I think it was Mitch McConnell who recently said, on MTP, http:// Grassley is being a representative for his party, and watching his right flank as Rep. Steve King may be looking to unseat him as "US-Sen, R, NW Iowa"via primary challenge. To let Grassley kick you again doesn't discredit Grassley; it discredits the Obama message machine. From tweet to tweet, town hall to town hall, Grassley has been a reliable mule.
Obama won over some independent, light-red voters in Iowa. He needs to come here and stand side-by-side with his "Republican friend in the Senate," or maybe find a new Ag. secretary and start showing up at "Vilsack in '10" rallies.
But seriously--in a 60-vote senate majority, the Pres is playing footsie with a guy wearing steel-toed boots.
Go the the NY Times Presidential results-by-county widget. Select "county bubbles" and click on Iowa. (I'm not good with images in diaries, sorry.) What you will see is a sizeable cluster of red in the NW corner, and then huge swatches of blue in the eastern part of the state.
Via swingstate's desmoinesdem,
After the Iowa Supreme Court struck down the state's Defense of Marriage Act, Grassley issued a statement saying he supported "traditional marriage" and had backed federal legislation and a federal constitutional amendment to ban gay marriage. But when hundreds of marriage equality opponents rallied at the state capitol last Thursday, and Republicans tried to bring a constitutional amendment banning gay marriage to the Iowa House floor, Grassley refused to say whether he supported their efforts to change Iowa's constitution:
"You better ask me in a month, after I've had a chance to think," Grassley, the state's senior Republican official, said after a health care forum in Mason City.
Desmoinesdem gives a huge caveat, that King is batshit crazy, polling puts a challenge from the right in the realm of the suicide mission, that only an impossibly low-turnout primary (unlikely, since he's undoubtedly the state's most visible politician on the airwaves these days) would King have a prayer (and, if you catch my drift, that's the best weapon King has going for him), and that the GOP establishment would rally around Grassley; but what if he "caved" on a public option? You think DFA made an example of Kent Conrad? Before there's even a challenger, Grassley would be in the woodshed, carpetbombed with ads. (Iowa and Nebraska TV markets aren't very expensive, especially with no caucus in sight.)
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If you opened up that results-by-county map, take a look at North, North, west, west Iowa. I'm dating a girl from there right now, and what a change it is for me. In
my last diary, I wrote about my Kossack ex-father-in-law, a great guy for whom I have the utmost respect, untarnished by the failure of my starter-marriage to his daughter. I've been dating this girl now for about eight months. She's quiet, free-thinking, snarky, liberal, sweet, and stable. Last weekend, I finally met her parents.
I walked to our lunch, because, well, for two Baptist, born-and-bred Republican Christian Northwest Iowans, my girlfriend tells me, divorce is unpardonable sin, and an Obama sticker--and on a Ford no less--is an abomination. Not to stack the deck too much, but my girlfriend says that the only vacations they took growing up were to Amway conferences and Bible retreats. Or did I repeat myself? They eventually found that selling Amway in Northwest Iowa was like selling ice in Alaska, or stupid in Kansas: everyone's all stocked up already.
I've never dated a girl with wingnut parents. Since I'm coming into it divorced, I'm being polite and not bringing up politics.
They were nice folks, bright and cordial and they really liked me. I didn't bring up politics, but I was struck, even weirded out, by the parallels between my girlfriend's father and my ex-father-in-law. Both feared the draft, had low lottery numbers, but then used their early computer know-how to get into high-tech defense industries, are no-nonsense tinkerers. My girlfriend's father, if you can believe it, works in an Ethanol plant (but hates government subsidies), and recently was laid off in the midst of a cancer scare. He got a job in a competing plant, but not after a few months of COBRA payments and co-pays for brain surgery made things awfully tight. Each are a couple years shy of 65, in industries that are getting younger and leaner (well--I don't know if you can say that for ethanol) with cancer in each of their pasts, the threat of a heart attack widowing a spouse around the corner, and a series of bad investments having delayed their retirement years by a decade or more. Besides, they like to work, and each has a wife that drives him up the wall.
What I'm wondering, the million dollar question, is why does one get angry at Obama for abandoning the public option (I don't know his username, but I'm sure he's made a few hellfire comments today) while the other can't believe Grassley's even talking to this man whose name defaces my car?
Grassley's a nice guy one-on-one. I know he's quite busy and about to go on vacation, but Iowans like President Obama when they meet him one-on-one. I have to say, I'm four hundred bucks richer from some flood-recovery programs Grassley passed, but you know what? I spent that on a bullshit MRI a neurologist gave me when I complained of headaches, after talking to me for 7 minutes (the most expensive 7 minutes of my life, at 250 dollars, unless you count the time between which I said "I do" and the pastor said "you may kiss the bride.")
Grassley's got some townhalls scheduled one week from today, in Northwest Iowa. It would be great to get a progressive presence there (even though I'll be stuck in eastern Iowa). Since Grassley apparently represents Republican interests ahead of Iowan ones, maybe it would be good not to shout him down, but to band together and sing him the old union song:
The President should come to. You know, as a guest of his BFF. Although my girlfriend's parents are wingnuts, they're hospitable, and they have a guest bedroom.