The Road Ahead: The Challenge of Donald Trump’s Democratic Presidency: Taking the Word Out of the Un-Trump Conjecture
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I talked to a lot of these kind of Republicans between 2016 and 2020 — not a perfectly representative sample, probably weighted too heavily toward Uber drivers and Catholic lawyer dads, but still enough to recognize a set of familiar refrains. Some voters prefer Trump’s policies over his personality. They mostly ignored some of his messages because they did not like them. They thought that he had the measure of liberals in a way that prior Republicans had not, that his take-no-prisoners style was suited to the scale of liberal media bias and progressive cultural hegemony. He did not always seem to be in charge of his own administration and competent in the day-to-day running of the government.
It was always clear, going into 2024, that a large minority of the Republican primary electorate would vote for Donald Trump no matter what — including, in the event of his untimely passing, for the former president’s reanimated corpse or his A.I. simulation. A smaller bloc strongly preferred a pre-Trump and un-Trump-like Republican; this has become the Nikki Haley constituency.
If Ron DeSantis surprises in Iowa and beyond, if he recovers from his long polling swoon and wins the Republican nomination, it will represent the triumph of a simple, intuitive, but possibly mistaken idea: That voters should be taken at their word about what they actually want from their leaders.
Republican presidential candidates have been traveling the state for months to convince voters that they are the best candidate to take on Biden.
The wind chill on Monday could be much colder than on any other caucus day in history, and lows could be well under zero. The freezing temperatures follow multiple snowstorms that blew through the state in recent days, forcing campaigns to cancel events or move them online.
The forecast is brutal even by Iowa standards and could mean a depressed turnout in a race that has been constant for months. Donald Trump has led in the polls as much as 30 percentage points.
His rivals — mainly Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis and former U.N. Ambassador Nikki Haley, but also entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy and former Arkansas Gov. Asa Hutchinson — face an uphill battle as they compete for the slice of Republican voters who are ready to put the Trump years behind them.
Haley made the case that while Trump was right for his time in office, he is not the right candidate at the moment.
She said that she agreed with a lot of his policies, but that chaos followed him. “You all know it. Chaos follows him. And we can’t be a country in disarray and have a world on fire and go through four more years of chaos because we won’t survive it.”
One attendee who is ready to move past the years of Trump is a small business owner who was so turned off by him that she voted for Hillary Clinton in 2016 and Biden in 2020.
“You do not agree with four years of policy that we’ll get,” Kelly said. “We may very well not get through another four years of Donald Trump with our democracy intact.”
Causal Caucus Trump Haley Desantis: Bringing Down the Disrespectful Bounds on the Status of the Republican Party in Iowa
Haley thinks she has the best chance of defeating Biden in a general election. Steve Boal, a retired finance executive, was drawn to Haley’s campaign for its ability to beelectability.
“In general, I’ve seen her try to be civil,” he said. That’s really hard to watch, you know, people that are disrespectful of one another. It’s like we need some civil discourse.
In terms of talking up his conservative credentials while trying to win over a Trump friendly GOP, DeSantis has followed the same pattern as Haley. DeSantis was slow to criticize the former president when the campaign got underway — even as Trump barraged him with insults. He has since ramped up his criticism, particularly of the many legal troubles Trump is facing.
“If he is nominated, the entire election will be about legal issues, criminal trials or perhaps criminal convictions by Jan. 6,” said DeSantis in Clive, Iowa. That plays into the Democrats’ hands.”
Trump doesn’t seem to be “pro-life,” as DeSantis claims, as he has a record on abortion. Trump has boasted about appointing the Supreme Court justices that reversed Roe v. Wade, but criticized the strict abortion limits put in place by some Republican state legislatures.
Source: Brutal cold adds another layer to Republicans’ final push in Iowa
The Iowa Caucus Caus for the Ex-President, A.J. Bahrt, and I. Kelly, R.C.Leffler, C.V. Veenschoten
“All of the events that I’ve been to, every debate, every town hall, everything that I have seen from him, has solidified my commitment to caucus for him and to vote for him in the election in November,” he said.
There are enough reasons not to vote for Trump if I don’t have to. I’ll make a decision in November. I try to vote with my conscience.
But Republicans like Bahrt and Kelly are the exception, not the rule. Even though he has not spent much time in the state, the former president is ahead in Iowa in all the polls.
The younger Trump said they were trying to get people to not care. “They’re trying to get you to sort of, ‘Donald Trump is winning by 7,462 points. You ought to stay at home. “
The room was full. Seated at a table in the center were Lynne Mona, who’s semi-retired, and Dawn Veenschoten, who runs an embroidery business. Both are big Trump fans. Both see the many legal troubles he is facing as politically motivated.
Gary Leffler is serving as a caucus captain for the former president, meaning he’ll speak on Trump’s behalf at a caucus site Monday. He expects a big Trump victory.
The people are more excited than I’ve ever seen them. “I was there in ’16 and ’20, and they are more organized, they are more dedicated, they’re more enthused.”
Source: Brutal cold adds another layer to Republicans’ final push in Iowa
When is Florida – Will it be Cold? A Remark on the Former State Senator, Jonathon Haley, said at a TED Talk on “The American Heart of the Universe”
Haley, a former South Carolina governor, said that it would be so cold on Monday. I’m not sure what -15 is. I was complaining it was cold in Iowa in October. I’ll tell you what. We can do this. You deserve better. You need an America without chaos.
“I am aware that it will be -4,” Trump Jr. said. “But if I can get my Florida butt back up here … Everyone can get back down there. We can leave. We can be part of the caucus process.
I’m from Florida and I’ve staked a lot of my campaign on the Iowa caucuses. Florida guys don’t usually come north in January. You are willing to brave those elements for three, four hours if you want to. you do that and you springboard us. I will be your voice for the next eight years. We will turn this country around.”