Republican Presidential Debate: Live Coverage

Ben, you’re right that these tax plans would benefit the wealthiest Americans. But that won’t alienate most Republican primary voters. In a Pew poll released earlier this month, just 31 percent of possible Republican primary voters said that they would be more likely to support a candidate who wants to raise taxes on the wealthy. And 34 percent said they would be less likely to support a candidate who wants to raise taxes on the wealthy. The divide does fall along ideological lines: At 39 percent, liberal Republican voters are more likely than conservative Republican voters (27 percent) to fall in the former category.

We went into the commercial break on marijuana, which isn’t a slam-dunk issue for the Republican candidates. Yes, the majority of Republicans (39 percent) were against legalizing it in an April 2015 Pew Research survey, but a sizable minority (39 percent) said it should be legal. It is an issue on which the moderate candidate could appeal to the base, though. Only 32 percent of conservative Republicans wanted to legalize it, while 65 percent didn’t.

Kasich talks about the need for skilled workers. Yesterday, I visited a manufacturing training facility run by Eastern Iowa Community Colleges here in Davenport. They’re training Iowans in skills such as welding, machining and other advanced manufacturing techniques. The demand for workers is there: At a job fair yesterday evening, companies lined up looking for skilled workers.