What we’re getting wrong about 2024’s “moderate” voters

“A final chunk of Americans are a rare breed in America’s political parties. They don’t fit neatly on the ideological spectrum; on the partisan spectrum, they tend to lie outside the political parties. Some academics, like Fowler and his team, call them “idiosyncratic” moderates, but I think “weird” is simpler since it describes just how difficult they are to read.
Unlike disengaged moderates, weird moderates are engaged — aware of political news, policies, and debates — but like disengaged moderates, they hold a mix of opinions. They aren’t really drawing those positions from the ideological extremes, so they tend toward moderation on a variety of issues. Because of the weird mix of ideas they have, they might not feel represented by either party or by a specific conservative or liberal ideology. They also include your classic “socially liberal but fiscally conservative” types who might have been more predominant in the Democratic and Republican parties of less polarized times. They’re not consistently liberal or conservative on all topics and therefore are open to persuasion. They hold the opinions they do have strongly, unlike the true moderate, but feel overlapping pressures when making a decision in the voting booth.”

“The imperative to persuade true and weird moderates runs counter to the trend of America’s political parties, which have been moving further to the political left and right while also becoming more ideologically consistent internally — pushing out moderates of all kinds. Party leaders have been leading this push, but the rank and file has followed suit in the last two decades, as rates of self-identified moderates have been on the decline in both parties.”

https://www.vox.com/2024-elections/24058352/what-were-getting-wrong-about-2024s-moderate-voters

Haley and DeSantis Pander to Iowans by Praising Ethanol Mandate

“In practice, though, ethanol is actually worse for the environment than traditional gasoline. And while ethanol is cheaper than gasoline, it also contains less energy by volume. Depending on the age of your vehicle, it can also be bad for your engine.

One thing ethanol is good for, though, is corn farmers. A 2021 report by Taxpayers for Common Sense called the Renewable Fuel Standard “the largest current subsidy for corn ethanol.” A 2022 study found, as Reuters put it, that “as a result of the mandate, corn cultivation grew 8.7% and expanded into 6.9 million additional acres of land between 2008 and 2016.”

It therefore makes perfect sense for two candidates desperate for votes in Iowa—the state that produces more corn than any other—to pledge fealty to a federal mandate that requires more people to buy corn-based ethanol. But just because something makes political sense doesn’t make it good policy.”

https://reason.com/2024/01/10/haley-and-desantis-pander-to-iowans-by-praising-ethanol-mandate/

Sen. Lankford says a ‘popular commentator’ threatened to ‘do whatever I can to destroy you’ if he negotiated a border deal during a presidential election year

“Sen. James Lankford of Oklahoma spoke on Wednesday about the political challenges he’s encountered while serving as the top GOP negotiator on a bipartisan border security deal.
In a speech shortly before the expected failure of the deal, Lankford bemoaned the fact that some fellow Republicans were objecting to the bill for purely political reasons.

“Some of them have been very clear with me,” Lankford said of his GOP colleagues, “they have political differences with the bill. They say it’s the wrong time to solve the problem. We’ll let the presidential election solve this problem.”

Lankford went on to say that a “popular commentator” — without naming any names — threatened to “destroy” him if he negotiated the deal during a presidential election year, regardless of what was in it.

“I will do whatever I can to destroy you, because I do not want you to solve this during the presidential election,” Lankford recounted the commentator saying.

“By the way, they have been faithful to their promise, and have done everything they can to destroy me,” he added.”

https://www.yahoo.com/news/sen-lankford-says-popular-commentator-200553824.html

Ron DeSantis got the Republican Party wrong

“The DeSantis campaign was fundamentally a product of a certain class of the GOP’s elite: people who admired Donald Trump’s willingness to break the traditional norms of American politics but saw him as basically déclassé or ineffectual. These are the sorts of conservatives who look admiringly at Hungarian autocrat Viktor Orbán, seeing his use of legalistic arcana to crush liberal opposition as a model for how to fight a culture war and win.
Obviously, most Republican voters aren’t this hyper-ideological. But DeSantis and his allies theorized that the “Trump but competent” shtick would allow them to pull from all sides of the GOP electorate. By focusing on his “culture warrior” background — like his fights over Covid restrictions and Disney — DeSantis could win over a key portion of the Republican base. By seeming more competent and organized, he could scan as palatable to the traditional establishment.

Except it turned out that the kind of culture war politics DeSantis offered, an often-abstract assault on “wokeness,” paled in comparison to what Trump served up. The MAGA base wanted Trump and all his hard edges: the bigoted rhetoric and all-consuming post-2020 election anger. The rump establishment bloc preferred Nikki Haley, sticking DeSantis in no-man’s land. His campaign was appealing to a small niche of highly intellectual populist conservatives, but that proved to be just about it.

The MAGA faithful didn’t want a pseudo-Trump gussied up for the GOP’s elite. They wanted Trump and his “retribution.” DeSantis’s failure to recognize this doomed him from the start.”

https://www.vox.com/politics/24034491/iowa-caucus-results-polls-desantis-trump-haley-ramaswamy-republican-party