GOP Farm Team

Recommend...del.icio.us Digg it Furl Netvouz Netscape Newsvine reddit Yahoo MyWeb September 12th, 2006 at 03:36pm Ben Weyl

Via the Des Moines Register, we learn that the Iowa Farm Bureau has announced its “2006 Friends of Agriculture.” So who made it on to the illustrious list? Gubernatorial candidate Jim Nussle, secretary of agriculture candidate Bill Northey, congressional candidates Mike Whalen and Jeff Lamberti, and U.S. Representatives Tom Latham and Steve King. Hmm, I can’t put my finger on it, but there’s something similar about all those guys. What is it? What could it be? Oh yes: they’re all Republicans.

(The group declined to endorse either candidate in the second congressional district but I guess that’s a win for the Dems.)

The Register waits until the last paragraph to remind readers that the bureau is “a Republican-leaning group that supports measures to restrict taxes,” but at least they did so at all. Context matters, especially in the case of innocuous sounding names. Without context, Americans might be fooled into believing some boating group that wanted swift truth or something was actually a surrogate for the Bush campaign. Nah, that would never happen.

The only person who may be surprised by the Bureau’s endorsements is Leonard Boswell — or at least his web designer. According to Boswell’s webpage, he’s garnered the Bureau’s endorsement “every time he’s run for office.” Not anymore, Boz. Not anymore.

UPDATE: The Congressman’s webpage has since been changed to remove the now-false sentence. Kudos for the quick response. And as an aside, I wouldn’t worry much about not getting the endorsement. It looks like Boswell is doing just fine.

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