Trump has edge on Biden on issue of aging

NEWS AND OPINION:

So how are the potential presidential hopefuls for 2024 doing? The clock is ticking, and one candidate appears to be doing rather well in the all-important state of New Hampshire.

“Former President Donald Trump holds a 41-percentage point lead in a hypothetical Republican primary, with 58% support. Florida Governor Ron DeSantis holds 17%, followed by Governor Chris Sununu at 7%, former U.N. Ambassador Nikki Haley at 6%, and former Vice President Mike Pence at 4%,” an Emerson College poll released Wednesday reported.

The findings are not so promising for President Biden, however.

“In the Democratic primary, a majority, 55%, of Democratic primary voters think President Biden should not be the 2024 Democratic nominee, while 44% think he should be the nominee,” the poll analysis said.

Things can still be unpredictable, though. In a hypothetical 2024 presidential race between Mr. Trump and Mr. Biden, the sitting president leads the former president 42% to 38%. Another 16% would support someone else and 4% are undecided.

There’s a potential age edge, though.

“A majority of New Hampshire voters, 57%, think Biden’s age of 82 would be an obstacle to being an effective president, 6% think it would help him be an effective president, while 37% think it would not matter that much. A plurality of voters, 46% think Trump’s age of 78 would not matter that much, while 36% think it would present an obstacle to being an effective president and 18% think it would help him be an effective president,” the poll analysis said.

The survey of 1,025 registered New Hampshire voters was conducted March 3-5.

FIRST OF MANY

Rep. Morgan Luttrell has introduced his first bill in the House of Representatives.

The Texas Republican and Navy combat veteran has also given the legislation a compelling name: the Anti-Foreign Adversary Collaboration Resolution.

The bill would prohibit members of Congress from serving on boards affiliated with our foreign adversaries, such as China, Russia, North Korea and Iran.

“Countering our opponents is one of the most pressing issues we will undertake in this Congress. The legislation I introduced today emphasizes the importance of a long-term focus on countering, curbing, and outcompeting foreign adversaries across the globe,” Mr. Luttrell said in a statement shared with Inside the Beltway.

Rep. Kevin Hern, Oklahoma Republican and chairman of the Republican Study Committee, said he’s “proud to join Morgan on this important bill.”

“We cannot allow nations who wish us harm to exert undue influence on our government,” he said. “Members of Congress must be completely free and independent of any influence from America’s enemies.”

NIKKI’S PROMISE

One presidential hopeful vows to get a hold on the nation’s purse strings.

“Spending is out of control. And Democrats and Republicans share the blame. The non-stop spending binge of the past three years gave us soaring inflation that’s still squeezing families and an economy that’s stumbling toward recession,” writes former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley, now a candidate for the Republican presidential nomination, in an op-ed for the Detroit Free Press.

“The current push to raise the federal debt limit is depressing. Worse is the fact that this same fiasco will keep happening. Washington simply isn’t serious about getting spending under control,” she said, blaming both Democrats and Republicans for a “nonstop spending binge” that has pushed the national debt to $31.6 trillion.

“As president, I will veto spending bills that don’t put America on track to reach pre-pandemic spending levels. I will claw back the $500 billion in federal pandemic funding that hasn’t been spent while going after up to $100 billion or more lost to fraud,” Ms. Haley continued.

“It’s time someone in Washington stood up for taxpayers and stopped America’s slide toward bankruptcy,” she added later.

COMFY IN THE MIDDLE

One presidential hopeful could be steering clear of his progressive past. That hopeful is the president himself.

“Here is one of the clearest signs that Joe Biden is attempting to steer back to the middle as his reelection bid approaches, and a sign that every previous policy choice he’s made is renegotiable if it will help his reelection bid: The Biden administration is now considering reviving the practice of detaining migrant families who cross the border illegally, a policy Biden denounced as a candidate in 2020,” wrote National Review columnist Jim Geraghty.

“Welcome to the new, tacking-to-the-middle portion of the Biden presidency. Last week, the president tossed aside his previous comments about home rule for the District of Columbia to overrule a sweeping change to the district’s criminal code that would have reduced sentences for crimes such as carjacking. This week, the president is contemplating bringing back detaining migrant families, a policy he repeatedly denounced as a presidential candidate in 2019 and 2020,” Mr. Geraghty said.

“You don’t have to agree with a progressive Democrat to understand why Biden drives them nuts. In Biden’s world, everything is negotiable, even policies he denounced as a candidate. And when he enacts the same policies as his predecessor, he and his team will insist it is completely different, because Biden operates with a pure heart, while his predecessor was pure xenophobic evil. When the other guy does it, it’s deliberate, unneeded, heartless malevolence; when Biden does it, it’s just a pragmatic concession to hard realities,” the columnist said.

POLL DU JOUR

• 41% of U.S. adults “strongly oppose” using gender-neutral pronouns to describe someone, instead of using “he/him” or “she/her”; 71% of Republicans, 39% of independents and 21% of Democrats agree.

• 20% “somewhat oppose” using gender-neutral pronouns; 16% of Republicans, 24% of independents and 16% of Democrats agree.

• 22% “somewhat support” using such pronouns; 9% of Republicans, 25% of independents and 31% of Democrats agree.

• 14% “strongly support” using those pronouns; 2% of Republicans, 11% of independents and 30% of Democrats agree.

• 3% did not know or did not answer; 1% of Republicans, 2% of independents and 1% of Democrats agree.

SOURCE: A USA Today/Ipsos poll of 1,023 U.S. adults conducted March 3-5.

• Follow Jennifer Harper on Twitter @HarperBulletin.