After a slow start, Republican presidential prospects are streaming into Iowa, the first caucus in the GOP’s primary process… and some rising stars appear to be testing a bid for the White House.
For example, South Carolina Sen. Tim Scott kicked off his “listening tour” Wednesday at Drake University in Des Moines, the capital. In an optimistic speech, Scott mentioned a “new American sunrise, even brighter than before.”
“I see 330 million Americans getting back to celebrating our shared blessings again, tolerating our differences again, and having each other’s backs again,” Scott said in a speech to about 100 students and curious Republicans at Drake University in Des Moines. “We need new leaders who will lift us up, not tear us down.”
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Scott was reportedly speaking to a crowd of both Republicans and Democrats, including the far-Left.
“I see a future where common sense has rebuilt common ground, where we’ve created real unity, not by compromising away our conservatism, but by winning converts to our conservatism,” Scott said.
Take a look —
Tim Scott is not speaking to a particularly Republican crowd here at Drake University in Iowa. There are some conservatives leading the applause, but all the students I’ve talked to so far said they’re liberal or leftist and came out of curiosity. pic.twitter.com/6rXywTGIKs
— Natalie Allison (@natalie_allison) February 22, 2023
SC Sen. Tim Scott and Iowa Gov. Kim Reynolds toured a Des Moines Catholic school this morning and talked to reporters about their support for a school choice agenda. Scott has two public events today as he flirts with a run for president in 2024. pic.twitter.com/SJvWEZzs6l
— Brianne Pfannenstiel (@brianneDMR) February 22, 2023
Since the midterm elections, Iowa has seen campaign stops from other possible contenders, too.
Quietly making inroads is former Arkansas Gov. Asa Hutchinson, who visited Iowa in January, and met last week with legislative Republicans in the Capitol in Des Moines and Republican activists in western Iowa.
Former Vice President Mike Pence headlined a rally to oppose an eastern Iowa school district’s policy allowing students — without their parents’ consent or knowledge — to ask the school for affirmative steps in gender transition from the school.
Presidential candidate Nikki Haley has also visited Iowa, and she used the opportunity to build on the recent achievements of Florida’s legislature. She was in suburban Des Moines slamming “woke ideology” and arguing “a national self-loathing has taken over our country.”
While serving as South Carolina’s governor, Haley appointed Scott to the U.S. Senate.
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Scott also slammed what he’s called “woke superiority,” but he distinguished himself with his optimistic tone.
“If you wanted a blueprint to ruin America, you’d keep doing exactly what Joe Biden has let the far left do to our country for the last two years,” Scott said, deriding the view of U.S. history through a lens of racism and its slaveholding past. “Tell every white kid they’re oppressors. Tell black and brown kids their destiny is grievance, not greatness.”
Instead, Scott used his own story, as the son of a single mother living in poverty, as the template for curing what he called “a crisis of optimism.”
“A leader with faith in America would have faith in Americans,” he said, ticking through a typically Republican-themed agenda of tax cuts, energy deregulation and religious freedom as policies, along with personal responsibility, that benefited his. “Faith in the American people means faith in freedom, free enterprise and free speech, because we are a free people.”
If he follows through with a campaign, the South Carolinian’s upbeat style could distinguish him during a GOP primary.
Should Scott launch a campaign, he would enjoy an instant financial advantage compared to several potential opponents. Scott, in the Senate since 2012, won what he has said would be his last Senate campaign last year, and had a robust roughly $22 million in his campaign account, which could be transferred to a campaign for president.
Last year, Scott reportedly outraised Pennsylvania’s Mehmet Oz, a fellow Republican running for Senate. What’s more, Scott raised all that money for a landslide race. He beat his Democrat opponent by 25 points.
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Notably absent from the lineup, at least for now, is former President Donald Trump, who has been campaigning near the train derailment in Ohio… far away from Iowa.
To be sure, Trump is making other kinds of moves in Iowa. On Monday, his team announced it had named a state campaign director, Marshall Moreau, who managed the 2022 campaign of Republican attorney general candidate Brenna Bird. Bird defeated Democrat Tom Miller, who had been the longest-serving attorney general in the country, first elected in 1978.
Trump has maintained an Iowa political presence, with a national campaign team member, Alex Latcham, based in the state. But Trump held a kickoff rally on Jan. 28 in South Carolina, where his 2016 primary victory sealed his status as GOP frontrunner. And he squeezed in a speaking spot earlier that day at the annual state GOP meeting in New Hampshire, where he also won the first-in-the-nation primary seven years ago.
The Republicans will hold their Iowa caucus around February of next year, if past caucuses are any indication. By contrast, the Democrats are starting their primary cycle not in Iowa, but in South Carolina.
The Horn editorial team and the Associated Press contributed to this article.