Trump rallies in Park City as Kansas farmers pay the price
By Ruth Behrens · Reporting from Newell, Iowa ·
President Donald Trump is rallying for Roger Marshall in Kansas, but soaring diesel costs and broken trade promises have left rural voters exhausted and disillusioned.
President Donald Trump is heading to Park City to save a Senate seat. He wants to prop up Roger Marshall in a race that has become unexpectedly tight. But he is walking into a harvest that feels like a heist. The GOP is wrong to think a rally can drown out the sound of a bank statement. Farmers are not a prop for a campaign. They are people who get up at four in the morning and are currently being bled dry by the very policies the President claims to champion.
The cost of a harvest in Park City
Diesel is the lifeblood of the fall harvest. According to PBS, it averaged $6.30 per gallon nationwide on Friday. That is more than 70% higher than a year ago. When the fuel price jumps like that, the margin for error vanishes. Glenn Brunkow, president of the Kansas Farm Bureau, says the margins are tight. He knows that anything cutting into those margins really hurts.
The numbers from the U.S. Department of Agriculture do not offer much comfort. They project net farm income will decline this year. Meanwhile, production expenses are expected to rise. The Bible tells us that the laborer is worthy of his hire. A basis chart tells us the laborer is being robbed.
A band-aid for a broken limb
The GOP will argue that they are the only ones fighting for the rural worker. Their ablest advocate will point to a secure border. They will highlight an executive order to ease limits on the tax-free use of red-dyed diesel. Donald Trump says this order will save "millions" for farmers.
But a tax break on fuel that costs too much is just a slower way to go broke. You cannot break the market with a geopolitical game and then pretend you are a savior for treating the symptoms. The government treats the farmer like a political pawn in a larger economic shift. It creates instability and then offers a subsidy to keep the lights on.
The ghost of the eighties
The GOP believes Kansas is a fortress. CNN reports that Trump won the state by 16 points in 2024. No Democrat has held a Senate seat there since 1932. But the bedrock is cracking. Don Hineman, a former Republican state House majority leader, is tired of being persuaded by the "boogeyman." He is not just talking in coffee shops. He has put his money behind the Democratic candidate, Adam Hamilton.
This is the Farm Crisis of the 1980s. A cycle of rising input costs and shrinking margins leads to rural insolvency and a loss of faith in the political establishment. We saw it then, and we see it now. The historical pattern predicts that when the cost of living outweighs the party line, rural voters stop showing up. Or they quietly cross the aisle.
KWCH reports that the Wichita Police Department is warning of significant traffic delays for the rally. The city is planning shuttles and overflow parking at Gilley’s Park City Gambling Hall. It is a lot of theater for a man who has left the Midwest to pay for his trade wars. The GOP has forgotten that a nation that cannot feed itself is not sovereign.
The GOP has traded the stability of the American farm for the theater of the rally. They treat the Midwest like a map of red counties instead of a community of people. They have ignored the warning signs of a new rural collapse. If they keep playing games with tariffs and oil, they will find that the farmers have finally stopped listening. They will learn that you cannot eat a campaign promise when the diesel tank is empty.
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WTI crude oil price. Source: Federal Reserve Economic Data (FRED).
Sources
- KWCH: Presidential visit to bring major traffic delays in Wichita; shuttle, overflow parking planned for arena event
- CNN: Midterm election live updates: Trump says ‘polls are fake’ as he campaigns for GOP candidate in deep-red Kansas
- PBS: WATCH LIVE: Trump heads to rally in Kansas as Republican voters' frustrations deepen