Far out of the mainstream, Jim Nussle was against a woman’s right to choose – even when a woman’s life is in danger. Until now, anyway.
Carroll’s Daily Times-Heraldcalls him out on this sudden “flip-flop.” In an interview with the Herald, Nussle took this position:
“Those are very difficult challenges and my position has been that I believe life begins at conception and I don’t have any exceptions to my pro-life position.”
Problem is, now he’s running for governor. And those views are a little extreme. So when filling out an issues survey from Project Vote Smart, he adjusted his position. All of a sudden, he supports abortion rights in the first trimester and in cases of rape, incest, and when a woman’s life is in danger. That’s a relief.
As the Herald’s Douglas Burns puts it:
“Nussle either had an Everest-sized epiphany one night or he is captaining the good ship Mixed Message or he is a, cue the 2004 Republican National Convention audience chorus, ‘flip-flop, flip-flop.”
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.
The Washington Post reports that the National Republican Congressional Committee is planning to spend 90% of its advertising budget on “what officials describe as negative ads.” The article explains that Republicans’ only hope of shifting attention away from pesky little issues like Iraq is to wage personal attacks on Democrats. Or as Representative Tom Cole, Grinnell class of ‘71, puts it, “When you run in an adverse political environment, you try to localize and personalize the race as much as you can.” Actually, Cole doesn’t even try to spin the Republicans’ nasty program:
In a memo released last week, Cole, who is running to succeed Reynolds at the NRCC, expanded on that strategy. The memo recommended that vulnerable incumbents spend $20,000 on a research “package” to find damaging material about challengers and urged that they “define your opponent immediately and unrelentingly.”
You might also remember Cole from 2004, when he gave a speech including the gem: “I promise you this. If George Bush loses the election, Osama bin Laden wins the election. It’s that simple. It will be interpreted that way by enemies of the United States around the world.” He went on to add, “What do you think Hitler would have thought if Roosevelt would’ve lost the election in 1944? He would not have thought American resolve was strengthening. What would the confederacy have thought if Lincoln would have lost the election of 1860?”
No one’s going to fall for that kind of mumbo jumbo this year, Tom. In the words of an alum I much prefer to you, “Have you no sense of decency, sir?”
We can’t afford complacency, but things are looking good. Chris at MyDD has posted a huge list of relatively recent public poll numbers in competitive house races across the country. Among the results: Braley leads Whalen, 54-41; and Boswell leads Lamberti, 54-43.
I guess that’s why we’re already hearing rumblings from the GOP’s trademark voter suppression machine.
