Guest post by Paul Ingrassia
Today Iowans will weather subzero temperatures to participate in the first official event to kickstart the 2024 presidential season: the Iowa caucus. Riding the tailwinds of four brazenly unconstitutional, politically motivated indictments and a recent court appearance in New York State, Donald Trump heads into Iowa with anywhere between thirty- and fifty-point leads over his nearest competitor, the neoconservative former South Carolina governor, Nikki Haley, and appears to have all the momentum behind him.
While the results of Iowa are not necessarily determinative of who eventually becomes the party’s nominee (after all, President Trump placed second behind Ted Cruz in the 2016 Iowa caucus), the caucus is nevertheless seen as an important bellwether for the rest of the primary season. A surprise upset victory or loss, or stronger than expected showing has made or broken a presidential campaign of yore, either catapulting a sleeper candidate to national prominence or derailing a once viable candidacy for all time.
The territory on which the 2024 Iowa caucus will take place is, much like the events of the past year, unprecedented. Donald Trump is the first candidate to enter the primary process as the frontrunner in three presidential campaigns since Franklin Roosevelt. In his third bid for the presidency, he is arguably now on stronger footing than he was in his previous two campaigns. This time around, however, he is facing of course a mountain of opposition by a weaponized justice system at the behest of Joe Biden, the presidential figurehead whom half the country believes illegitimate, and a significant portion of the other half – presumably his own coalition – believes too old and decrepit to carry out the duties of his office.
Being that the same half who believes Biden is illegitimately serving his office is the same half that will be voting in today’s caucus, it raises the serious question of why we are even having this primary cycle in the first place? If the Republican coalition broadly thinks President Trump is the legitimate officeholder, then why are at least three Republicans, all of whom repeatedly pay deference to the frontrunner’s agenda, attempting to challenge Trump for his party’s nomination? After all, if they truly believe, as they profess on the campaign trail, that the 2020 election was fraudulent, why are they attempting to interfere with the legitimate officeholder in his quest to reclaim the office that is rightly his? Even more so, if they believe the process is rigged, why are they even running without working to fix it first – what black magic allows them to miraculously fix “a broken system,” without so much as lifting even a finger to, well, fix the broken system?