OPINION:
Monday’s political caucuses in Iowa mark the start of the 2024 presidential selection process, and this campaign season looks like no other. With indications the November election could be a rematch between the candidates of 2020, painful experience of Democratic knavery past and present animates the Republican drive to reclaim the White House.
Iowa Democrats have no need to face the bitter cold, since they vote by mail for their presidential candidate and their caucuses are meant only to choose national convention delegates. Still, President Biden has turned up the political heat with his recent scathing attack on former President Donald Trump, the Republican front-runner, from Emanuel AME Church in Charleston, South Carolina, the site of tragic racial enmity.
With the same broad brush with which he condemned “White supremacy” rather than a gun-toting madman for the murders of nine Black parishioners in 2015, Mr. Biden held Mr. Trump responsible for the Jan. 6 Capitol tumult that followed the 2020 election.
“That violent mob was whipped up by lies from a defeated former president,” Mr. Biden raged. “His actions were among the worst dereliction of duty of any president in American history.”
Republicans in Iowa and elsewhere are likewise animated by the conviction that Mr. Biden and his fellow Democrats are party to a lawless case of Trump persecution by prosecution — also unmatched in U.S. history.
The mischief of 2020 persists. The Department of Justice has warped Mr. Trump’s call that January day for his supporters to proceed “peacefully and patriotically” to mean the opposite. Rather than recognizing his words as consistent with his constitutional duties, Mr. Biden is attempting to strip him of constitutional protections and to cast him as an insurrectionist to deny his place on the ballot.
New details about the scheme have come to light. The same day in 2022 that Attorney General Merrick Garland appointed fellow partisan Jack Smith as special counsel to investigate election interference charges against the former president, administration officials reportedly met with Georgia special prosecutor Nathan Wade at the White House to discuss the filing of similar charges in the Peach State.
Mr. Wade was hired to pursue Mr. Trump by Democratic Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis, who allegedly paid him more than $650,000 while covertly joining him on lavish vacations. Democratic deals and sweetheart shenanigans go hand in hand.
Appalled at the ugly face of injustice, many Republicans across the nation have felt compelled to register their reproach by handing Mr. Trump a commanding lead over a field of well-qualified contestants. As Iowa caucusgoers gather, the former president is favored by 52.2% of respondents in the RealClearPolitics Poll average. Lagging behind are Nikki Haley at 16.6%, Ron DeSantis at 16.4%, and Vivek Ramaswamy and Asa Hutchinson in single digits.
Should Mr. Trump prevail amid Iowa’s icicles, his momentum could snowball into Jan. 23 in New Hampshire, where he holds a slimmer, 14-point advantage over Mrs. Haley.
In fairness, Americans should base their presidential choices on future aspirations rather than past indignities. When fairness is trampled by injustice, though, the Republican drive to reclaim leadership is a redemptive one.
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