- Hell hath no fury like corporate welfare queens scorned
- Challenger gaffs the hand that feeds him
News reports verify rumors and implications over the last couple of months that Iowa’s Fourth District Congressman Steve King will have a primary challenger. Actually two. The first to announce was 79 year-old perennial Republican candidate-for-something, “pro-choice” Paul Lunde. He has been out and about advertising his primary election desires by passing around business cards saying he wants a Constitutional Amendment guaranteeing Medicare and Social Security. Irony abounds when a guy who is OK with killing off babies wants Social Security “guaranteed.”
We are not sure unlucky Lunde realizes he announced for the Republican Party. Anyway, the more significant news is that State Senator Rick Bertrand of Sioux City made it official today and announced his primary election challenge to conservative Republican stalwart King.
We doubt Bertrand would make this leap against a popular incumbent Republican unless he was put up to it by the powers that be. Ethanol mandate shills Branstad senior, his ethanol lapping lobbyist son Eric and ethanol SuperPAC fund-raiser Nick “The Prick” Ryan must have cooked this up standing a bit too long dropping their caucus tears in the mash vat.
It is said they are seething over King’s support for Ted Cruz who famously opposed government mandates and other subsidies for energy producers, like the Iowa Republican Party calls for, the only candidate to take such a position in the Iowa caucuses. The group pulled out all the stops calling for anybody but Cruz in the Iowa caucuses. They spent a lot of money doing so. They were embarrassed by virtue of Cruz’s victory. It was delightful. And now they think vengeance will be theirs against King.
They will spend a lot of money to “teach” King a lesson. Their hubris combined with their ignorance of what makes Republicans tick, knows no bounds. We think they will lose again, and encourage conservatives everywhere to make sure they are schooled again by supporting King.
Reading Bertrand’s newspaper comments, one thing is just rich:
Bertrand said he believes that “stagnation and ineffectiveness at all levels of government is rooted in the fact that elected officials simply stay in office way too long.”
Oops. This current beneficiary of the Branstad crony coalition, whose titular don Terry is the longest serving governor in the nation’s history, said that. We cringe a bit for Senator Grassley. We are for term limits but we wonder what Bertrand was thinking. Does it show his independence? No, his primary patron, don Terry, isn’t running again and this is just another “anybody but” operation (as long as they support corporate welfare).
On a different score, the bias of the Des Moines Redstar Register in reporting the rumors and announcement is, well, right up to their standards. Here are pictures from a February 20th story by the DMR. The article included a primped and posed campaign picture submitted by Bertrand but an unflattering shot of Congressman King, as if they had no campaign file photo for him.
We will now refer to Bertrand as “Mousse Brain”, his keeper(s) as “Ethanol Breath” and King as “Champ”
R Mall
(revised from original post)
