Politics
Republicans Who Voted For The Iran War Now Running On Lower Gas Prices
By Mor Michael, . BSN Network. Satire.
A broad coalition of Republican candidates facing competitive races has concluded, after careful internal polling, that the best way to address a war they voted for is to talk about something else entirely.
The pivot, described by campaign operatives as a "kitchen table reset" and by everyone else as a thing that is happening, comes as voters in battleground districts rank affordability and cost of living as their primary concerns, just ahead of "general exhaustion" and "wanting it to stop."
The strategy involves a two-part maneuver that political scientists are calling, for the first time, "the full onion": vote for the thing that raises prices, then campaign against the prices.
Congressman Dale Hutchins of Ohio's 9th, who voted in favor of military authorization in January and has since appeared in three separate campaign mailers holding groceries he did not purchase, explained his position to a local television reporter last Tuesday.
"I have always been focused on what families are paying at the pump, at the checkout line, at every level of their daily lives," Hutchins said. "That has been my north star." He was then asked about his Iran vote. "The checkout line," he said again.
The Trump piece of the strategy is, if anything, more delicate. Candidates are not saying they oppose the president. They are saying they are "their own guys," which is a thing men say when they owe someone money. Several have removed Trump's name from their websites while keeping the policy positions, the font, and in at least two cases, the stock photo of the same farmer.
Republican strategist Karen Voll, who advises three of the candidates currently executing this maneuver, said the approach is being badly mischaracterized.
"These are independent leaders who share certain values with the administration while charting their own course on the issues that matter most to their districts," Voll said. "It's a nuanced position." She was asked whether any of those independent leaders voted against the Iran authorization. She said the call was breaking up.
In focus groups conducted in four competitive districts, voters responded poorly to candidates who mentioned Trump unprompted, poorly to candidates who refused to mention him when asked, and most poorly to a candidate in Phoenix who described himself as "spiritually aligned" with the president, which the moderator noted was "new."
Polling in Ohio's 9th shows Hutchins trailing by four points, with his opponent running a single ad. The ad is a photo of a gas station. It has no words.
Hutchins's campaign called the ad misleading and released a response video in which the congressman stands in front of a different gas station, looking directly into the camera, saying nothing for eleven seconds before the screen cuts to his logo.
Early numbers suggest voters find both gas stations equally convincing.
The Iran war, now in its seventh month, has added an estimated several hundred dollars per household to annual energy costs, a figure that candidates across the aisle have described variously as "unacceptable," "a real concern," and "not something I was briefed on before the vote," which is the one that required a follow-up.
Hutchins is scheduled to appear at a town hall in Youngstown this weekend. The event is listed on his website as a "Listening Session on Affordability." Constituent questions must be submitted in advance. The submission form does not include a field for Iran.
The story we are making fun of: https://www.today.com/video/republican-candidates-in-tight-races-try-to-distance-from-trump-271184965600