Joni Ernst with Bob Vander Plaats, president of The Family Leader. I wonder what she pledged to him.
Joni Ernst's campaign has lost its challenge to keep a Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee ad off of the air. A local television station will keep running the ad, which talks about the 20,000 Iowa jobs that have been outsourced, and Ernst's pledge "to keep special tax breaks for corporations shipping jobs overseas."
Here's where it gets fun. Watch the contortions the Ernst campaign goes through to try to say that her pledge to Grover Norquist doesn't mean what it actually means—continued tax breaks for large corporations.
In his letter to KWQC, [Ernst’s counsel Ronald] Jacobs argued that the DSCC’s ad is not accurate because of the distinction between "tax breaks for companies that ship jobs overseas" and "tax breaks for shipping jobs overseas." The latter construction, used in the ad, implies an incentive for outsourcing, Jacobs argued.
Jacobs also took issue with the ad’s characterization of the Taxpayer Protection Pledge by Americans for Tax Reform, Grover Norquist's the anti-taxation group, which promises no new taxes. Just because Ernst signed the pledge, Jacobs contended, she "is not required to keep tax breaks for a company that happens to outsource jobs."
"Rather, the signer could eliminate those tax breaks by reducing the overall tax rate on all companies," Jacobs wrote.
Right. That's really convincing. Except for the part where it didn't convince the television station to pull the ad. Because it's pretty much bullshit.
Ernst has quite the habit of disavowing the things she's signed pledges for. Like nullification and "authoriz[ing] state and local law enforcement to arrest federal officials attempting to implement the unconstitutional health care scheme known as ObamaCare?" When pressed on that one, and perhaps seeing for the first time how crazy it sounds to a non-primary voting audience, Ernst backtracked, with her campaign issuing the statement "Joni has not and does not endorse or support nullification." Except for when she signed the pledge saying she does.
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