Castration is Now a Campaign Issue

Joni Ernst, the winner of the Iowa Senate Republican primary on Tuesday, has gained her the support of prominent conservatives like Sarah Palin and a broad coalition that included the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and the Senate Conservatives Fund to rally behind her: She took some pretty definitive stances that would make your typical liberal voter throw up a bit in their mouth such as; no same-sex marriage, no reform of immigration, no federal minimum wage, no Education Department, no progressive tax code and supporting the idea of private accounts for Social Security. Bust the most surprising thing about her campaign, she blew away the competition.

Ernst, 43, was a relatively unknown state senator in a crowded but uninspiring field who made national headlines when she used a memorable ad about hog castration to get on voters’ radar. The end result was Joni not only clearing the 35 point threashold to avoid a convention vote, but actually beat Mark Jacobs who dolled out over 3 million dollars by more then 35 points.

The big question becomes, is Iowa’s Senate race is now in play?

Most pundits tactical maps for Republican control of the senate didn't take put a lot of stock in picking up a seat in the Hawkeye State. Truth is it's been a long time since a senate election here has been anything but a certain thing, With retiring Senator Harkin (D) being elected to 5 terms and Sen. Grassley (R) currently serving his 6th. Couple this with Governor Brandstad (R) running this year for a 6th term, Iowa senate races are less of a choice and more of a time to catch up on some house hold chores. With an established candidate vying for a seat that seemed to have a 'D' imprinted on it, not a lot of attention was focused on Iowa. Now, however, the GOP has a candidate that is turning heads, and GOP operatives love the contrast between her and Democratic Rep. Bruce Braley. 

Brayley's a lawyer turned politician who has been in Washington for almost a decade, during which congresses list of accomplishments couldn't even be counted on a single finger for most Americans. He's had it on easy street the last year with no one contesting him for the Democratic ticket. Allowing him to raise over $5 million dollars, but he had to start writing checks to television studios when attack ads started popping up against him last winter and a pretty major gaffe at an out of state fund raising event that kind of came across as bad mouthing farmers. Not the keenest of strategies when running in Iowa.

Meanwhile, Ernst could be the first Iowa woman ever elected to Congress, which might boost female turnout. She served in the military; he didn't. She grew up on a farm; he’s a trial lawyer. She's a Lt. Colonial in the Guard, he looks like he couldn't hold his own in a rough game of bad-mitten. She apparently likes to castrate things, he (presumably) has something to castrate.

She does have some positions that will have to be defended during the general election, such as saying  she said she would have voted against the farm bill, and she named the Clean Water Act as one of the most damaging laws for business, and denied that global warming is causing climate change. Making her still very vulnerable to much of he play book that democrats have drafted up for the midterm. 

I await the statements how yet another lawyer turned politician already in Washington is going to help clean up Washington better then someone who doesn't support same sex marriage. Or how a $30 thousand donation from the Koch Brothers tips the scales in favor of the candidate who is currently over $4 million behind in fundraising. Perhaps the war on woman will resonate well with Iowa voters. Perhaps advertisements letting voters know what the candidate can do to farm animals will become the new standard for Iowa elections. However this plays out, the political spectator in me is curious to see how this will play out.

Nuclear Empowered Senate

"In order to break down the separation of powers and ram through their appointees to the judicial branch, President Bush and the Republican leadership want to eliminate a 200-year-old American rule saying that every member of the Senate can rise to say their piece and speak on behalf of the people who sent them here." - Harry Reid, 2005

"As I said at the time, the nuclear option was the most important issue I've ever worked on in my entire career, because if that had gone forward it would have destroyed the Senate as we know it," - Harry Reid, 2009

“The Senate is a living thing, and to survive it must change, as it has over the history of this great country,” Harry Reid, 2013

Not since people trounced on President Bush's inability to enunciate like a proper N'eastener has Washington had so much buzz over a nucular nuclear issue.

The US Senate, under the leadership of democratic majority leader Harry Reid, just pushed the proverbial big red button and passed the so-called “nuclear option,” which makes executive branch and judicial nominees at all levels under the Supreme Court of the United States no longer subject to filibuster. The new rules only requiring a simple 51 person majority over the higher bar of 60 votes.

Like so many other laws and regulations that get passed in D.C. Nobody is actually coming forward and claiming that they wanted this new rule. Time is instead spent blaming others for forcing their hand to do something they didn't want to do. 

Harry Reid is blaming Republicans, calling them obstructionists. An accusation that hasn't been thrown out in the senate chambers since about 5 minutes beforehand. Senate minority leader Mitch McConnell is blaming people who don't want to listen to opposition, when asked to clarify, Sen. McConnell replied "What?" John McCain is blaming the babies of the senate, which by his interpretation is anyone born after 1918. President Obama is blaming insurance companies, then someone corrected him that this wasn't about Obamacare, then he blamed a few bad apples in the IRS, people again said he was mistaking this for the IRS targeting scandal, the President then said it was a program that began under Bush's Department of Justice with the name "Wide Receiver", when the same people in the room started to correct him again, the President became flustered and said "Whatever it was that just happened, I didn't know about it until I will read about it in the paper tomorrow." before storming off the stage.

What does this move mean for the American people? Well, it establishes that rules in the senate don't actually mean anything, so the next time a senator says "We can't do that, it's against the rules." You know it's hogwash, or 'malarchy' as Biden would say. They just need 51 people to want something bad enough to break the rules, by which of course I mean change the rules. Also, this could also usher in a new era of political appointees being held on a shorter leash, since the process of replacing them would be considerably easier. Finally, it's another step towards setting a precedent that minority parties have no real power in congress. Merge those two guiding principles together and you have a form of government that seems a far cry from a constitutional republic.

And if Democrats think it's a win-win to get their nominations through, I'd like to see how they react when people from both parties in either chamber attempt to sit down at the negotiating table next month to has out the next short term grand bargain to avoid another shut down. With the President vowing to veto pretty much anything the house passes and the senate saying today they have no more need for a minority party. The stage is set for cold shouldering that will make the last set of negotiations over a government shutdown seem like an epic battle between the Human Torch and barrel of napalm.

For a final thought, what are the guesses as to how quickly the same majority will vote to re-invoke the 60 person rule if the Democrats loose enough seats in next year's election to place Republicans back into the majority? My guess is that will make this new Appellate Court vetting process seem like a Baywatch beach running scene by comparison.

Ted Cruz Was Against The Bill, Before He Was For It.

A lot of people are a bit confused about the course of events that are presently taking place in congress. Most people perceive that a piece of legislation passed the House of Representatives and now must go to the Senate to be approved or rejected. The sad truth is that is simply not the way it works in Washington, hasn't for some time. Any more, Washington rules for passing a law are more akin to playing the game mouse trap then what we all learned about in 3rd grade social studies class, so let’s take a moment and try to piece together exactly what is going on what the possible outcomes of the latest and greatest budget battle are.

The House of Representatives passes this Continuing Resolution, which according to most people over there anymore is just as good as a budget without all that paperwork and number crunching that is typically associated with trying to figure out how best to spend $3.5 Trillion dollars. This particular one would fund all the government programs through the end of next year with one minor exception. The American Care Act (i.e. Obamacare, or the ACA) was left out of the bill because the three people in congress who have read it really don’t like it. Then this resolution goes to the Senate, where they have a collection of arcane parliamentary rules that are more messed up and non-sequital then watching Andy Dick do Shakespeare in the Park. The wrench in the cogs here is that in the Senate, senators Ted Cruz and Mike Lee, along with a few others are trying to force Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid to get 60 votes in order to make any amendments to the House passed bill, namely an amendment that would stick the part of the House bill that de-funds the ACA. 60 votes is typically needed to get anything through the senate anymore, but once passed, a parliamentary vote could be called for an amendment to the bill that effectively changes it into something completely different, kind of like when you ask for the Big Mac combo at McDonalds, then wind up with a half-eaten breakfast burrito instead, even though they stopped serving breakfast 8 hours ago.

In order to enforce this 60 vote requirement, Senator Ted Cruz is stating that he will use a little rule called the filibuster, where Ted will take over the floor of the Senate and will then begin yapping about anything from how much he loves Canada to how much he loves Texas, it doesn't really matter, the important aspect being that as long as Ted holds the floor, nothing can be voted on at all. If he gets a few people to join in, they could hold government at a standstill for days, though it seems that an appropriate metaphor for that would involve a molasses on a cold day versus a molasses in a blizzard.

The kind of jacked up aspect of this is as such, Ted Cruz is going to have to stop a vote on the bill itself, as is, if he doesn't get the 60 vote agreement now in order to avoid a parliamentary vote on any amendments to the bill later. He is trying now to avoid a scenario from playing out where a simple majority in the Senate can expo facto send the legislation to a joint committee of house and senate members where it is expected that republicans from the house will cave and allow the amendment that would keep funding for Obamacare to stand.

Got it? So Ted Cruz is going to be against the bill, before being for the bill. But unlike another Senators failed attempt to straddle the electorate, an informed public will know why before, during, and after any vote occurs. There is some evidence that a pretty nasty smear campaign against Senators Ted Cruz and Mike Lee is getting underway in order to undermine their attempt to derail the derailment of the debt and allow the government to keep moving along after the soft Oct. 1st deadline when we apparently are no longer able to use accounting tricks to keep up our funding charade.

Visual Aid on How Congress Works

So why haven’t they started this whole mess then? What’s the hold up? Well, other than some pretty exciting football games over the weekend, there are a lot of things going on behind the scenes from Senator Reid’s side to try and get ready for this battle. First of all, the aforementioned smear campaign to get some public support for his side, secondly, a dream scenario would be to get some moderate republican Senators like McCain and Graham over to his side, enough of these votes and Reid could potentially agree to Senator’s Cruz demand and still get his way as far as the bill is concerned. And of course, lastly, Obama is hoping for something else to go horribly wrong in his foreign policy that will take the spot light off of Cruz as he actually takes a stand for his beliefs and what he feels is a degradation of traditional America. Could you imagine if that kind of attitude caught on with the general public?