Posted on 10/23/2014 3:16:42 PM PDT by 2ndDivisionVet
The picture of IA GOP SEN nominee Joni Ernst thats emerging from exposure of her pre-2014-general-election utterances is of a standard-brand Constitutional Conservative embracing all the strange and controversial tenets of that creed. Theres Agenda 21 madness. Theres Personhood advocacy. There are attacks on the entire New Deal/Great Society legacyand perhaps even agricultural programsas creating dependency. And now, inevitably, theres the crown jewel of Con Con extremism: the belief that the purpose of the Second Amendment is to enable patriots to violently overthrow the government if in their opinion its overstepped its constitutional boundaries. Sam Levine of HuffPost has that story:
Joni Ernst, the Republican candidate for U.S. Senate in Iowa, said during an NRA event in 2012 that she would use a gun to defend herself from the government.
I have a beautiful little Smith & Wesson, 9 millimeter, and it goes with me virtually everywhere, Ernst said at the NRA and Iowa Firearms Coalition Second Amendment Rally in Searsboro, Iowa. But I do believe in the right to carry, and I believe in the right to defend myself and my family whether its from an intruder, or whether its from the government, should they decide that my rights are no longer important.
Now this is a guaranteed applause line among Con Con audiences, for reasons that have relatively little to do with gun regulation. The idea here is to intimidate liberals, and looters and secular socialists, and those people, that there are limits to what the good virtuous folk of the country will put up with in the way of interference with their property rights and their religious convictions and their sense of how the world ought to work. If push comes to shove, theyre heavily armed, and bullets outweigh ballots. Its a reminder that if politics fails in protecting their very broad notion of their rights, then revolutionary violencewhich after all, made this great country possible in the first placeis always an option. And if that sounds anti-democratic, well, as the John Birch Society has always maintained, this is a Republic, not a democracy.
This stuff is entirely consistent with everything weve been learning about how Joni Ernst talked before she won a Senate nomination and decided upon an aggressively non-substantive message based on her identity and biography and one stupid but apparently irresistible joke comparing the kind of treatment shell give to the pork purveyors of Washington (presumably those who support obvious waste like food stamps and Medicaid) to hog castratin. Issues are absolute kryptonite to her campaign, so its no surprise shes decided abruptly to cancel all meetings with editorial boards between now and November 4, according to Des Moines Register columnist Rekha Basu:
Is Joni Ernst afraid of newspaper editorial boards? After much negotiating, she was scheduled to meet his morning with writers and editors at The Des Moines Register, but last night her people called to unilaterally cancel. She has also begged off meetings with The Cedar Rapids Gazette and The Dubuque Telegraph-Herald.
Is Ernst that sensitive to the kinds of criticisms that invariably will come in such a high profile U.S. Senate race? Is she afraid of the scrutiny? Sure, its stressful, but all the other candidates for Congress are doing it to get their messages out, including Steven King, the target of frequent editorial criticism.
Maybe Ernsts cynicism will be justified by the results, but I dunno: Iowans are pretty old-school about this kind of thing, and the Register actually influences votes, probably more than any newspaper I can think of. If she does win, nobody in Iowa has any excuse to be surprised if she turns out to be Todd Akin or Sharron Angle with better message discipline. As I said in another post recently, thats pretty much who she is. Knowing shes played the I have the right to overthrow the government with my gun meme makes that even clearer.
Still, somebody should ask Joni Ernst: Since you brought it up, exactly what circumstances would justify you shooting a police officer or a soldier in the head? Oh yeah: that would require her taking questions, which I doubt well see in the last days of this campaign.
We shall see how his tune changes when there is flying lead in the air...
Hey, Ed, remember the New Left, the petri dish of modern liberalism? It seems to me that they had a few revolutionary slogans as well: “Political power comes out of the barrel of a gun” . . . “Up against the wall, MF” . . . “Off the pigs (police)” . . . Ho ho ho Chi Minh”. Yep, Ed, and more than a few of those people are now Democratic office holders, college profs, and so forth.
Alinsky would be proud.
Both is a distinct possibility that “or” excludes.
Well let’s read what one Minnesota liberal aid about the Second Amendment:
“Certainly one of the chief guarantees of freedom under any government, no matter how popular and respected, is the right of citizens to keep and bear arms. This is not to say that firearms should not be very carefully used, and that definite safety rules of precaution should not be taught and enforced. But the right of citizens to bear arms is just one more guarantee against arbitrary government, one more safeguard against tyranny which now appears remote in America, but which historically has proved to be always possible”
That was Hubert Humphrey back in 1960. Yet the tyranny that seemed remote in 1960 is at our doorstep now. Old Hubert accurately saw that possibility.
Of course Old Hubert would not be welcome in today’s Dem Party.
You beat me to it!
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