Ernst avoids Iowa newspapers preferring face time with Fox News.
According to Republican Joe Scarborough, Joni Ernst wasn’t smart to avoid the Iowa print media. “You can’t run from editorial boards,” he said. Scarborough bragged on Morning Joe yesterday that when he served in congress, even though everyone considered his right wing libertarian views to be, in his words, “crazy,” he still benefited by speaking to the press. He asserted that it is smart for a candidate to grant interviews with the media in their state and therefore, Ernst should have done it.
But the point is not just that it wasn’t smart of Ernst to evade the editorial boards of the Des Moines Register, the Cedar Rapids Gazette, The Dubuque Telegraph-Herald or the Quad City Times, the state’s largest newspapers. The point is that in doing so she denied the citizens of Iowa who she claims to want to represent, a thorough vetting of her views.
Sorry Joni, but sound bytes in debates and cutesy pig ads that someone else dreamed up for you do not count as much as having to provide thorough answers and explanations of your policy ideas. Your opponent Bruce Braley faced the media and had to answer tough questions and subject himself to scrutiny. What makes you so privileged that you do not feel obligated to give the voters of Iowa complete information about where you stand on the issues? If you are going to be so touchy about criticism, perhaps you should not be our senator.
Here’s what the Gazette had to say about it.
thegazette.com/questions-piling-up-for-ernst
Joni Ernst seems to be disrespecting quite a few folks.
You may have read in our U.S. Senate endorsement that Ernst, Republican candidate for the office, “failed to make time in her schedule” to meet with the Editorial Board at The Gazette.
But while Ernst staffers merely strung us along, never agreeing to a meeting time or openly refusing the invitation, we learned Thursday morning Ernst reneged on her promise to The Des Moines Register. She also snubbed The Dubuque Telegraph-Herald, the Quad-City Times and the CBS television affiliate in Sioux City. Even more await an answer.
She did meet with the board of the Sioux City Journal and, according to Bloomberg Politics reporter David Weigel, the Omaha, Neb. World-Herald as well. I’ve not heard chatter from the Nebraska interview, but there was noise following Sioux City when Ernst doubled-down on support of “personhood,” saying she would support a national push.
“I am a pro-life candidate,” she told the SCJ Board. “I support that. However, if you look at any sort of amendment at the federal level — amendments … come together through consensus. And, honestly, we don’t have a consensus.”
Ernst used the same flawed reasoning regarding a federal amendment that she applied to sponsorship of a state “personhood” amendment. Her answer was essentially, “Yes, I’ll support this ban on all abortions and most forms of birth control, like the pill, but no one needs to worry about it because it won’t become law.” And no one in that particular room questioned it, just like none of the moderators of the debate questioned it.
And that, in a nutshell, is why I believe Ernst is cherry picking who she will engage in real conversation.
I’m already on the record in relation to the “personhood” amendment and Ernst’s steadfast refusal to answer the basic questions at its root: A “personhood” amendment provides fertilized human eggs, before implantation, the same legal rights as people, so doesn’t it ban procedures, devices and chemicals that can result in their demise?
Since this would be the legal reality of your amendment, are you being disingenuous when you say that you will protect a woman’s access to birth control, or does your definition of what you’ve termed “reliable and affordable birth control” already exclude the pill and other methods that would come under legal scrutiny?
Similar questions need to be asked about Ernst’s position on abolishment of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency in favor of state-run systems. Ernst says states know best how to use resources, but hasn’t explained what will or should happen when one state decides its resources are best spent on Problem A while Problem B runs amok and impacts neighboring states. In the simplest terms, if my neighbor neglects a tree that later falls on my house, who do I turn to if higher governing authorities have washed their hands of oversight?
Maybe Ernst knows. Maybe she has a plan. But it’s difficult to have confidence in her when it does not appear she has enough confidence in herself or her ideas to sit down for a conversation.
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