favored their preferred candidate.
When the results help their candidate, the polls are proof.
When the results hurt their candidate, the polls are corrupt.
That is not principle.
That is tribalism.
And tribalism has become one of the most destructive forces in American politics.
Third: Choosing the Most Dramatic Explanation
Perhaps the strangest trend is our tendency to reject the most obvious explanation in favor of the one that makes our opponents look evil.
In fact, there have been many episodes/posts/comments that are so illogical that somewhere, Spock is probably rolling over in his empty photon torpedo casing grave. The impulse to leap past the obvious and embrace increasingly convoluted theories would have struck him as a spectacular failure of logic.
Consider the Iowa Standard Poll.
At one point, this poll showed Zach Lahn leading the field.
Whether that remains true today is beside the point.
The most straightforward explanation was simple:
More Iowans were hearing Lahn speak, and many of them liked what they heard.
Yet some immediately jumped to far more elaborate explanations.
Some argued that most of the votes must have come from Kansas.
Others suggested that the poll itself was somehow manipulated, hacked, or intentionally rigged.
One person even claimed there was a scandal because votes appeared to be changing.
But there was a far more likely explanation.
Anyone who has spent much time navigating social media knows how easy it is to accidentally click or tap the wrong thing. If someone attempted to open the poll and their finger landed on a candidate’s image, their vote could potentially change without them realizing it.
Is that explanation exciting?
No.
Is it likely?
Yes.
But because it does not paint political opponents as villains, it gets ignored.
Instead, many people instinctively choose the explanation that casts everyone except their preferred candidate in the worst possible light.
That tendency is damaging.
It erodes trust.
It fuels division.
And it makes meaningful political discussion nearly impossible.
A Final Thought for the Grassroots
The grassroots movement has long viewed itself as the moral conscience of the Republican Party.
But if we are honest, we have fallen short.
We have become too willing to mock, ridicule, and vilify those who disagree with us.
We have become too comfortable applying different standards to different people.
We have become too eager to win arguments and too reluctant to love our neighbors.
As Christians, we should know better.
Jesus consistently treated people with dignity—even those who rejected Him.
He confronted error without cruelty.
He spoke truth without malice.
He maintained consistency in judgment.
And He remained focused on His mission.
Imagine what would happen if we did the same.
Imagine a governor’s race where supporters passionately debated ideas without questioning one another’s intelligence.
Imagine a race where candidates were evaluated by the same standard.
Imagine a grassroots movement more concerned with truth and upholding Biblical Morality than tribal loyalty.
Iowa deserves that.
The Republican Party deserves that.
Most importantly, the people of Iowa deserve that.
Whether your candidate is Eddie Andrews, Brad Sherman, Adam Steen, or Zach Lahn, remember this: when the primary is over, we will still be neighbors.
The question is whether we will have treated one another that way.
- Matthew Haynie
