GOP’s fake new makeover: How the media sat down on the job in 2014
"Arguably the most egregious case is Iowa, where GOP Sen.-elect Joni Ernst scored an 8.5 point victory over Democratic congressman Bruce Braley in the race to succeed retiring Democratic Sen. Tom Harkin. Ernst managed to garner support among both Tea Party and establishment types in her GOP primary bid, prompting the Atlantic’s Molly Ball to herald the rise of the so-called “fusion Republican.” To be fair, it’s not a bad description — if only because Ernst is an exemplary case study in how the Tea Party right now dominates the “mainstream” GOP. But while voters may have known all about Ernst’s biography as a hog-castrating, down-home Iowa farm girl, they’d have been hard-pressed to identify her extreme views on the issues. (Indeed, polling showed that voters actually preferred Braley’s positions to Ernst’s.) Beltway reporters largely overlooked Ernst’s scary worldview — her support for arresting federal officials who implement Obamacare, her belief that there’s a secret United Nations plot to take over Iowa farmers’ land, her claim that Obama has become a “dictator” who may deserve impeachment, and her paranoid statement that she keeps a gun in case the government “decides my rights are no longer important” — in favor of talking up her “popular charisma” (Luke Russert) and her “compelling biography” (Nia-Malika Henderson). She may have sounded no different than Sharron “Second Amendment Remedies” Angle, but she was a bright new face! A rising star! Living proof that the GOP is just fine on women’s issues!"
