OPINION:
As we careen toward the Iowa caucuses, now about 45 days away, and the New Hampshire primary, only eight days after that, the campaign for the Republican presidential nomination has been reduced to its essentials.
Assuming that nothing unexpected happens (for example, the death or incapacitation of one of the candidates), there are now only two possible paths for Republicans in this election cycle.
The first path is that Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis’ long bet on Iowa pays off, that the endorsements of Iowa Gov. Kim Reynolds and Iowa political activist Bob Vander Plaats and the months of hard work by the DeSantis campaign in the Hawkeye State result in a victory for Mr. DeSantis.
A victory in Iowa would be contrary to opinion research and a rejection of former President Donald Trump — the de facto GOP nominee — and would therefore be surprising. It would almost certainly lead to an endorsement of Mr. DeSantis by New Hampshire Gov. Chris Sununu that would propel Mr. DeSantis to a competitive finish in New Hampshire and to an eventual winner-take-all Super Tuesday on March 5.
Mr. DeSantis has a chance to win that sort of contest.
The reality is that Mr. Trump has been running as an incumbent. His crew has minimized his exposure to the public, except in cases where the questions are few and the crowds are friendly (college football games, professional wrestling events).
Mr. Trump’s agenda for a second term, as befits an incumbent, has been light on specifics and heavy on atmospherics. The focus is mostly on settling scores — with the deep state, with the media, with whomever — rather than the handful of policy preferences the campaign has offered.
It is worth noting, however, that Mr. Trump has managed to come out in favor of a universal tax on imported goods, which would make Americans even poorer than President Biden has managed to make them. In the same vein, his former trade representative — Bob Lighthizer, who would almost certainly be an important participant in a second Trump Cabinet — recently came out in favor of an energy tax, which would, of course, make energy more expensive and make workers poorer.
Mr. Trump has also made it clear that he would like the party to stop talking about right-to-life issues. That’s understandable from a candidate in the middle of a campaign, but it may not sit well with primary voters, many of whom have spent much of the last 50 years trying to get the party to have this exact fight.
The contest that might happen in the event Mr. DeSantis can win Iowa would play to Mr. DeSantis’ strengths. He has run a government; he understands how things migrate from ideas to law. He can talk about that process with fluency.
For example, on Thursday night, Mr. DeSantis is going to do something that Mr. Trump will probably never do again: debate a political opponent in a formal setting. He is scheduled to debate Democratic California Gov. Gavin Newsom. There’s no telling what the debate will be about, given that people have been leaving California for the better part of a decade — many of them heading to Florida.
One would assume they are going to talk about how to respond to illegal immigration and the Mexican drug cartels that feed on the misery of other humans. Or maybe the surge in violent crime that is ignored by the left because it serves their political purposes. Or maybe it will be something quotidian like tax policy.
If we’re lucky, some of it will be about California’s effort to ban gasoline-powered cars nationwide; it’s tough to believe voters will be in favor of that.
But the important thing is that it will be a debate that will involve policies and competing visions for the future of the United States, not a speech that will focus on the mostly personal grievances of the past.
The other path that is available to the Republicans in Iowa is to turn out for Mr. Trump and give him the victory that surveys have been predicting for some time. In that event, the campaign for the Republican nomination will be over — irrespective of what former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley might do in New Hampshire or which organizations might endorse her — and Mr. Trump can pivot to the general election.
Either way, the choice facing Republicans has become clear.
• Michael McKenna is a contributing editor at The Washington Times and was previously a deputy assistant to the president for legislative affairs.
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