Fairground officials have been just as adamant that he will not.
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Trump is an incarnation of Republican populism that is completely free of the public relations superstructure of hypocrisy – those politically life-sustaining lies – that is essential for the Republican Party establishment.
“You failed your state!” one protester yelled out.
After speaking to reporters behind the cattle barn where she talked to a boy with his cow, Clinton ducked into a display next to a food stand to talk with a supporter away from the glare of a dozen television cameras. Campaign staff said Carson plans to return to Iowa in September.
It’s his celebrity outsider appeal – he needs nothing, so he owes no favors – that’s been one explanation for Trump’s rise in the GOP polls. “If you had asked me a month ago, I would have said no”, he said.
The real estate magnate – wearing a navy suit jacket, white leather shoes and red hat with his logo “Make America Great Again” – walked through the fair ensconced by more than a dozen private security guards and Iowa State Troopers.
Just before Sanders took the State Fair Soapbox, a young woman wandered down Grand Avenue past his army of young revolutionaries. They’re sick of money’s influence in politics: Sanders eschews it, and Trump says he’s so rich he doesn’t need it.
“But don’t let the circus distract you“, Clinton said at a Democratic fundraising dinner in Clear Lake, Iowa.
“Working together, using our brains, we can save our nation”, Carson told the crowd. That is also completely plausible, especially since we haven’t had much of a conversation about socialism in this country for a very long time.
Walker added that he hopes to “at least to be first, second or third” in all four of the early states, which also include New Hampshire, South Carolina, and Nevada.
The strained back-and-forth was illustrative of the two-term governor’s strategy as his polling numbers have recently declined in Iowa and nationally: extreme caution and message discipline. Henry got scared just before takeoff and left the aircraft to be with his father. While the Gallup poll he cited shows 59 percent of Democratic voters would be okay with voting for a socialist, another recent poll showed that 52 percent of Democrats have a favorable view of socialism. That’s a hard niche for Walker to fill.
But, as members of the media swarmed Walker after his remarks at the fair, pressing for details on his stance, he would not reveal more.
Only a small fraction of Iowa’s registered voters typically participate in its caucuses – and participants are usually deeply partisan.
Walker’s team, of course, isn’t alone in building the sort of grassroots network that will be critical to turnout out voters on a cold winter night next year at more than 1,700 precincts.
Trump took questions from reporters before he came to the fairgrounds and aimed barbs at fellow candidates while touting his place atop the Republican polls. Instead of tearing up the deal, he said he would “police” it, and he called Secretary of State John Kerry “incompetent” for negotiating the agreement.
Bernie Sanders is Trump’s polar opposite, he is the man of the (non-trumpian type) people in this campaign.
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That could be a bad thing for Walker.
