One of the most powerful – if not THE most powerful – political themes in American politics is “send them a message.” Back in July I looked at the field of some twenty Republican and Democratic candidates and concluded that only three were “message” candidates; Senator Bernie Sanders, businessman and entertainer Donald Trump and Senator Ted Cruz.

I noted that the three message carriers; Democrat Bernie Sanders and Republicans Donald Trump and Ted Cruz have different messages, but they had one thing in common – voting for them is a clear rejection of the status quo in their parties, and in the conduct of the federal government.

In one sense nothing has changed – voting for Sanders, Trump and Cruz sends a clear message of rejecting the status quo in the Democratic and Republican parties.

But in another, deeper, sense Monday’s Iowa Caucuses changed everything on the Republican side.

Establishment Republicans don’t really like Donald Trump or his message or his voters, but they figured they could make a deal with him.

What’s more Trump’s secular populism has absolutely no connection with those issues that motivated conservative voters for almost 40-years. And decoupling policy battles over illegal immigration, amnesty for illegal aliens and trade from the larger limited government constitutional conservative movement would make life much easier for establishment politicians.

Prior to the Iowa Caucuses the establishment media and the Republican Party’s permanent political class saw in Donald Trump and the Trump phenomenon an ascendant secular populism that would sweep aside the cultural conservatives who had made their lives miserable by demanding that Republicans take principled conservative positions on what used to be called “the social issues,” such as abortion, same-sex “marriage” and battling the cultural debasement that has accompanied the federal takeover of education.

The DC insiders figured if there could be a pause or truce in the battle for the culture, then they could make a deal with Trump on everything else.

And why not? Mr. Trump wrote a bestselling book “The Art of the Deal” and he talked about “getting things done” in Washington as much or more than Mitch McConnell and Paul Ryan.

Ted Cruz’s victory in the Iowa Caucuses blew the idea of a pause or truce in the battle for the culture right out of the sky.

Ted Cruz’s unabashed appeal to faith-first voters, his vast support among politically active conservative Christians and Jews, and his deep personal faith guarantee that the cultural issues will not be off the table this campaign.

Indeed, during a call with conservative Catholic leaders not long before the Iowa Caucuses Senator Cruz told us “This campaign will be about religious liberty.”

In the post-Reagan Republican Party the urban elite of the Republican establishment have tried mightily to marginalize – if not completely excommunicate – the cultural conservatives who joined economic conservatives and national security conservatives to make-up the three legs of the Reagan coalition.

But numbers in Iowa demonstrate that of the three legs of the Reagan coalition, cultural conservatives remain the most politically potent.

According to Bloomberg Politics’ analysis 64% of Iowa Caucus participants self-identified as Evangelical Christians: Senator Marco Rubio did best among the 21 percent of voters who identified electability as their top candidate quality, while Donald Trump cleaned up among the 14 percent who most wanted a candidate who "tells it like it is" and the 21 percent who want a candidate who can bring needed change. But Senator Ted Cruz vaporized the competition among the 42 percent of caucus-goers who said that the top quality in a candidate was that he "shares my values."