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Joan Walsh - State of the GOP is broken: I thought Joni Ernst was bad. Then I watched Ted Cruz
Salon ^ | January 21, 2015 | Joan Walsh, editor-at-large

Posted on 01/21/2015 4:55:24 PM PST by 2ndDivisionVet

Watching Sen. Joni Ernst Tuesday night, I found myself thinking: If there’s a GOP establishment, it must consist of secret Democrats, because they so reliably sabotage their rising stars by assigning them the reply to President Obama’s annual State of the Union address, way before they’re ready. Gov. Bobby Jindal and Sen. Marco Rubio moved from 2016 contenders to punch lines in moments.

Ernst seemed headed the same way, with her robotic sing-song delivery and her head-scratching anecdotes about bread bags on her shoes and working the biscuit lines at Hardees. She was clearly working to show voters that she’s a regular person who cares about the working class, even though she told the Koch brothers last June that they “really started my trajectory.” It’s tough to square those notions, but Ernst took to the task with good cheer and the gumption you need to castrate hogs.

I always struggle with whether it’s sexist to reflexively compare female Republicans like Joni Ernst to Sarah Palin. It may well be, but it’s clear they also play similar roles in their party. Both women have been sized up as vice-presidential fodder (strangely, the GOP never seems to size up women as potential presidents, which presented a problem in 2008 when voters realized they were electing Palin to be a heartbeat away).

And to be fair, Palin and Ernst have other things in common. The GOP’s answer to feminism, its strategy for winning female votes without changing its anti-female policies, seems to be recruiting sassy frontier gals who hunt and ride motorcycles and, yes, castrate hogs, but do it all in lipstick and (camouflage) pumps. And hey, in Iowa, it worked.

But then I watched Sen. Ted Cruz’s star turn, and Ernst looked a lot better. And I realized it probably is sexist to find a robotic, sing-song delivery Palinesque: Cruz was just as robotic and staged, only with a deeper voice — until his devastating “meh” moment. “Meh – let me start over,” he says, almost a minute into his Obama attack. And someone on his staff – again, a closeted Democrat? – posted the whole thing to YouTube.

I could watch Cruz’s “meh” moment on an endless back-to-back loop with Obama’s “I know, because I won both of them” line. The Texas senator, a former debate champion and Supreme Court litigator, is supposed to be one of the party’s great orators? He made Ernst look good.

But the problems didn’t stop with Ernst’s cheerful mediocrity or Cruz’s arrogant pratfall. What does it mean that there were five GOP replies to Obama? (Or seven, if you count Mitt Romney and Jeb Bush on Facebook.) Historically, the SOTU response began as a way for the out-of-power party to compete with a president hogging the cameras for an hour to pitch his policies to a nationally televised audience. The modern Republican Party has taken that opportunity and fractured it.

There was the Spanish language version from Rep. Carlos Curbelo – the one that included immigration reform when Ernst’s didn’t. Guys, narrow casting doesn’t work anymore – even Google will translate for the monolingual.

And that Tea Party guy whose name I can’t remember? That just further branded the Tea Folk as irrelevant, given that its “stars” are supposedly Cruz and Rand Paul. Why not bask in their glory? (Paul actually delivered the reply in 2013.) Or maybe Tea Partyer has become synonymous with crackpot who can’t get elected to a statewide office, or who mistakes Obama administration staffers with visitors from India.

Meanwhile, “front-runners” and elder statesmen Mitt Romney and Jeb Bush borrowed a page from Palin and took to Facebook – Romney even reprised her famous “bridge to nowhere” joke, this time about Obama’s SOTU proposals.

Only Rand Paul made a semi-credible response, with a doom and gloom overview that made a welcome nod to racial unrest in Ferguson and elsewhere. For what it’s worth, he said more about the topic than Obama did.

Rand Paul is not the most interesting man in politics, but he’s certainly the most interesting man in the Republican Party. I still find him slightly threatening in a matchup with Hillary Clinton – he trashed “Hillary’s war in Libya” Wednesday night — when none of the rest would likely mess up her 2016 hair. But really, what a train wreck this party is.

Look, plenty of Democrats botched their SOTU replies. In (relatively) recent years, newly minted former Gov. Tim Kaine comes to mind, but he shrugged it off and now he’s a senator. You make a reply that doesn’t go well, and nobody talks about it the next day. That’s a big win, compared with seven dwarfish responses that prove the party is going to keep its firing squad arranged in a circle.

And remember, at this point we’re likely to see at least four of those guys – counting Bush and Romney, Paul and Cruz – in the 2016 presidential debates. Cruz was expected to be formidable, but you don’t get do-overs at live, nationally televised events, no matter how Republican National Committee chairman Reince Priebus thinks he can rig the rules. I’m not saying the Democrats have no problems or internal fissures, but their debates won’t feature anything like the GOP’s.

Expect the media to say that’s boring, and damaging to Clinton. But secretly, or not so secretly, Republicans wish they had Clinton’s problems.

********

Joan Walsh is Salon's editor at large and the author of "What's the Matter With White People: Finding Our Way in the Next America."


TOPICS: Iowa; Issues; Parties; U.S. Senate
KEYWORDS: 114th; 2015gopsoturesponse; bhosotu; gopresponse; iowa; joniernst; obama; sotu; tedcruz
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I'm laughing so hard I can't breathe.
1 posted on 01/21/2015 4:55:24 PM PST by 2ndDivisionVet
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To: 2ndDivisionVet

Ernst did fine, better than Rubio did. It was a little stale though. McConnell clearly fed the teleprompter


2 posted on 01/21/2015 4:57:53 PM PST by Viennacon
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To: 2ndDivisionVet
Watching Sen. Joni Ernst Tuesday night, I found myself thinking: If there’s a GOP establishment, it must consist of secret Democrats

I think that's the only accurate statement in the entire article.
3 posted on 01/21/2015 4:58:01 PM PST by Crazieman (Article V or National Divorce. The only solutions now.)
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To: 2ndDivisionVet

This woman is a psychopath.


4 posted on 01/21/2015 4:58:16 PM PST by bkopto (Free men are not equal. Equal men are not free.)
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To: 2ndDivisionVet

Joan Walsh is a ditzy loon. Perfect for the Saloon.


5 posted on 01/21/2015 5:00:01 PM PST by FlingWingFlyer (When the hell do I get MY white privilege? I'm tired of busting my @$$ for a living.)
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To: 2ndDivisionVet

oh...my

6 posted on 01/21/2015 5:02:50 PM PST by BookmanTheJanitor
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To: 2ndDivisionVet

7 posted on 01/21/2015 5:03:25 PM PST by smokingfrog ( sleep with one eye open (<o> ---)
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To: BookmanTheJanitor

She must’ve been something before the internal combustion engine.


8 posted on 01/21/2015 5:04:28 PM PST by 2ndDivisionVet (The question isn't who is going to let me; it's who is going to stop me.)
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To: smokingfrog

Wow, that makeup has to be on with a trowel.


9 posted on 01/21/2015 5:04:41 PM PST by Crazieman (Article V or National Divorce. The only solutions now.)
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To: BookmanTheJanitor

She’s a looker! (Makes me looker the other way!)


10 posted on 01/21/2015 5:04:52 PM PST by JaguarXKE (1973: Reporters investigate All the President's Men. 2013: Reporters ARE all the President's men d)
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To: 2ndDivisionVet

Of course a Commie lib wouldn’t like Joni Ernst..they hate everyone who is for freedom and life..if Mao was dug up from the dead the left would nominate him for President


11 posted on 01/21/2015 5:05:26 PM PST by Sarah Barracuda
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To: 2ndDivisionVet

WOW talk about being severely bitter, bitchy and, jealous.


12 posted on 01/21/2015 5:06:26 PM PST by manc (Marriage =1 man + 1 woman,when they say marriage equality then they should support polygamy)
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To: 2ndDivisionVet

Joan Walsh’s brain is broken...


13 posted on 01/21/2015 5:07:21 PM PST by ExCTCitizen (I'm ExCTCitizen and I approve this reply. If it does offend Libs, I'm NOT sorry...)
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To: BookmanTheJanitor

That is here?

Yuck, no wonder she is jealous of republican women, what a ugly, bitter hag.


14 posted on 01/21/2015 5:07:27 PM PST by manc (Marriage =1 man + 1 woman,when they say marriage equality then they should support polygamy)
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To: Crazieman

Yes that one line was accurate.


15 posted on 01/21/2015 5:09:29 PM PST by ExCTCitizen (I'm ExCTCitizen and I approve this reply. If it does offend Libs, I'm NOT sorry...)
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To: FlingWingFlyer

Salon makes The Onion look newsworthy.


16 posted on 01/21/2015 5:10:07 PM PST by ExCTCitizen (I'm ExCTCitizen and I approve this reply. If it does offend Libs, I'm NOT sorry...)
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To: BookmanTheJanitor

What is THAT?


17 posted on 01/21/2015 5:10:47 PM PST by ExCTCitizen (I'm ExCTCitizen and I approve this reply. If it does offend Libs, I'm NOT sorry...)
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To: 2ndDivisionVet

Or before Dinosaurs... :-)


18 posted on 01/21/2015 5:11:37 PM PST by ExCTCitizen (I'm ExCTCitizen and I approve this reply. If it does offend Libs, I'm NOT sorry...)
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To: JaguarXKE

LOL...funny...


19 posted on 01/21/2015 5:12:05 PM PST by ExCTCitizen (I'm ExCTCitizen and I approve this reply. If it does offend Libs, I'm NOT sorry...)
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To: 2ndDivisionVet

The Snark is strong with this one.


20 posted on 01/21/2015 5:14:34 PM PST by Rodamala
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