On Twitter with Steve King and emboldened Nazis

By Dan Brooks in Contemporary Media 2 Comments
Rep. Steve King (R-IA) with far-right Eurotrash Frauke Petry and Geert Wilders

Rep. Steve King (R-IA) with far-right European leaders Frauke Petry and Geert Wilders

This morning finds friend of the blog and all-around badass Gina Patnaik putting it down on Rep. Steve King (R-IA) in the Des Moines Register. Gina is from Denison, in his district, and she is disappointed by King’s decreasingly coded racism:

So when you say that the changing racial demographic of our country is “cultural suicide,” I know what you mean. You mean me.

It’s a great letter, and I urge you to read it. I happened to interact with Rep. King regarding this cultural suicide business last week, when I called him an embarrassment to my home state on Twitter and he retweeted me, for some reason. Behold:

king-rt

I wondered why he would do that. Did he not understand that it was criticism? Does he automatically retweet anyone who mentions him? Did he see the white sheet in my avatar and assume we were cool? These questions baffled me for about two minutes. Then came the Twitter Nazis.

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Grassley tacks on Supreme Court appointment

By Dan Brooks in Iowa 0 Comment
Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley (R-IA)—boss photo by Joshua Roberts

Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley (R-IA) Photo: Joshua Roberts

Senator Charles Grassley is the most Iowa man in Iowa. He’s 82 and has aged in the Iowa manner, by looking like a child who fell into a food dehydrator. His Twitter is a delight. He is a Republican in the Chamber of Commerce tradition, representing that wing of the party whose ambition for government is to get it out of the way of farmers and insurance agents. This approach has gotten him labeled a Republican In Name Only, which is the kind of accusation people who learned about politics from Glenn Beck will level at a man who has been in the US Senate for 34 years. But despite the certainty that he will spend the rest of his life in office—or maybe because of it—Grassley displays the most Iowa quality: he wants to do a good job. Yesterday, he announced he might hold hearings on President Obama’s Supreme Court nominee after all. His decision may have something to do with this jeremiad in the Des Moines Register.

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The insane stupidity of the Romney compromise argument

By Dan Brooks in Politics versus Government 2 Comments

“What’s that direction people look in when they’re lying? I can look the other direction if you want.”

Much has been made over the last few days of the Des Moines Register‘s endorsement of Mitt Romney. The Register‘s argument is two-pronged: first, they believe that Romney’s plan of lower taxes and decreased regulation is the best way to fix the economy. That’s obviously true; when businesses and rich people spend money, it goes into the economy, whereas when the government spends money it goes into a deficit. Low taxes and deregulation are known drivers of economic growth—that’s why we had a massive economic collapse when taxes and regulations were at their lowest. But forget that. The second, more important reason the Register endorsed Romney for president is that he is the better candidate to “forge compromise” in Congress. David Brooks made the same argument over at the Times, and he sounded just as nuts.

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