前程百利小编为大家带来托福阅读材料。香草素因为大家的“不讨厌”而流行，这让作者想到了参选美国总统的候选人斯科特·沃克。文章的难词已经标示出来，希望大家可以学习到相关知识，并通过不断的阅读练习提高自己的托福阅读能力。
Vanilla is the most popular ice cream flavor in America, not because it’s the best (that would be coffee) but because it’s the least objectionable(令人反感的).
Put another way(换种说法;=or rather， in other words), vanilla is the most acceptable(可接受的) to the most people; it’s not many people’s favorite, but no body hates it.
And that’s why Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker is the vanilla candidate.
A new Des Moines Register poll(民意调查) has Walker in first place — narrowly — among likely GOP(Grand Old Party，共和党的别称) caucus-goers(caucus党团会议，可指某党推选其参选人的会议). With Mitt Romney included in the poll, Walker was the respondents’ first choice with 15 percentage points.
Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul was second with 14 percentage points andRomney third with 13. With Romney out, Walker rose to 16 percentage points and Paul to 15.
First place in a tightly packed field is better than any of the alternatives, but it’s not that big a deal this far out.
The big deal is the vanilla factor (which sounds like a terribly boring spy novel).
According to the Register story that accompanied the poll, 51percent of caucus-goers want an “anti-establishment(指反对传统的社会、政治、经济原则的) candidate (参选人)without a lot of ties to Washington or Wall Street who would change the way things are done and challenge conventional thinking.”
Meanwhile, 43 percent prefer a more establishment figure “with executive experience who understands business and how to execute ideas.”
Walker is in the golden spot. He can, like Bill Murray in the movie “Groundhog Day” listening to An die MacDowell explain the perfect man, reply “that’s me” to almost everything Republicans say they want.
Executive experience? Challenge conventional thinking ?Anti-establishment fighter? “Me, me, me.”
Respondents looking for an establishment candidate said Romney was their first choice. Those preferring an outsider said Paul was their first choice. But both groups said their second choice was a big scoop of Walker.
Of course, this can all change. No matter how palatable(可接受的) it is, people can still grow weary of(厌倦) vanilla ,and Walker may melt under the pressure. Though having won three state wide elections in four years — in liberal Wisconsin!— that’s unlikely.
If you’re Jeb Bush, Paul, Ted Cruz or one of the other candidates(official and not), Walker should have you worried.
With the arguable(可疑的，存疑的) exceptions(异议;exception有例外和异议两个意思，分别对应两个形容词exceptional和exceptionable，前者指例外的或出类拔萃的，后者指引起异议的) of Sen. Marco Rubio and Gov.(Sen. 和 Gov.分别是议员和州长的缩写) Bobby Jindal, right now most of field the is made up of boutique flavors, intensely popular among some, intensely unpopular among others.
Pundits talk of the “establishment versus Tea Party” rift in the GOP as a recent development.
The truth is this schism(分裂，分立) is more like a permanent(永远的) feature of Republican politics.
Robert Taft, Barry Goldwater, Ronald Reagan and Newt Gingrich fought the forces of Thomas Dewey, Nelson Rockefeller, Bob Dole and George H.W. Bush with hammers and tongs(全力以赴地) fordecades, losing many early battles and winning later ones.
Richard Nixon brilliantly played both sides against the other, alternating between establishmentarian noblesse oblige(字面意思是社会阶层高的人的义务，指认为社会阶层高的人有责任慷慨帮助下层人的观点) and populist hostility(民粹主义者的敌意) to the “Georgetown set”(The Georgetown Set是一本书的名字。该书的主要内容是冷战期间聚集在华盛顿特区的精英们如何左右世界形势的。在这里代指精英阶层) whenever it served his purposes.
These squabbles(争吵) often took an ideological color(意识形态色彩), but they were sometimes simply bare-knuckle(不留情面的) fights over who got control of the levers of power within the party.
For example, even today, the ideological differences between the anti-establishment Cruz and that supposedly wan(弱的) vassal(跟从者) of entrenched(确立的) power, Senate MajorityLeader Mitch McConnell, are quite small.
Bush is doing a phenomenal(惊人的，不寻常的) job of securing support from big GOP donors. As a result, the Beltway(华盛顿特区的) news corps(记者团) has dubbed(把……称为) him the front-runner.
“Republicans have a tradition of picking an anointed(选定的) one early,” Karen Tumultyand Matea Gold of The Washington Post write. “That establishment candidate almost always ends up with the nomination(提名), although not without a fight and some speed bumps(路面减速装置，泛指阻力) along the way.”
Yes and no. The anointed one and the establishment candidate aren’t necessarily the same person. And what counts as “the establishment” is often a moving target.
Just consider the Bushes. George H.W. Bush ran as the establishment candidate and lost to the anointed candidate in 1980. George W. Bush thought he was anointed in 2000 but ended up having to run as an anti-establishment candidate (recasting(重塑，改写) himself as a “reformer with results”).
Ultimately, both got elected, but only after finding peak vanilla. Jeb Bush is a long way from that.
以上就是前程百利小编为大家带来的托福阅读材料，平时的阅读练习是托福考试阅读备考的重要一环。希望大家利用好每份材料，尽可能多地从中获取知识。预祝大家托福考试取得好成绩。
