I begin today’s show by noting we will never change politics without a change in political leadership. The debt ceiling fight certainly showed us that. But are conservative voters even interested in substance? Possibly not, but as my colleague Steve Deace says on today’s show, we are lucky that the first state to vote is one that takes the process more seriously. Steve explains how the Iowa caucuses are a parochial process that are skewed not just toward committed church-goers but also toward higher-information voters. This works against Trump’s winning formula, which all too often has protected him from the harm his ideological flaws would otherwise cause with conservative voters in other states. Steve lays out the path for DeSantis and uses historical precedent to show how Iowa bucks the political paradigm, including even unanimous polling data in the closing stretch of the campaign.

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