{"id":861415,"date":"2026-09-26T14:06:10","date_gmt":"2026-09-26T14:06:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/861415\/"},"modified":"2026-09-26T14:06:10","modified_gmt":"2026-09-26T14:06:10","slug":"trump-and-diesel-prices-spell-trouble-for-farm-country-republicans","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/861415\/","title":{"rendered":"Trump and diesel prices spell trouble for farm-country Republicans."},"content":{"rendered":"

The Surge is your weekly political sanity check: What matters, what might, and what\u2019s just political theater. Sign up here<\/a> to get it in your inbox.<\/p>\n

Welcome to this weekend\u2019s edition of the Surge, Slate\u2019s politics newsletter. Oh, you think it\u2019s \u201cbad\u201d or \u201ccompletely and obviously illegal\u201d that Donald Trump has used taxpayer dollars<\/a> to air a campaign-season ad<\/a> celebrating himself while the lyric \u201clove me\u201d plays repeatedly in the background? Sounds like you\u2019ve got Trump Derangement Syndrome, cowpoke.<\/p>\n

We are little more than a month from the stupid midterms, and Republicans Are in Disarray. They were specifically promised that the Iran war would not have trade-offs! Susan Collins is not concerned about a major story that dropped this week, but perhaps she should be. Plus, why do some Democrats keep describing one New York Republican House member as unbeatable? He may be with that attitude.<\/p>\n

First up, though: If you\u2019ve got some diesel sitting around the house, you could make a pretty penny on Facebook Marketplace.<\/p>\n

The week Republicans in red states realized they\u2019re going to have to hustle.<\/p>\n

Everyone has understood for some time that this would be a favorable election cycle for Democrats. But this seemed to be the week that this passive knowledge blew into true panic for Republicans\u2014in red states.<\/p>\n

The Iran war raised energy prices since its inception. But it\u2019s the recent price spike of diesel fuel, late in campaign season, that\u2019s driven Republicans into a previously unseen fit of panic. A diesel price spike isn\u2019t good for anyone who enjoys such things as, say, eating food or purchasing products. But it\u2019s especially bad for big agricultural states, where margins were already thinned due to tariffs and fertilizer prices. Indeed, one of the truly unusual features of the Trump administration has been how the president has so specifically worked to make people\u2019s lives difficult in places like, say, Iowa and Kansas.<\/p>\n

Well, Iowa and Kansas have a bunch of races this year, and the candidates are abruptly sounding different. Rep. Ashley Hinson, running for Senate in Iowa against Democrat Josh Turek, posted this week<\/a> that \u201cthe war needs to be brought to a successful and immediate end,\u201d while Iowa GOP Reps. Zach Nunn and Mariannette Miller-Meeks went a step further and actually voted<\/a> to end the war last week. All are in competitive races, and one poll this week showed Hinson trailing Turek<\/a> by 8 points. This was a bit of an outlier, but the race shouldn\u2019t be especially competitive to begin with. In Kansas, meanwhile, Sen. Roger Marshall\u2014running against Democratic nominee Adam Hamilton in an ever-closer race<\/a>\u2014separated himself from the president<\/a> by chastising Immigration and Customs Enforcement\u2019s behavior in the state. Marshall has continued<\/a> voting for the Iran war, and Hamilton is hammering him over it.<\/p>\n

How deep will this red-state incursion go? Already, national Republicans have all but given up purple-state Senate races like Georgia and North Carolina, as more and more money will have to go to defensive measures in Texas, Ohio, Alaska, Iowa, and Kansas. Nebraska<\/a>? Maybe South Carolina and Mississippi<\/a>? As National Republican Senatorial Committee Chairman Tim Scott told GOP senators<\/a> this week, senators in deep-red states need to run as if they\u2019re behind so all resources can go toward the \u201crecord number of toss-up races\u201d on the map.<\/p>\n

Democrats shouldn\u2019t get overly excited about the prospect of winning, say, eight Senate seats. Republicans still have the money advantage, and their recent deluge of spending should tighten things a bit. Trump will pull some gimmick with diesel prices, like an export ban, that will be terrible policy but might offer relief<\/a> for a hot second. And many swing voters, while livid at Republicans, still do consider Democrats to be helpless freaks. But this week? Take in the GOP panic. Marinate in it. It is rich. And all because of policy choices\u2014wars, tariffs\u2014that did not need to be made.<\/p>\n

Will that story about Susan Collins and the scam defense contractor matter?<\/p>\n

Not every Senate race is a vision of unadulterated joy for Democrats. They still have to watch their backs in races where they nominated more-left-wing candidates (Michigan, Minnesota, Maine) or where people might be conflating the Republican candidate with his more popular brother<\/a> (New Hampshire). In Maine, for example, the Collins machine is still chugging along in a tight race with Troy Jackson, and even led him in a New York Times poll released this week. (Others showed Jackson ahead<\/a>.)<\/p>\n

On Tuesday, though, ProPublica published<\/a> a much-discussed investigation into the Collins team\u2019s relationship with Martin Kao, the former CEO of a Hawaiian defense contractor. Kao is now in federal prison after his business plan\u2014buying off politicians with campaign donations in exchange for defense contracts that never went anywhere\u2014was exposed. The story reveals that Collins helped secure the company funds while Kao used shell companies to make large donations to Collins\u2019 super PAC. The FBI was supposedly digging deep into the situation until Trump came to office, at which point FBI agents were either fired or reassigned to assisting Homeland Security in the pervasive harassment of immigrants.<\/p>\n

The Collins team portrayed it all as a hit piece, saying any notion of a pay-to-play scheme was \u201ccategorically false.\u201d Her strongest argument in response to it is that much of it relies on interviews Kao did with the FBI once he was already in jail and looking to save himself, although ProPublica countered that<\/a> it had independently verified many of his claims. (There are also some not-great emails from members of Collins\u2019 orbit in there.) But even if there\u2019s no hard camera footage of Kao giving Collins burlap sacks full of cash, there is undoubtedly a story that she got duped into delivering federal dollars to a scammer.<\/p>\n

One quote that didn\u2019t make it into our feature<\/a> on Collins earlier this year, but that came back to me this week, was from former Sen. Roy Blunt: \u201cI can\u2019t think of an earmark that Susan has ever asked for that turned out to be a problem for her politically.\u201d That may no longer be the case.<\/p>\n

Is Mike Lawler really a brilliant political force of such magnitude that he cannot be defeated?<\/p>\n

Last week, moderate, retiring Maine Democrat Jared Golden\u2014who\u2019s really winging it<\/a> on his way out of office\u2014endorsed New York GOP Rep. Mike Lawler for reelection, citing Lawler\u2019s ability to work with the other side to pass legislation. What caught our eye about this was a reaction from one House Democrat, who told<\/a> the Washington Sun that Golden\u2019s endorsement didn\u2019t bug them, since \u201cI don\u2019t think Lawler\u2019s beatable.\u201d And this caught our eye because we read the same line from a \u201csenior House Democrat\u201d in an Axios story last month<\/a>, almost word for word.<\/p>\n

Well, these House Democrats\u2014or this one House Democrat who really likes delivering the same line to multiple reporters\u2014are suffering from acute confidence issues, because: what? Sure, Lawler is pretty talented at maintaining his individual brand, either by carving out additional tax relief for his constituents<\/a> in the One Big Beautiful Bill Act last year or by calling out bigots within his party<\/a>. And, sure, Lawler was one of only three House Republicans who won districts in 2024 carried by Kamala Harris. That\u2019s all a testament to his skill<\/a>, but it\u2019s also a sign that he would be directly underneath a blue wave should it come to crash. As ol\u2019 Bert Camus would say: One must imagine Lawler beatable.<\/p>\n

Republicans have put a lot of money behind defending Lawler\u2019s seat, and there\u2019s been some question as to why Democrats haven\u2019t kept up in propping up his opponent, Cait Conley. (Conley is arguably the purest distillation of DCCC recruitment ever: West Point. Military. Harvard. MIT. National Security Council.) But part of the reason they haven\u2019t kept up is because Democrats \u2026 don\u2019t have as much money.<\/p>\n

For an extra section of lightning-round political thoughts from Jim, sign up to get the Surge in your inbox<\/a>.<\/p>\n

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