For Joni Ernst, this time the shoe is on the other foot

(NOTE: In a previous version of this post I said that Theresa Greenfield was regional director of Rottlund Homes when the leases of local small businesses were terminated in order to facilitate the building of a more profitable chain store. In fact, at the time that decision was made Greenfield was president of the company that owned the property, Colby Financial Interests. My doubts about whether Greenfield's behavior was unethical nevertheless remain).

Six years ago, Senate candidate Joni Ernst was the target of a singularly dishonest "hit" ad by a liberal PAC. It showed a bunch of fatcat Republican businessmen reviewing slides of various candidates for open Senate seats. When Joni's picture came up, they all laughed and assured each other that "Joni signed on the dotted line," subscribing to some nefarious plan to give tax breaks to the rich.

And what was that nefarious, evil scheme? A pledge she signed to oppose raising anybody's taxes if elected. Was the ad deceptive? Of course. And while one might agree or disagree with the pledge,  it didn't favor the rich any more than the middle class or the poor. To suggest otherwise- as the ad quite intentionally did- was to try to deceive the voters.

This time, it's a conservative PAC supporting now-Senator Ernst that's running the deceptive ads. It seems that Joni's opponent, Theresa Greenfield, was Director of Real Estate for the Iowa Division of Rottlund Homes, a company that did business in several states. That company let lots of people go when the Great Recession hit and ultimately closed its Iowa division. Subsequently, in 2012, Greenfield became president of Colby Financial Holdings, the family-owned company that is basically responsible for the existence of the growing Des Moines suburb of Windsor Heights. In that capacity, she terminated the leases of some small businesses because a large chain store wanted to develop the site and would generate more money than collecting rent from the current tenants was generating.

It seems odd that Republicans, of all people, would find following the profit motive immoral.  but Iowans are being told that by choosing to rent to the chain store rather than the small businesses already utilizing the property Greenfield "kicked mom-and-pop businesses to the curb" and was "so ruthless" that she even signed the notices that the leases were being terminated herself. But who else should have signed them? And if she had hidden behind someone else's signature, what would her critics have had to say about that? Has the conservative Senate Leadership Fund, that is running the ads,  been converted to the viewpoint of Bernie Sanders? Does it now believe that businesses exist, not to generate a profit for their owners, but to do good in the community and be nice to people? Somehow I doubt it.

As I mentioned above, the Great Recession hit, Rottlund's Iowa Division laid off two-thirds of its employees. It was hardly alone in doing either. I, too, lost my job at that point. Many people did. Rottlund defaulted on loans and ultimately closed its operations in Iowa. Again, it was hardly alone in either respect; plenty of businesses were unable to meet their financial obligations and many went under. But somehow, Greenfield's opponents would like us to believe that she was personally to blame for the Great Recession! Almost as crazy, they apparently want voters to think that it was a regional director who made the corporate decision to pull the firm out of Iowa, thus eliminating her own job along with all the others! It's worth noting, in any event, that the Republican President of the United States had a longstanding pattern while in the business world of openly and cheerfully refusing to meet financial obligations incurred by companies which he actually operated, not because of a recession but merely because it would cost his creditors more to sue him than to simply accept the loss, so he could get away with it. And he led entire companies into bankruptcy six times! Are there different rules for Donald Trump and Theresa Greenfield? Is a subordinate employee- a regional director- somehow more responsible for the solvency of a firm than its owner and CEO, if that employee happens to belong to the wrong political party?

How can one consistently criticize Greenfield's business record without also criticizing Donald Trump's much worse one?

OSHA fined Rottlund's Iowa Division several times for safety violations while Greenfield was its director. She can reasonably be held accountable for that. But it seems the only part of the case being made against Greenfield that is remotely reasonable. Trump was fined by OSHA far more often. Anything that can be said about Greenfield can be said about Donald Trump- except that she was a subordinate, whereas Trump bore ultimate responsibility for his administration of entire companies. And somehow I have trouble believing that the Republicans who support the Senate Leadership Fund truly believe that Rottlund would have been wrong to fire Greenfield if she had insisted on putting the interests of those local businesses ahead of the interests of her own employer!

And then, there's the ad from the same group which accuses Greenfield of trying to "hide" her "failed business record" by editing the resume on her campaign website.  Strange. I don't recall Mr. Trump advertising his bankruptcies, fines, and other business misadventures when he ran for President. In fact, when he was confronted about them during the Republican debates in 2016, he repeatedly used loopholes in the phrasing of accusations to imply that they never happened!

But perhaps the single most deceptive pro-Ernst ad I've seen employs a blatantly dishonest tactic which not only President Trump but his supporters use quite frequently. The ad doesn't come right out and say that Greenfield supports "defunding the police," or the "Green New Deal," or other reckless and extreme left-wing schemes. Instead, it presents her as the candidate of the extremists who support them. We, of course, are supposed to deduce from this that if people who support such irresponsible policies support Greenfield, too, then she must support them herself!  The ad stops short of actually lying, but there can be no reasonable doubt that the entire point of the ad is to deceive the voter who sees it into believing that she does.

The way campaign finance laws are written, unaccountable third-party PACS can get away with an awful lot. Joni herself was the victim of such ads last time out. It should be emphasized that neither Sen. Ernst nor her campaign is responsible for the ads attacking Greenfield, nor is the Iowa Republican Party. None of them can exactly be blamed, even though they are the ones who profit. And after all, if we want to blame politicians for what their supporters do, why should they? Some people are eager to see Joni Ernst re-elected who are more than willing to buy the deceptive ads on her behalf, and on the behalf of her party!

Nevertheless, I can't help but reflect that if it was unethical for Theresa Greenfield to allow the interests of her employer to dictate her behavior in a matter in which those interests conflicted with those of small business owners, it surely is unethical for Sen. Ernst to accept the political benefit of deliberate and transparent attempts to smear her opponent and deceive the voters rather than openly and forthrightly denouncing the ads and labeling them for what they are.

And that, finally, comes to the reason why even though I agree with Joni Ernst on most issues, made telephone calls on her behalf six years ago, and not only admired her but fully expected her to be our first woman president, and disagree with Greenfield about a great deal, I will be voting for Greenfield this November. Sen. Ernst- a woman of intelligence and, I always believed, of integrity and courage- has been entirely too concerned about Donald Trump's opinion of her and not nearly concerned enough about her obligation to protect our nation's interests from the erratic incompetence of a rogue president of her own party.  Joni Ernst should have been standing up for the traditional values of the Republican Party and of America, but choose instead to be an enabler of a president unfit by any reasonable criterion to hold the office.

That she chose to ignore the overwhelming evidence and vote to acquit Mr. Trump at his impeachment trial in itself would be grounds for voting against her in November. Over and over, faced with a choice between her loyalty to America and her loyalty to Donald Trump, she has chosen Donald Trump. Over and over, when her obligation was to the interests of the United States and of her own constituents, she has, like most Republicans,  chosen instead to be a defender of the indefensible.

For the sake of any future the Republican Party might possibly still have, those who have put Donald Trump's favor above their own honor and the interests of America need to pay the price. I say this not because I'm inclined to be vindictive about basic American values and the heritage of the party of Abraham Lincoln and Ronald Reagan and of my own father having been dragged through the mud and people like Joni Ernst having allowed themselves to be complicit, but because we need to be absolutely certain that if history ever repeats itself, future senators and congressmen who belong to the same party as an incompetent loose-cannon president make a different decision than they did.