The metaphorical castration of Joni Ernst

In 2012,  a fellow Iowan I both respected and admired was elected to the United States Senate after releasing a signature ad in which, boasting of her experience castrating hogs as a girl, said that she "knew how to cut pork," and promised to "make 'em squeal" when she got to Washington.

I made a lot of phone calls on behalf of Joni Ernst and the Republican ticket six years ago.  When she was spoken of as a potential running-mate for Donald Trump in 2016, I wrote this. And then I wrote this. I even bemoaned the prospect of an unpopular Republican president dragging Sen. Ernst down to defeat this year.

Today is a dark day. Not only has the March for Life been transformed from an outpouring of support from people of all backgrounds for the cause of basic human values into a partisan rally for a corrupt hypocrite whose only agenda is his own greater glory, but a leader I once admired has let me down.

The hypocrisy is all the more stunning because it comes from a public official of whom I thought much better. But it seems that our Godfather President has corrupted Joni Ernst, as well as the rest of the Republican Party.  She will be a party to the preordained outcome of this rigged, partisan trial,  hypocritical rhetoric about being "committed to holding a fair trial" or not. Mr. Trump will be acquitted by a partisan vote even though his own transcript of his telephone call with Ukrainian President Zelensky clearly establishes his guilt, and even though both the rules of English grammar (the Constitution specifies "high crimes and misdemeanors") and what the Founders had to say about impeachment belies the argument that conduct must violate the law to be impeachable.

Which, in any case, Mr. Trump's conduct did. "Do impartial justice," indeed!

Senator, I'd counted on you to show the same courage in the Senate that you did in facing our country's enemies on the battlefield. It grieves me to know that our authoritarian president, who demands that the entire Republican party put personal loyalty to him ahead of principle or else, has gotten to you.

You may take comfort that you will not have "your head on a pike." But be assured that this ex-Republican will be voting for your opponent in November. You, no less than Mr. Trump, need to go down to crushing defeat.

I will probably disagree with your opponent about virtually everything. But hopefully, at least she will be what you once were: a woman of principle.

ADDENDUM: Any remaining doubt I had about Joni has been removed by a tweet in which she salivates over the prospect of Joe Biden being the Democratic nominee because of the extremely vague and far from well-documented charges popular in Trumpworld that there was somehow something or other corrupt about his son Hunter's service on the board of Ukrainian natural gas producer Bursima Holdings. Bursima was headed by corrupt Ukrainian politician Mykola Ziochevsky, and several of the younger Biden's law partners opposed his joining the firm because of Ziochevksy's bad reputation.

Meanwhile, Joe Biden was one of several Western leaders urging Ukraine to fire Viktor Shokin, the nation's chief prosecutor, who was actively blocking  corruption investigations. The Ukrainian Parliament agreed and removed Shokin from office.

Somehow, Trump lawyer Rudy Giuliani came up with the idea that Biden had used his influence to get rid of a seemingly corrupt prosecutor who was preventing the investigation of corruption in Ukraine- to protect his son, Hunter! The idea seems on the surface to defy common sense, and to this day absolutely no evidence has been forthcoming to support it. But the far-right has never required evidence or even logic to spread conspiracy theories regarding people it doesn't like. These are, after all, the people who are absolutely convinced that Bill and Hillary Clinton have arranged the assassinations of a large number of people many of whose deaths were in no way suspicious and had no particular actual connection to the Clintons in the first place because they somehow posed a danger to them.

For Joni Ernst to associate herself with that sort of tinfoil hat craziness isn't just disappointing. It removes all doubt that she has thrown in her lot with the extremists and conspiracy theorists who make up the backbone of the Trump movement. The level-headed, responsible center-right Republican I once thought would be our first woman president- and who I thought should have been- seems to have followed the path blazed by so many who have been lured by that Pied Piper of insanity, Donald Trump, from sound and traditionally Republican responsibility and respectability into the wilderness of crackpot far-right paranoia.

She should be ashamed of herself. As for me, I have the same reaction I've had when people like Mollie Hemingway and Lindsey Graham have followed Trump off the deep end. I grieve for people I once admired, respected, and for whom I saw a brilliant and honorable future, but who once the fever dream of Trumpism has passed are now going to have a very hard time being taken seriously by serious people.