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58. The Tea Party's Endgame

It's like Igor found a new home for Reagan's cue-ball brain.



Joni Ernst Is the Tea Party's Endgame

The Republican Senate candidate in Iowa has been hailed as the return of the tea party. She's really a sign of its triumph.

—By Patrick Caldwell
Mother Jones | Thu Oct. 30, 2014 6:00 AM EDT

EXCERPT...

Ernst built a career in the armed forces. She deployed to Kuwait in 2003 at the start of the second Iraq War, and serves as a lieutenant colonel in the Iowa Army National Guard to this day, leading the largest battalion in the state. In 2004, she ran for county auditor in her home county. She won, and was reelected in 2008. Then, in 2010, Branstad tapped Kim Reynolds, the state senator in Ernst's district, as his lieutenant governor. Reynolds and local Republicans recruited Ernst to run for Reynolds' seat, which she won with 67.4 percent of the vote.

Ernst's biography—and her record of electoral success—helped rally establishment Republicans to her cause, says Steve Roberts, a former chairman of the state party.

When Sen. Tom Harkin, the five-term Democratic incumbent, announced his retirement in 2013, the mainline GOP crowd knew Ernst was their woman. "She was a different kind of candidate, which was the only way we were going to maybe have a chance to beat Braley," Roberts says.

Soon after Harkin announced he would retire, Roberts and a gaggle of other establishment GOPers encouraged Ernst to run for the soon-to-be-open seat. That group included David Oman—a former chief of staff to Branstad who ran unsuccessfully for governor in 1998 and was co-chair of Mitt Romney's Iowa campaign—and David Kochel, Romney's lead political strategist in the state. In July 2013, Ernst announced she would run for Harkin's seat. Reynolds, the lieutenant governor, endorsed Ernst a few months later, and Kochel and Oman joined Ernst's campaign. Romney, Kochel's former boss, endorsed Ernst this March. As the state's top Republican, Branstad didn't endorse a candidate in the primary, but his preference was no secret. "Pretty much everybody in the state knew that Ernst was Branstad's pick, even if he wasn't going to say so publicly," says Tim Hagle, a political scientist at the University of Iowa.

FOUR OTHER REPUBLICANS RAN for the GOP nomination to replace Harkin. Like Ernst, they lacked statewide name recognition. But with the help of her friends in party leadership and a well-timed viral ad in which she promised to apply her pig-castrating skills to the federal budget, Ernst sailed to an easy victory in the June 3 primary. She finished with 56 percent of the vote—an outright majority that ensured she would not have to win over delegates at a potentially unpredictable nominating convention.

Since June, Ernst has tried to tack to the center, and Democrats have pointed to her comments during the primary to paint her as extreme. "That kind of stuff can come back to haunt you," Hagle says. But Ernst has brushed off her past positions, often by simply denying she ever held them.

CONTINUED...

http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2014/10/joni-ernst-iowa-senate-bruce-braley

Thank you for the kind words, IADEMO2004! Thank you also for the kind reminder about kindly Sen. Breadbags. She will keep the High Fructose Corn Syrup running on time.