Trump’s a Drag on This Hog-Riding, Pig-Castrating Republican
By Margaret Carlson
Farmers are used to battling acts of God, but not coping with a capricious act of man that has cut soybeans prices by 50% since 2014, costing Iowans more than $2 billion.
Will she or won’t she? There had been a rumor that Sen. Joni Ernst would be too busy casting votes in Congress, or washing her hair, to accompany Donald Trump on his June trip to Iowa, the one calculated to compete with Joe Biden’s first tour of a state that he and former President Barack Obama won twice, but which Trump won by nearly 10 points in 2016.
Ernst ultimately found the time to join Trump. She introduced him in Council Bluffs, endured an on-stage kiss, and, possibly, ended her career. In normal times, Ernst would be favored to win reelection. She’s the Harley-riding combat veteran known for an ad in which she promised to castrate the forces of evil in Washington the way she castrated pigs at home. In 2014, in a state that sent retiring Democrat Tom Harkin to Washington for 30 years, she won by nine points.
That was political eons ago, when the White House was but a twinkle in Trump’s eyes as he tested the presidential waters trying to prove that Obama had tricked the country into believing he was born here. Ernst didn’t have Trump on the ballot in 2014. Now, she’s running with him in 2020 with many farmers mad as hell. . Ernst hovers around a 50-percent approval; Trump’s net approval has fallen 20 points since he took office, according to the latest Morning Consult polls. He gets most of the blame for the loss of two Iowa House seats in the 2018 midterms.
That’s a lot of drag on a first-term senator who like most of her colleagues crumples like a Mylar blanket to stay on Trump’s good side. She won’t outright challenge the president on his “beautiful” tariffs in his “easy to win” trade war which in reality, says Aaron Putze of the Iowa Soybean Association, is causing Iowans a “tsunami of pain” as the “tip of the spear” in Trump’s war. It’s bringing about bankruptcies, land auctions on the courthouse steps, and crippling the economy of entire towns.
The rural vote was crucial to Trump flipping the state. Farmers are used to battling acts of God, like the floods that have hit the Midwest this year, but not coping with a capricious act of man that has cut soybeans prices by 50 percent since 2014, costing Iowa farmers an estimated $2.2 billion, according to Iowa State University, and farmers nationally $10 billion, according to the American Farm Bureau. Farmers stay up nights wrestling with whether to give up on soybeans and plant something else, knowing that the something else could well be targeted later, should the mood strike Trump.
And $15 billion in budget-busting subsidies don’t begin to make up for the catastrophe, monetary and emotional. The Washington Post spent a day with Ray Martinmaas, whose family has farmed since 1888. He lost $700,000 last year and said farmers are “bearing the brunt” of Trump’s folly. “People are starting to say ‘I don’t know how we’re going to survive this.’” Martinmaas voted for Trump and is now open to a Democrat for president in 2020.
more:
http://www.thedailybeast.com/joni-ernst-is-a-harley-riding-gun-shooting-pig-castrating-republican-donald-trump-is-dragging-her-down?via=newsletter&source=DDMorning
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