Iowa’s U.S. Senate race in 3-D

Herb Strentz examines Chuck Grassley’s latest political messaging and low factors from his file within the Senate.

The house stretch of this midterm election marketing campaign is unfolding in in 3-D format — Dire, Divisive, and Despairing. That is notably true of the U.S. Senate race between Republican incumbent Chuck Grassley, searching for his eighth time period at age 89, and Democrat Michael Franken, a retired U.S. Navy admiral, who might be 65 on election day, November 8.

That 3-D nature of our Iowa politics was illustrated nicely in one of many Grassley marketing campaign’s latest tv commercials.

In a backhanded means, Grassley acknowledged why it’s time for Iowans to vote him out of workplace.

The advert launched in early September known as, “Who Does This Man Suppose He’s?”

The premise is that Franken is speaking down Iowa. It is beautiful to listen to a voice-over (talking for the Grassley marketing campaign) ridicule this promise from the Democrat: “We are able to do that: rescue the state of Iowa. Rescue our popularity.”

The spot implies it is ludicrous for Franken to speak in regards to the despair he has witnessed on the Iowa marketing campaign path, akin to what he had noticed in poorer international locations throughout his 36 years of Navy service. Franken commented that in the present day’s Iowa is “not the state that I would like for future generations” and “not the state that I need to be buried in.”

Again and again, Bleeding Heartland authors have echoed Franken’s perspective: what Iowa has change into underneath Republican trifecta governance shouldn’t be what we wish for future generations.

For openers, please contemplate the essay John and Terri Hale wrote in February: “We was once proud to be Iowans.” It’s an easy, considerate and nonpartisan piece, actually not disparaging nor hopeless. Their references and recollections contact upon important folks and occasions, offering perception on how this state has modified.

Now contemplate our senior senator’s contributions to the political tradition.

For at the very least twenty years, Grassley has lied about how the property tax, which he calls a “demise tax,” impacts household farms. Specialists have refuted that characterization. The late Neil Harl, an ag economist for Iowa State College, couldn’t discover farm households dealing with something just like the woes Grassley described. Extra not too long ago, Neil Hamilton, now retired as director of Drake College’s Agricultural Legislation Heart, referred to as the senator’s speaking factors “hogwash.” The inheritance tax now exempts a pair’s first $23 million of property worth.

Early in President Barack Obama’s administration, Grassley strung Democrats alongside for months as they watered down the well being care reform invoice, hoping to realize bipartisan approval. Nonetheless, Grassley falsely claimed the Reasonably priced care Act would set up authorities “demise panels,” the place bureaucrats may pull the plug on grandma.

The 2010 well being care regulation has labored fairly nicely. Grandmas are nonetheless alive and kicking.

To fears of “demise panels” and “demise taxes” we are able to now add fear-mongering about IRS demise squads. As Tom Barton reported for the Cedar Rapids Gazette in August, Grassley questioned throughout an look on a Fox Information present whether or not the Inside Income Service “would use elevated funding from the Inflation Discount Act to ship armed items of brokers into small Iowa companies.”

“Are they going to have a strike pressure that goes in with AK-15s already loaded, able to shoot some small enterprise particular person in Iowa with these, as a result of I believe they’re going after center class and small enterprise folks, as a result of they suppose that anyone that has pass-through earnings is a criminal, and so they aren’t paying their justifiable share, and we’re going to go after them,” he stated.

In TV adverts and in occasional information clips, Grassley does push-ups to indicate his bodily health. His Senate work typically entails political “pull-downs” as nicely. His tenure as Senate Judiciary Committee chair might be marked for disdain for civil liberties. He has helped formed the federal judiciary to drag down womens rights in wiping out the Roe v. Wade precedent with guarantees of extra reactionary rulings to return. This Bleeding Heartland publish from 2020 laid out the state of affairs, citing a regulation assessment article about Grassley’s Judiciary chairmanship that Iowa’s mainstream media ignored.

Grassley’s penchant for talking out on contrived points is compounded by his failures to be a desperately wanted voice of moderation, expertise, and affect in our divisive occasions. After Donald Trump’s most up-to-date Iowa rally in 2021, Grassley dismissed the previous president’s irresponsible rants and incitements, declaring, “He is a personal citizen…He can say something he desires to.”

One of many senator’s newest television adverts boasts that his seniority within the U.S. Senate is “priceless for Iowa.” However his reluctance to make use of that clout in therapeutic methods is troubling. In emails despatched to his workplace, I’ve quoted the fears attributed to Edmund Burke, John Stuart Mill, and different political philosophers: “All that’s obligatory for evil to triumph is for good males to do nothing.”

Grassley doesn’t reply to these messages. He may contemplate one other statement, generally attributed to theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer, executed by the Nazis due to his opposition to Hitler: “Silence within the face of evil is itself evil: God is not going to maintain us guiltless. To not communicate is to talk. To not act is to behave.”

With these and different issues, how can Iowans not take coronary heart in Franken’s enchantment? “We are able to do that: rescue the state of Iowa. Rescue our popularity.”

That popularity contains persevering with gratitude to the late Governor Robert Ray, who responded to the refugee crises in southeast Asia by welcoming Tai Dam refugees to Iowa in 1975.

Distinction that with Governor Kim Reynolds, who demagogued in opposition to non-existent “sanctuary cities” and signed an immigration invoice opposed by regulation enforcement teams in addition to dozens of presidency or nonprofit organizations. Reynolds’ Republican colleagues, Governors Greg Abbott of Texas and Ron DeSantis of Florida, despatched refugees of their states to Washington DC and Martha’s Winery in Massachusetts in apparent political stunts.

That, too, shouldn’t be the form of state we wish Iowa to be for future generations.

P.S.—Whereas this publish focuses on Grassley’s marketing campaign promoting and associated issues, Bleeding Heartland will proceed to cowl different elements of the Senate race as nicely. In case you missed it, Laura Belin addressed this week’s controversy involving Franken and his former marketing campaign supervisor. 

Herb Strentz was dean of the Drake Faculty of Journalism from 1975 to 1988 and professor there till retirement in 2004. He was govt secretary of the Iowa Freedom of Info Council from its founding in 1976 to 2000.

High picture: Screenshot from Chuck Grassley’s marketing campaign industrial attacking Mike Franken.