Andrew McCarthy On Trump's Iowa Win

The National Review continues to be solidly NeverTrump, and it's brought out an old NeverTrump stalwart, Andrew McCarthy, to, prognosticate on the Iowa outcome:

. . . I took in a wide array of television and web coverage of former president Trump’s 30-point win in the Iowa caucuses last night.

What I found most curious was the Trump crowd’s crowing that Democrats woke up this morning to the news that their plan has failed — because, the irrational exuberance goes, Trump looks strong while Biden is floundering. This misapprehends the Democrats’ plan, which, in fact, continues to be working to perfection.

The plan was built on the four indictments and sundry civil suits, all brought by Democratic partisans (led by the Biden Justice Department). The point of the lawfare siege, which is the target of Trump’s constant ire and is thus scoffed at by his fans as ineffective partisanship, was to get Trump nominated. In that sense, the siege has been effective beyond the Democrats’ wildest dreams.

But doesn't this neglect what appears to be an across-the-board consensus view that a key aspect of the lawfare strategy is to start the January 6 trial by March 4, the day before the Super Tuesday primaries? For instance, via the Daily Beast, which commented before the US Supreme Court denied Jack Smith's request to rule immediately on Trump's immunity claims:

With Trump’s election fraud case set to start March 4, and the screening of potential jurors set for Feb. 9, the Supreme Court at this point would have to hear the case over the holidays—and speed through one of the most historic decisions in modern history.

. . . Any delay—even by a day—would seriously hamper one of the most significant aspects of Trump’s upcoming trial in Washington for lying to the American public in an attempt to stay in power. Days and hours matter because Trump’s D.C. trial is set to start the day before the massive primary election contests on Super Tuesday.

. . . It’s terrible timing for Trump, who will be portrayed by seasoned prosecutors representing the U.S. government as a man who betrayed the very Constitution he swore to protect and defend. And it’s an unprecedented opportunity for Nikki Haley, Ron DeSantis, and the few other candidates desperately trying to replace him as the GOP frontrunner.

In other words, as best anyone can surmise, a key Biden intent in the overall lawfare strategy is to head Trump off by Super Tuesday in hopes of promoting NeverTrumper candidacies by Haley and DeSantis, whom Biden, at least at the time he developed the lawfare strategy in the middle of last year, apparently felt he'd have an easier time beating. As far as we know now, the March 4 deadline for Jack Smith to start the January 6 trial is still a must-do. But wasn't this supposed to be in order to hurt Trump, not to help him?

By McCarthy's argument, no, starting the January 6 trial just before Super Tuesday will simply inflame Trump's base and further lock in his nomination. His reasoning is this:

The biggest factor in Trump’s early clinching is the Democrats’ lawfare. . . . Before the first indictment, Ron DeSantis was within striking distance. Once the indictments began, the base rallied to Trump and he blew the field away. As Phil notes, even DeSantis now concedes that the indictments “distorted the primary.”

Sometime in the next week or two, we will get a verdict and judgment from Judge Arthur Engoron, the elected progressive Democratic judge in elected progressive Democratic New York attorney-general Letitia James’s civil fraud lawsuit. . . . Trump will run for election judicially stamped as a fraudster who’s been put out of business (much of the country won’t care about the details, or know that the judge is a partisan hack).

. . . But here’s the thing: Hard as this is, Trump-sympathetic Republicans need for analytical purposes to set aside their seething over the Democrats’ exploitation of punitive legal processes against the former president. You need to put yourselves in the shoes of the country as a whole. Most Americans do not see this as you do. They vote, but they don’t follow politics closely. They are not attuned to the partisan machinations, the way incumbent Democrats convert the legal system into a campaign weapon. They know only the broad outlines of news coverage.

To support his argument, McCarthy relies mostly on the New York civil trials, the one now ending under Judge Engoron and the one getting under way in which E Jean Carroll insists yet again that Trump raped her. He leaves aside the question I've raised about the Jack Smith January 6 trial and why the Democrats want it to take place before Super Tuesday to damage Trump's prospects for the nomination, and even more significantly, he leaves completely aside the problem of the Fulton County trial and the new and salacious allegations of misconduct against DA Fani Willis.

The Fulton County trial is quickly degenerating into farce, and the sexual allegations are dominating the headlines -- as of today, likely even more than Trump's Iowa win. This is the best political entertainment since Monica Lewinsky, and the country as a whole is tuned in. But again, the consensus opinion seems to be that it will hurt the Democrats in the general election if the Fulton County case is dismissed or delayed. Here is Andrew Fleischmann in the Daily Beast:

So what happens next? Judge McAfee has stated his intention to hold a hearing in February to look over the truth of these allegations. If they are true, the case will not be dismissed, but it is likely that he will disqualify Fani Willis, which, under Georgia law, will require disqualifying her entire office. The case will then go to the Prosecuting Attorneys’ Council of Georgia, which will decide who the case can go on to next.

. . . But even if everything goes as smoothly as humanly possible, it is difficult to imagine trying the former president before the November election. And it’s also possible the case may go to someone who will choose to dismiss it.

Mr Fleischmann's assumption is that the Fulton County case must be tried before the election -- and his unspoken premise is that if he isn't found guilty before then, he'll be elected and pardon himself. He clearly thinks this is a potential outcome in the likely timeline of events. The same set of arguments applies here as to the need to start the January 6 trial before Super Tuesday -- otherwise, it will be very hard to prevent Trump's nomination and subsquent general election victory.

I think Andrew McCarthy's theory that the Democrat lawfare strategy is meant deliberately to inflame the Trump base and get him nominated as the candidate most likely to lose in November is too clever by half. Other Democrat opinion is clearly that the lawfare strategy was intended to use ongoing trials early in 2024 to deny Trump the nomination or, failing that, somehow to convict him of a crime before the election, sentence him to prison, and ensure he loses the general election.

The problem has been two practical obstacles. The first is that the prosecutors and judges have been party hacks who, like Judge Julius Hoffman in the Chicago Seven trial, have played into the defense strategy of discrediting the judicial process. This was and is, given appropriate overreaction and misconduct, an effective strategy. The second is that the lawfare strategy appears to have been developed and implemented only in mid-2023, and given the nature of legal proceedings, the trials are vulnerable to delay, when to be effective, they need to deliver credible results, either in key testimony or outright convictions, before definite 2024 election dates. This is increasingly unlikely. Murphy's general laws state, in part,

• Nothing is as easy as it looks.
• Everything takes longer than you think.
• Anything that can go wrong will go wrong.
• If there is a possibility of several things going wrong, the one that will cause the most damage will be the one to go wrong. Corollary: If there is a worse time for something to go wrong, it will happen then.