As regular readers know, I’ve been pretty outspoken in objecting to the dismissive approach Iowa Senate candidate Joni Ernst has been taking when asked about extremist positions she’s taken in the very recent past. She was for a Personhood Amendment, not because she wanted to mess with anyone’s uterus, but because Religion. She used to talk at length about Agenda 21 because she didn’t quite understand how vigilant Iowans were in resisting the evil plans of one-worlders to outlaw strip malls and golf; now she’s reassured and it’s not a big priority for her. Having “addressed” these tokens of her extremism and/or shameless pandering to extremists, she wants us to focus on her farm background and her military background and Bruce Braley’s insult to that nice Chuck Grassley.
So now I can’t wait to hear how she deals with a third problem (per TPM’s Daniel Straus):
State Sen. Joni Ernst, the Republican nominee for U.S. Senate in Iowa, once said she would support legislation that would allow “local law enforcement to arrest federal officials attempting to implement” Obamacare.
Ernst voiced her support for that, as well as supporting legislation that would “nullify” Obamacare in a Iowa State Legislative Candidates survey for Ron Paul’s libertarian-aligned Campaign for Liberty in 2012.
Now Ernst is hardly the only Republican state legislator in the country who in an effort to show her zeal for stopping the godless death panels of the Affordable Care Act vowed to use or abuse or exceed any tools available. But she’s one of the few who got promoted to the big leagues of a U.S. Senate campaign, and needs to own up to her record of encouraging insurrection against the government of the country she would be serving in Congress. And if she can’t or won’t, then she’s thumbing her nose at Iowa voters on both sides of the aisle.
