'Haley's "last stand" in Iowa'

'Haley's extremely narrow road to victory calls for top-tier finishes in the first two states'

Douglas E. Schoen in The Hill

Iowa could be Nikki Haley's "last stand," says Douglas E. Schoen in The Hill. The former South Carolina governor and Trump administration United Nations ambassador predicted last week that she and former President Donald Trump would be the only remaining candidates in the Republican presidential field after January's Iowa caucuses. But if she fails to deliver a strong showing "she, not Gov. Ron DeSantis (R-Fla.), may be the candidate who doesn't make it out of Iowa."

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'Defunding the IRS costs the government money'

Brian Riedl in The Washington Post

Republicans wrangled a $20 billion cut in Democrats' new IRS funding in the debt-limit deal earlier this year, says Brian Riedl in The Washington Post. "And now, in the appropriations showdown, they're going after the rest of it." But "defunding and weakening the IRS is not conservative. To the contrary, it will ultimately drive up deficits and raise middle-class taxes." Unpaid taxes, mostly from "underreporting of corporate and pass-through business income," cost the government $625 billion annually. 

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'Is it too much to say that most Gazans hate the IDF?'

Marshall Poe in Responsible Statecraft

The Israel Defense Forces aren't fighting a war of counter-insurgency in Gaza, says Marshall Poe in Responsible Statecraft. In that kind of conflict, insurgents don't "generally enjoy the support of local population." In Gaza, Hamas fighters are surrounded by civilians who "may not be active combatants, but they are likely to give aid to the insurgents" on nationalistic grounds. That makes this a "war of occupation." History shows that kind of conflict will be hard for Israel to win. 

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'Many people assume that the ideology of the young is a predictor of the future'

Michael Segal in The Wall Street Journal

Many were "shocked to see American college students demonstrate in support of Hamas," says Michael Segal in The Wall Street Journal. But don't expect this to spread "such hatred" far and wide. Young people won't remain naive about Hamas' "Islamic supremacist ideology" forever. "Students grow up. They start out as pacifists until they realize that other people want to kill them." The real world teaches them that many causes popular on campus can "lead to terrible consequences."

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