January 23, 2015 5:59 AM

Joni Ernst: Amateur Hour? Ayn Rand reincarnated? Or just a tool of the Koch brothers?

Watching Sen. Joni Ernst Tuesday night, I found myself thinking: If there’s a GOP establishment, it must consist of secret Democrats, because they so reliably sabotage their rising stars by assigning them the reply to President Obama’s annual State of the Union address, way before they’re ready. Gov. Bobby Jindal and Sen. Marco Rubio moved from 2016 contenders to punch lines in moments. Ernst seemed headed the same way, with her robotic sing-song delivery and her head-scratching anecdotes about bread bags on her shoes and working the biscuit lines at Hardees. She was clearly working to show voters that she’s a regular person who cares about the working class, even though she told the Koch brothers last June that they “really started my trajectory.” It’s tough to square those notions, but Ernst took to the task with good cheer and the gumption you need to castrate hogs.

I couldn’t bring myself to watch Sen. Joni Ernst (R-IA) give the official GOP response to Tuesday’s State of the Union address. That was 10 minutes of cheap propaganda and generalized lunacy I just couldn’t subject myself to. When I heard about her “bread bag” story, I knew I’d definitely made the right choice. My own feelings on the matter is that Joni Ernst say more about Iowans that it really does about anything else. I know next to nothing (and care even less) about Iowa politics, but most Senate campaigns mean that a candidate is garnering attention state wide for at least 18-24 months prior to election. That was ample time for Ernst to demonstrate (repeatedly) that she has the intellectual agility and acuity of a box of hair…and yet a majority of Iowa voters chose her. If you knowing and willingly send Stupid to Congress, what does that say about you? Nothing good, to be certain.

Republicans have a wonderful facility for seeing the accomplishments and progress made during Barack Obama’s time in office and STILL managing to label his tenure as a “failure.” We should all hope to fail so spectacularly, right? Most economic indicators have rebounded significantly from George W. Bush’s recession, the price of gas is down, we’re no longer at war (officially, at least)…and I could go on, but you get the point. Ernst, and Ted Cruz after her were willing to pillory the President’s “failed” policies, insisting that Republicans have the answers Americans need and demand.

Iowans may have thought they were voting for a senator. What they got was amateur hour.

Never mind that every time the Republicans have been in power since Richard Nixon, they’ve thoroughly screwed the pooch, particularly the economy. Ah, but Joni Ernst knows what American needs…even though she’s been in Washington as a Senator for about 20 minutes. Sorry, but taking your Palinesque star turn with a plastic smile and camouflage pumps doesn’t make you a credible statesman. It actually made Ernst look like just the latest Republican sacrificial laughing stock. Marco Rubio and Bobby Jindal are SO 2014….

Oh, and lest I forget….

Gentleman, start your Sarah Palin comparisons!!

I always struggle with whether it’s sexist to reflexively compare female Republicans like Joni Ernst to Sarah Palin. It may well be, but it’s clear they also play similar roles in their party. Both women have been sized up as vice-presidential fodder (strangely, the GOP never seems to size up women as potential presidents, which presented a problem in 2008 when voters realized they were electing Palin to be a heartbeat away).

And to be fair, Palin and Ernst have other things in common. The GOP’s answer to feminism, its strategy for winning female votes without changing its anti-female policies, seems to be recruiting sassy frontier gals who hunt and ride motorcycles and, yes, castrate hogs, but do it all in lipstick and (camouflage) pumps. And hey, in Iowa, it worked.

Caribou Barbie shoots and field dresses moose, Joni Ernst castrates hogs. That may seem folksy, a way to establish the “just plain folks” cred, but it has nothing to do with governing. And her talk about growing up poor, while it makes for a good story, is just that- a good story. It’s not a reflection of where she is today, nor is it indication that she understands what the poor are going through. In fact, the family of this “we pulled ourselves up by our own bootstraps” Teapublican received $460,000 in federal farm subsidies between 1995 and 2009.

Is Ernst dishonest? Disingenuous? Or merely a tool of the Koch brothers’ ambition to remake government in their own image? Whatever the case may be, she’s turning into today’s iteration of Sarah Palin- vacant, vacuous, and symbolic of an intellectually dishonest view of the role of government. And she has a seat in the most powerful legislative body in the world. Awesome.

Nice work, Iowa!

blog comments powered by Disqus

Technorati

Technorati search

» Blogs that link here

About this Entry

This page contains a single entry by Jack Cluth published on January 23, 2015 5:59 AM.

Today in Honest Movie Posters was the previous entry in this blog.

American Sniper: What happens when war porn and Right-wing propaganda intersect is the next entry in this blog.

Find recent content on the main index or look in the archives to find all content.

Contact Me

Powered by Movable Type 6.0.2