Joni Ernst

On Friday's CNN Newsroom, Brooke Baldwin played up the apparent similarity between Senator-elect Joni Ernst's laugh and that of Cruella De Vil, the antagonist from Disney's 101 Dalmations. Baldwin aired a short segment on Ernst and two newly-elected Republican women in Congress. She ended the part about the Iowa politician with her comparison: "Don't forget about that laugh. Some people call it…

MSNBC and CNN zeroed in on the supposed radical right-wing views of Senator-elect Joni Ernst during their live election night coverage. Just after 2 am Eastern on Wednesday, MSNBC's Luke Russert played up how Ernst was "able to have these rather extreme Tea Party views; and then, moderate them closer to the election." Just over two hours earlier, CNN's Dana Bash gave the Iowa Republican a similar…

Kevin Drum and other pundits take the press to task for misleading Iowa voters by, in Drum's words, pushing a “charade” that Republican Senate contender Joni Ernst is a “pragmatic centrist.”

During his MSNBC show on Thursday night, Chris Matthews discussed a soundbite of Iowa Republican Senate candidate Joni Ernst stating her stance on the Second Amendment from two years ago and interpreted it as “pretty radical” to the point that “[s]he has talked about killing politicians she doesn't agree with.” First, here is what Ernst actually said (which was uncovered in a Huffington Post…

After citing numerous Republicans on the campaign trail criticizing the Obama administration's handling of the ebola crisis, on Thursday, MSNBC Daily Rundown host Craig Melvin condemned such criticism as "the politics of fear" and "irresponsible."

Following a segment that aired on Sunday night’s NBC Nightly News on President Obama’s unpopularity ahead of the midterm elections, the evening news program with two more midterm election segments on Tuesday. Both segments, however, were not without liberal bias, as one segment promoted the “close” Kentucky Senate race and the other discussed three Senate races to watch that present “big hurdles…

Talking Points Memo’s Josh Marshall says Ernst’s ideas about localism and the ACA are “insane” and remind him of something you’d hear from “militia types.”

Managing Editor's Note (Jan. 15, 2015; 5:15 p.m. Eastern): I've republished this to the front page today given the news that Sen. Ernst will be give the official Republican response to President Obama's State of the Union Address next Wednesday. If Chris Matthews doesn't make repeated sneering references to hog castration on MSNBC next Wednesday night, look out your window. You'll probably see a…

Charlie Pierce at Esquire complained that Democrats refuse to make the case that “the Republican party has thrown its marbles gleefully to the four winds,” which among other things means that “crackpot” Joni Ernst has a good chance to win a Senate seat. "She shouldn't be allowed into the United States Senate on a tour, let alone as one of its 100 members," he wrote. "This is more than just a…

Politico has noticed a lack of women in statewide office in Iowa for over 20 years. So who is promoted as the possible savior of this situation?  Not the obvious choice. Instead it is promoting Hillary Clinton who is might be running to win the Iowa primary for presidential nomination, not statewide office.

Her ears ringing with the "code words" of "nullification" and "states rights," Salon's Joan Walsh strongly suggested on Tuesday's Hardball that Iowa Republican U.S. Senate candidate Joni Ernst was cynically reaching out to nefarious elements of the GOP when she answered a question about nullification of federal laws in a September 2013 forum. [See my related story about the Daily Beast's biased…

Recent polls show a tight contest in the Iowa Senate race to replace retiring liberal Democrat Tom Harkin (D), so leave it to the Daily Beast to hype a video clip it recently unearthed to insist that it is evidence that Republican nominee Joni Ernst as a nut who betrays a "shocking ignorance" [see image below page break] about constitutional law regarding the Tenth Amendment and state…

Bartender—send a double Wyborowa with a Zoloft chaser to the nice lady at the end of the table.  But seriously, relax, Mika.  Four months before an election in which they are poised to triumph, congressional Republicans are not about to muddy the waters by trying to impeach President Obama. But on today's Morning Joe, that reality did not prevent Mika Brzezinski from getting verklempt and…

Reporting a new poll out on the Iowa Senate race on this evening's program, Hardball host Chris Matthews seemed a bit befuddled that a Tea Party conservative who grew up on a farm, Joni Ernst, is actually leading a Democratic lawyer Rep. Bruce Braley (D-Iowa) who waded into a muck a few months ago with an elitist-sounding crack about Sen. Chuck Grassley (R) being a "farmer from Iowa who never…