By Nate Holdren, Des Moines
In recent memory Iowa Republicans have restricted abortion rights and restricted access to hemp products. These are obviously the actions of big government interfering with individual choice, something they pretend to dislike, so to deflect criticism they resort to the shrill thought-stopping cliche that children must be protected. Of course they must, but who could possibly believe Republicans actually mean it?
Abortion restrictions don’t reduce abortion, they just make abortions more dangerous, so no rational well-informed person can buy the lie that it’s a child-protecting policy. Kids consuming hemp product is a different matter insofar as keeping kids from consuming those products is clearly a good idea. So are making sure kids have clean water, reducing the likelihood of kids getting shot by controlling the availability of guns, and keeping kids out of dangerous workplaces, but Iowa Republicans have made all of those things harder. After the rollback of laws limiting child labor we now have the absurd situation where a teenager can work in a dangerous job, get injured, and the only protection Iowa Republicans are concerned to offer them is making sure they can’t buy over-the-counter hemp products, which are reasonably effective painkillers.
It’s tempting to speculate on Iowa Republicans’ motivations, but ultimately it’s irrelevant whether their policies are the result of ignorance, cynically chasing donations from far right billionaires, or a genuine principled commitment to hurting people. What matters is that they’re a moral bottomless pit and their policies are a mix of insult and injury to human dignity. I would never suggest that Kim Reynolds has in actual fact dipped a live kitten in olive oil, unhinged her jaw, and swallowed it whole — I assume its wriggling and mewling as it slides down her gullet would temporarily simulate human feeling and hide her deep inner emptiness — but let’s be real. If footage of her doing so emerged the only parts that would surprise any well-informed Iowans would be the physical logistics of how she opened her mouth so wide and that the governor was the only Republican caught doing so on video.
Above all, what’s especially shocking and damning is that even when their opponents are such obvious troglodytes, Iowa Democrats are so bad at winning elections.
