joni ernst – Moe Lane

Joni Ernst and bread bags: both are, in fact, as American as apple pie.

Alternate title: The Democrats demonstrate their tin ear on populism. Again.

So. When Joni Ernst gave the official Republican response to the State of the Union address, she included a homely detail from her childhood: in the wintertime, she and all the other kids would have bread bags placed over their shoes in order to protect them from the weather. …And why am I bringing that pretty much commonplace, throwaway line? Well, I’ll let Peggy Noonan explain.

Leftism too has its class tropes, only they come from the opposite angle. Response on the left to Ernst and the bread bags was snobbish, superior and dumb to the point of embarrassing. First, they couldn’t believe it—no one wears bread bags on their shoes in a storm, how absurd, she must be developmentally challenged. Then they denigrated what she said, putting pictures on Twitter of themselves wearing bread bags on their feet, accompanied by comments that had all the whiff of the upper class speaking of the quaint ways of the help. Andy Borowitz, surprisingly, wrote a dumb, leaden spoof in the New Yorker that seemed a companion piece to Politico’s earlier use of a photo of Ernst that gave her crazy eyes.

Continue reading Joni Ernst and bread bags: both are, in fact, as American as apple pie.

Sen. Joni Ernst (R, Iowa) to give GOP response to 2015 SotU address.

It’s a pretty interesting choice: “Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) and House Speaker John Boehner (R-OH) today announced that U.S. Sen. Joni Ernst (R-IA) will deliver the Republican Address to the Nation following the State of the Union address on Tuesday, January 20, 2015.” Combat veteran, freshman Senator, on nobody’s list for 2016 in any capacity: with any luck, the leadership is trying to integrate some of the last wave of populist conservatives into Congress. Either that, or she can give a really good speech. I can live with either.

Moe Lane

PS: There is a fellow who sneered at the junior Senator from Iowa earlier today. The name of this fellow – who apparently suffers from the twin burdens of owing all of his success to his last name, and having perhaps a decidedly unrequited lust for female conservative legislators – is known to me, but I choose not to repeat it. …Ah, the classics.

Tweet of the Day, The Provincialism Of The Joni Ernst-Hating Northeasterner On Display edition.

But he’s not bitter!

The Republicans got nothing but rewards for obstructionism. No Contract with America was needed. The 2014 electorate was willing to hire the Republicans like day laborers: Pull up, hop in. No, I don’t need your C.V. You castrate pigs? Great, you got a job.

Well, maybe he’s a little bitter. Continue reading Tweet of the Day, The Provincialism Of The Joni Ernst-Hating Northeasterner On Display edition.

I believe that what Tom Harkin did here is called ‘objectifying.’ Or just ‘being an jackass.’

Hey, how do you refer to a state Senator and National Guard war veteran who served in Iraq? Well, if you’re retiring Senator Tom Harkin, you apparently ignore those parts of the resume and zoom in on physical details:

Retiring Democratic Iowa Sen. Tom Harkin says that Iowa voters shouldn’t be fooled because Joni Ernst is “really attractive” and “sounds nice.”

“In this Senate race, I’ve been watching some of these ads,” Harkin said at the Story County Democrats’ annual fall barbecue last week honoring the retiring senator. “And there’s sort of this sense that, ‘Well, I hear so much about Joni Ernst. She is really attractive, and she sounds nice.’”

…Course, when your party is running the trial lawyer who goes around insulting the next Senate Judiciary chair and suing people over chickens, I suppose that you don’t have much to work with there. Still. Don’t these people pay attention to their own agitprop? …Pathetic, really.

Not to pile on in Iowa-Senate… no, wait, I want to. Joni Ernst brings the fundraising thunder.

Good news.

Today, the Joni Ernst for Senate campaign announced that it raised approximately $6 million in the third quarter, more than doubling the total raised by her opponent, Congressman Bruce Braley, and setting an all-time Iowa record for the amount raised by a statewide candidate in one quarter.

Via Jim Geraghty. Jim notes that killing it in the fundraising isn’t the deal-sealer that it has been in the past – but it doesn’t hurt, either. More polling tomorrow; interesting to see whether Braley will get any good news out of it. Lord knows that the man hasn’t had any lately…

Quote of the Day, This is Not Quite A DOOM Moment In The Iowa-SEN Race edition.

But it’s a big, fat warning sign. Short version: the Des Moines Register poll shows Joni Ernst beating Bruce Braley 44-38. That’s not the warning sign. This is:

[Braley] isn’t winning in his home district, in northeast Iowa.

That’s… great news, actually. Which means that it’s horrible news for Bruce Braley.

Via Hot Air Headlines.

Moe Lane

PS: Joni Ernst for Senate.

Bruce Braley avoids voters at Iowa State Fair. …Wait, what?

Let me start out by pushing back on the suggestion that Bruce Braley can be usefully compared to Mitt Romney. Mitt Romney, whatever his other faults, is personally a fundamentally decent man who you’d absolutely love to have as a next-door neighbor. Bruce Braley is a former tort lawyer with a galloping sense of entitlement and he lies when it suits him. I’m not saying that people who’d prefer the company of the latter to the former are necessarily bad people – as a partisan hack myself, I recognize the power of solidarity – but you’d have to be a partisan hack to make that call.

None of the above should keep you from smiling at what’s below, mind you. Continue reading Bruce Braley avoids voters at Iowa State Fair. …Wait, what?

Bruce Braley’s (D-CAND, Iowa-SEN) Fowl Play: legal threats against special ed therapist neighbor.

Why did the chicken cross the road? Because Bruce Braley has a restraining order out on it.

Let me give you the executive summary of this story: Democrat Bruce Braley is running (increasingly in a flailing-type manner) for Senate in Iowa. He’s currently in the middle of a dispute with one of his neighbors because one of the latter’s chickens ended up at Braley’s vacation home at Holiday Lake, Iowa*. Which happens, and as it turns out Braley won that dispute: the chicken-owner (who uses them as part of her duties as a therapist**) was told by the Holiday Lake Housing Association to contain her chickens. So, problem solved, right?

Wrong! Bruce Braley is a trial lawyer, remember? Continue reading Bruce Braley’s (D-CAND, Iowa-SEN) Fowl Play: legal threats against special ed therapist neighbor.

Iowa Republicans: please consider extra campaigning assistance for Joni Ernst for the next two weeks.

She’s off serving her country.

Republicans are appealing to Iowans to help campaign for Joni Ernst while she’s on leave for two weeks for active duty training.

Ernst, a candidate for Iowa’s open U.S. Senate seat and a battalion commander in the Iowa Army National Guard, leaves Friday for Fort McCoy for annual training.

The Iowa Republican party expects Bruce Braley to go after Joni Ernst during this time – Braley always did like cheap shots as a political strategy* – so they’re asking for special help during the next two weeks. So if you’re a Republican from Iowa: details on how you can help here.

(H/T: Hot Air)

Moe Lane (crosspost)

PS: Joni Ernst for US Senate.

*You know, it’d be one thing if Bruce Braley was consistently in favor of using the IRS to target political organizations that he doesn’t like. It’d be a horrible thing, but it’d be at least an honest opinion. But this one-of-you act he’s been doing is kind of pathetic. Last time I checked: Iowans believed in the rights of freedom of assembly and petition to redress grievances.

Oops, sorry, that’s language from the First Amendment to the Constitution. Shoot, I keep forgetting that Braley and his fellow legislators have apparently never read the primary source material.

Bruce Braley (D CAND, IOWA-SEN) is a farmer of LIES.

You know, the DSCC had one job. ONE:

Democrat Bruce Braley, who was caught on tape in January making a remark that seemed to besmirch Iowa farmers, has been caught on tape seemingly claiming to be one.

“We’re farmers,” a parade attendee appears to tells Braley, a U.S. Senate candidate, during the Fourth of July parade in Iowa Falls last weekend.

“So am I,” Braley answers in a video shared with The Des Moines Register today.

The Des Moines Register then went on to list the ways that Bruce Braley is not, indeed, a farmer: which is to say, pretty much every way, because Bruce Braley is not a farmer. He’s a politician who sucks up to out-of-state trial lawyers by mocking farmers. The Braley campaign is trying to pretend that the man heard it as ‘We’re for farmers.’ I dunno. You tell me:
Continue reading Bruce Braley (D CAND, IOWA-SEN) is a farmer of LIES.