First, Mr. Charles P. Pierce:
Joni Ernst, veteran juggler of pig testicles and official Republican candidate for the United States Senate in Iowa, seems to have gone very close to the full Calhoun at some gathering of hayshaking Bible-bangers back in 2013. Now, it is true that Ernst does not really come out in favor of nullification per se, but what she says is all the worse for its abject cowardice…
Then, NYTimes‘ “chief national correspondent” and This Town author Mark Leibovich, still trying to make himself unpopular:
[Iowa Governor] Branstad, who was standing a few feet away in MJ’s parking lot, does not quite present as such an exalted figure. He’s a mustachioed wisp of a sound-bite machine, who is prone to rambling and repeating himself at Olympian levels, even by politician standards. But he has channeled the fits of self-importance that befall many politicians in Iowa and New Hampshire into a larger ambition. Iowa may be a flat, landlocked state with six electoral votes, but under Branstad’s stewardship, it has become the country’s premier tourist destination for political brown-nosers and day-tripping presidential hopefuls. As a slow-moving formation of furry boom mikes followed Christie into a mosh pit of supporters inside the diner, Branstad began to enumerate to me his other “dear friends”: the Texas governor, Rick Perry; the Wisconsin governor, Scott Walker; Representative Paul Ryan, among others.
If there’s one thing every Republican presidential candidate can agree upon, it is that Branstad represents the peak of American leadership, if not the pinnacle of all human achievement. Homage must be paid. Perry said that what Branstad “has done in this state is an example that we want to take across the country.” Ryan said Branstad embodied the qualities “that people in Washington can learn from,” and Walker listed Branstad as one of the people that he respects the most. Branstad humbly agrees. “We want Iowa to be the envy of the whole nation,” he told me in the parking lot. “Not just because we have the first-in-the-nation caucuses.” (No, of course not; it’s totally natural for the governor of New Jersey to check out the cows here in the middle of July.) “Iowa is going in the right direction,” Branstad continued, “and the rest of the country is going in the wrong direction.”…
It would be one thing if all of this early activity and attention in Iowa resulted in a smarter electorate, better candidates or a more authentic version of democracy. But in general, the quaint “retail” settings of Iowa diners and New Hampshire living rooms are treated mostly as media sound stages, places where reporters report on how many other reporters showed up (see above)…
Over the years, Iowans have leveraged their first-in-nation caucus to promote the notion that they are wiser than the rest of us. “If the rest of America had been as smart as Iowa folks, we wouldn’t be in the shape we’re in today,” said the former Arkansas governor Mike Huckabee, a once and possibly future presidential candidate who won the Iowa Republican caucuses in 2008. And if the rest of the country thought like Iowa folks, Huckabee might be in the White House now — if not the 2012 Iowa winner, President Santorum…
If you’re so smart, how come you never had the sense to get outta Iowa?
If the journos are starting to rebel two years in advance of the actual caucus, how extravagant will the language be by late 2015?
Late Night Open Thread: To Heck with IowaPost + Comments (63)