Leubsdorf: Showtime in Iowa finally

He has listed these targets: “The Biden crime family,” including President Joe Biden; “deranged Jack Smith,” the special counsel investigating him, and others prosecuting him, such as New York Attorney General Letitia James; “the unelected bureaucrats and shadow forces who have weaponized our justice system”; “every radical district attorney and attorney general in America for their illegal, racist-in-reverse enforcement of the law”; “every known or suspected gang member in America and every one of them that is here illegally.”

Policy proposals: Close the border and complete a border wall; expand oil and gas drilling (already at an all-time high); more personal and business tax cuts; try again to repeal and replace the Affordable Care Act; reclassify thousands of federal civil service workers so he can fire those who oppose his policies.

• Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis: Trumpism without the theatrics. Trump’s principal rival in GOP polls a year ago, DeSantis is fighting for survival in Iowa after failing to establish himself as the clear alternative. A second-place finish is a must.

He has mostly tempered criticism of Trump, decrying his failure to complete the wall and repeal the Affordable Care Act, and his decision to lock down the nation at the start of the COVID pandemic. But DeSantis has refused to criticize Trump’s efforts to overturn the 2020 election results.

More recently, DeSantis has focused more on Trump’s character, though, like most rivals, DeSantis says he’ll back Trump if nominated.

Policy proposals: DeSantis, who signed a Florida law banning abortions after six weeks of pregnancy, said he would sign a federal ban at 15 weeks. He would scrap the Internal Revenue Service, institute a “flat tax” eliminating all credits and deductions, and abolish the federal departments of Commerce, Education and Energy.

• Former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley: A kinder, gentler version of Trumpism. Campaigned less in Iowa, where religious conservatives dominate the GOP, than in New Hampshire, where thousands of independents will vote in the Republican primary.

Policy proposals: Haley’s tone is more moderate than Trump’s and DeSantis’, though her positions are not too different on major domestic issues. She would sign a federal abortion ban but doubts one would pass. She criticized Trump for failing to curb federal spending. She was forced on the defensive recently by failing until prompted to cite slavery as the cause of the Civil War.

On foreign policy, she stands out by vowing to maintain the GOP’s traditionally muscular foreign policy, unlike Trump and many other Republicans.

• Vivek Ramaswamy: Trump’s Mini-Me. An unknown entrepreneur at the outset who founded a pharmaceutical company, Ramaswamy has campaigned to Trump’s right but failed to rise from single digits.

Policy proposals: He’d abolish the IRS, the Department of Commerce, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission and the Centers for Disease Control, and raise the voting age to 25. He says, without evidence, that the Jan. 6 insurrection — in which Trump supporters attacked the Capitol — was “an inside job.”

• Former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie: Anti-Trump. The only major candidate attacking the former president head-on, he’d refuse to support him if nominated. Christie has suspended his campaign.