Much as I really don’t want to, it is just hard to ignore the Don-Don. He is as gentle and quiet as a rampaging bull elephant trumpeting loudly to warn everything in its path to get out of the way. While Trump doesn’t have the heft of a bull elephant, he does have a couple of things that serve as heft in this society – an outsized bankroll and celebrity.

Like so many I am sitting in wonder at how this man whose life is the antithesis of nearly everything we are told that the Republican Party believes in. Three marriages and publicly reported affairs, expressed belief that some taxes must be raised and an expressed belief in universal health care. The only thing Trump seems to have in common with his chosen party is that all the ills in this country have been caused by a scapegoat population. Like many politicians before him, Donald Trump saw what direction the parade was going and jumped in front of it.

Here in Iowa, Republicans were once thought of as being actually conservative as in being careful with money and resources. Mr. Trump is neither, nor does he exhibit any of the other traits of traditional Republican Iowa such as church attendance and leading a quiet life. The current chair of Iowa’s Republicans has seemed to want to bring back that style in the last couple of years.

Which brings me to the question, if Donald Trump secures the nomination of the Republican Party will the Iowa Republican Party back Trump even though the Trump persona is in so many ways in conflict with what the Iowa Republican Party stands for? Will the Iowa Republican Party surrender it ideals for electoral victory?

There is an age old philosophical question that never seems to get resolved – Do the ends justify the means? Stated a little bit differently the question is whether it violating some moral guidelines is alright in order to achieve some perceived higher moral good. We have seen this played out in many instances over the years from this opposing abortion. To the end of ending abortion, anti-abortionists have employed what most consider the most immoral of all acts, murder.

Watching various campaigns and hot button issue discussions over the past couple of decades those on the right seem to have little problem employing the practices of lying, omission and wild exaggeration to achieve what they consider a moral good. Just based on those observations one could easily conclude that in right wing eyes the ends do justify the means. One may also question whether the conclusions, such as keeping wages low, keeping wages below poverty level or stopping action to affect climate change that they seek to achieve are moral.

So the Republicans have a populist demagogue leading their polls who in so many ways is in counterpoint to perceived Republican values. Were Trump to win the Republican nomination will state party apparatus such as Iowa’s get behind Trump for the purpose of winning the election despite his open violating of Republican guidelines? Will Iowa’s party leaders speak highly of a man with multiple marriages and affairs, with multiple bankruptcies, with very questionable business practices at times, who fans the flames of racism and who uses employees almost as props to his ego?

If Trump is nominated will rank and file Iowa Republicans justify a vote for this man as seeking a higher good despite real problems with the means provided? One can almost hear the justifications pouring forth from the likes of a Bob Vander Plaats as claims God as working in mysterious ways. Will we hear the likes of Joni Ernst, Steve King , David Young and Rod Blum telling us that Trump is indeed a good person and will work for the good of all citizens when evidence indicates he won’t?

However, whether Trump is the nominee or not, all have been tainted by not responding to his racist scapegoating in an immediate and forceful way. To a lesser extent each current Republican candidate is tainted. Backing one of them may require a bit less moral gymnastics, but each of them also have an “ends justify the means” problem when it comes to countenancing things like lying on climate change, poverty and extreme income inequality.

Or as Kenneth Galbraith once said:

The modern conservative is engaged in one of man’s oldest exercises in moral philosophy; that is, the search for a superior moral justification for selfishness.