Joni Ernst is a condescending hypocrite

And she and a few others need a swift kick in the seat of their pants

I have long resisted the temptation to editorialize about the blockheaded people parading across the national stage of politics these days, passing themselves off as thoughtful leaders but secretly nursing irrational grudges against common sense, decency, and the American way.

So if my thoughts today offend your political sensibilities, sobeit. It’s an opinion, pure and simple. You’re always entitled to your own opinion. Just don’t read my entries if you expect me to agree with you—or if you can’t listen to another point of view.

I am a historian and author, once a practicing journalist, never much of a pundit. When I write about historical topics, I look for a kind of objective balance that seems increasingly elusive these days—trying to present both sides of history, to let my readers judge what to make of it for themselves without forcing them in my direction.

Equally often these days, I write about foreign affairs, as well, because I was a diplomat for many years, before I left government for the private sector and academia. There, I admittedly analyze U.S. actions toward other countries for prudence and often, sadly, encounter a pervasive air of complete stupidity, with what I hope is a balanced eye—even if I openly disagree with the perpetrators of the absurd in the current administration.

But I simply cannot resist this opportunity to say my piece about the current state of domestic politics, and the hash that some of our current politicians are making of it. I am not a Midwesterner, and I don’t pretend to understand the political sensibilities of Iowans who chose to elect Joni Ernst as their U.S. Senator and then awarded her a second term, but who may be scratching their heads right now and asking: why did we ever think she was worth it?

But as an outsider and observer—who watched this former military unit leader, which she had long bragged about being, back down almost instantly from timidly challenging the ludicrous Pete Hegseth as Donald Trump’s Secretary of Defense—after wondering aloud about his unfitness for the job, and then morphing into a Trump-is-my-leader robot, so I must fall in line—I think it is high time we institute psychological fitness tests and strict term limits, along with recall elections for U.S. senators.

She is a hypocrite, pure and simple—and now, a condescending one, as well. If she was so easily terrified she might be “primaried,” what happened to her battlefield courage? Scared of a clown with orange hair? She served in both Kuwait and Iraq in 2003 and 2004—if not technically a combatant, she still faced dangerous conditions as transportation unit commander for the Iowa National Guard—and demonstrated courage under constant possible attack.

Fast forward 20 years or so, and her courage has now completely deserted her—weak in the knees before the Dear Leader and his gaggle of halfwit morons. All she has left in her backpack is sarcasm and nasty thoughts for her constituents. Sounds almost like late-onset PTSD to me. Or worse …

Don’t get me wrong. We have had senile or stupid U.S. senators before, and we will have them again—from both parties—like the blithering old fool, Strom Thurmond, who spent his last years there in diapers on life support, and Wisconsin’s dangerously deluded Joe McCarthy, who waved fabricated lists of Communists in the government at every opportunity—but could never remember how many names there really were (clue: none). More recently, we watched the ghost of once-admired Dianne Feinstein melt down before our eyes, because she refused to admit she was, in fact, already senile—could not remember where she was, or what she was voting for, and would not listen to family, staff, or friends. The smart ones, of course, fall the quickest …

Intelligence and wisdom are no longer necessarily prerequisites for public office. Just ask Lindsey Graham, who, like Ernst, has lately discarded what few moral bearings he used to have by kissing the butt of a certain resident of 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue once too often. Turning into a vulgar imitation of ole Strom, doing a good imitation of a squealing pig on uppers. The longer they stay in office, the more self-important and unhinged they seem to get.

Like a friend of mine recently said in his Substack blog—quoting someone else smarter than either of us—”you can’t fix stupid, but you can spot it coming by the red hat.” Some, like Joni Ernst, are already wearing theirs too tight. Mimicking Marjorie Taylor Greene …

Opponents are already lining up in Des Moines and elsewhere to challenge her—in both parties—when she runs again next year. If this was what she was trying to run away from when she backed off on Hegseth, she voluntarily willed it on herself this time. With luck, she should be the first to get booted from office—either in a primary or a general election—followed closely by another cackling clod from the Deep South, Virginia Foxx, who has shamed my home state for way too long.

* * * * * * *

Ernst’s unforgivably insensitive comments at a recent town hall with Iowa constituents—”well, we all are going to die,” she snickered at a questioner who questioned the wisdom of the Dear Leader’s proposed cuts to Medicaid as life-threatening—rank her right up there with North Carolina’s Foxx, a washed-up schoolteacher who has apparently gone bonkers after 20 years in the House, but isn’t about to quit now that someone finally gave her a committee to chair.

She is running again, too. Can’t get enough of that power … She listens to her own screechy voice and cheers, in a silo. She is important—in her own cataract-ridden eyes, at least—and that is enough.

At 81, Foxx is now the Wicked Witch poster girl for terminally belligerent and empty-headed, open-mouthed members of Congress who have overstayed their welcome. Earlier this year, according to the Charlotte Observer, she bellowed at a press conference that people “should shut up,” so she could continue defending Mike Johnson as her Speaker of the House. Hence the committee chair’s job, for a loud, sycophantic butt-kisser, with no other discernible skills to offer.

Guess which one is the squawker … and which one just smirks too much. Courtesy Charlotte Observer.

I could easily compare them both to the developmentally-challenged Marjorie Taylor Greene, Georgia’s answer to Bozo the Clown in a yoga leotard, whose acquaintance with deep thought of any sort is laughably thin. Her only excuse is that she hasn’t been playing with grownups long enough to learn anything useful from them yet, and furthermore, doesn’t plan to try any time soon. She is demonstrably stupid, proudly ignorant, cartoonish—a badly-drawn Marilyn Monroe without the figure, looks, fashion sense, or acting talent, the Jessica Rabbit of the MAGA world—but dreams wistfully of one day being perceived as “brave” and “smart.”

At least the poorly-educated Marilyn tried to read books and improve herself late in life. She, at least, was desperate for acceptance as something other than a sex symbol. MTG needn’t worry about that that unlikely perception. Even “smart” is beyond MTG’s limited capability as a pathetic joke—sadly, far beyond it, like a Chihuahua dreaming of being a Saint Bernard.

Greene’s conspiracy theories, inspired by wet dreams of Jewish lasers in space, alone qualify her as a looney practitioner of outlandish theories that should be straight-jacketed in a rubber room, not let loose on the floor of the U.S. House of Representatives. She recently attacked a British reporter for having the effrontery to report on U.S. politics, specifically Hegseth and the Signal group chat scandal. Almost challeneged her to mud wrestling. (“We don’t give a crap about your opinion and your reporting. Why don’t you go back to your country?” Yes you, you dirty Brit …)

And this week, she admitted she hadn’t really read the Big Beautiful bill before she voted for it—a shame remedial reading courses weren’t required for business majors back at the University of Georgia when she was there—but after it got pointed out that some nefarious AI regulations were in there, she is suddenly demanding a do-over, almost begging Joni Ernst to fix the bill for her in the Senate.

Yet her peculiar form of redneck political lunacy is useful to others, marginally less clownlike, like Ernst and Foxx, who humor her and view her as a sometimes-useful idiot—in the way that many Southern states used to point to Mississippi, perennially the worst-performing state in the country in almost every category. Think I’m bad? Just look at MTG …

And one more thing! The red hat is a dead giveway, MTG. Shame you don’t understand that. Courtesy BBC

Foxx and Ernst have both been around way too long. Both should retire for their own good, before they embarrass themselves completely—well, too late for that—but neither will consider it. That means weakness, and they are hooked on power—not their own, of course, of which they have very little, but the power of those abusive men they follow around like panting, pampered lap dogs.

Ernst still thinks she can prove how useful and relevant she is before she gets the shepherd’s crook. Her absurd use of snippy sarcasm as the preferred way to deal with troublemakers is a desperate grasp for indispensability in a world now passing her by—afraid that people will actually see her as she is, wild-eyed, tone-deaf and utterly out of touch, rather than how she sees herself: significant, fearless, a mover and a shaker. After all, she actually turned down being considered as Trump’s vice president over J. Dunderhead, after all—or so she said last year …

Not satisfied with her failed attempt at a zinger—that inappropriate, empty-headed putdown that was completely irrelevant to the question at hand, and drew gasps and boos—she tried to up the ante with her astounding “amplification” a day or two later.

Instead of simply stepping back and apologizing for tasteless words that were misinterpreted—the only time-honored response to an obvious stupid mistake—she doubled down on it, Trump-style. Filming her response in a cemetery, of all places, Ernst implies in her social media video that Iowa voters who misunderstood her “we all are going to die” declaration are apparently too thick to understand her half-baked rationale for cutting Medicaid—”we’re fixing it”—because as she put it, many of them still believe in the tooth fairy, as well.

That is, all those silly folks on Medicaid must want a tooth fairy to rescue them from their financial mess, and Joni is here to tell them they are just deluded, and don’t really deserve free health insurance … they should pay through the nose for it, and be grateful. Not on my watch will they get a break … and yes, they will thank me in the end, when I help Trump save the world—that is, if they don’t meet Jesus first.

Well, if that is how she sees the world of those (millions) who don’t agree with her, she is probably right in step with everyone the Dear Leader has intimidated or blackmailed into doing his bidding. More hypocritical than Thou. The former military officer has become what she once would have belittled and rejected in her first campaign: a condescending, insensitive clod who couldn’t land a job now as a street-sweeper, all she seems fit for.

Now she sits behind a desk, drawing a $180,000 salary with a fawning staff and gold-plated health benefits, for which she need not lift a finger, leaving her plenty of free time to film ridiculous infomercials in graveyards. Wonder how she would feel if she woke up one day, unemployed and broke, without any health coverage—with a terminal disease—and found she couldn’t even qualify for Medicaid, because of some foolish vote some misguided senator from Iowa had once taken … It would serve her right.

She even dares to invoke Jesus Christ in her misguided response to the whole situation—in much the same way that Dear Leader recently reminded his social media followers he’s on “a mission from God.” (Like hell he is—exuding utter hypocrisy in action.) She then implored “those who would like to see eternal and everlasting life” to “embrace my lord and savior Jesus Christ.”

Trouble is, the Jesus most of us already know actually preached compassion and forgiveness, sincerity, charity—not rejection or snotty putdowns—or at least he used to, before the Troll King rewrote the New Testament into a $60 gold-plated fraudulent, “God Bless the USA” Bible. And that holy figure is hardly the Jesus she envisions—the one she and born-again Pete Hegseth hypocritically view from their self-centered, befuddled foxholes: A bastardized sort of New Age-savior plastic meme coin to hang on the tank’s rear-view mirror—one who endlessly praises them for their personal courage and forgives their (many) sins, and swaddles them in comfort in time of political need, while trolling for donations to their campaigns, and relentlessly, endlessly condemning their oh-so-evil critics.

There’s just no sinner like a reformed sinner who brags about being saved but then doesn’t act like anything has changed. In politics, they are all more pious Pharisees than Godfearing Jews or Christians … the worst of the lot, instead of the best.

It reminds me of an odd incident just 18 months ago, in which fellow Senator Rand Paul—a quirky Kentucky ophthalmologist who once got into a nasty physical fight with a neighbor over their property line or his lawnmowing habits, or some such thing—took the high road, for once, and saved her life, literally. Ernst was choking to death at a luncheon they both happened to be attending, and he graciously performed the Heimlich maneuver on her.

Apparently Ernst briefly met Christ that same day, and that pulled the rug out from under her. For when she woke up, she was forever changed, permanently unhinged. Her immediate acknowledgment then was a backhanded, almost-demented thank-you, sort of, for saving her from choking on “the woke policies Dems are forcing down our throats. Thanks, Dr. @RandPaul!”

Senator Rand Paul (left) and our gal from Iowa (right), back from the dead. Courtesy New York Times

Watch out, Joni. The list of those fellow Republican senators who might be able to step in next time you eat too fast is shrinking by the day—like your Iowa colleague Chuck Grassley, who just won reelection last year at 90, after 40-odd years in office. He appears so frail and unfocused that he now looks as if he, too, is living on borrowed time—and like Feinstein before him, a bit over the edge into la-la land.

She may have actually been channeling Grassley when she chose to ridicule her constituents. He tolerates no fools, except himself. Disagree with me? How dare you? I’ll show you what tough love is all about … Who knows? Her motives are murky at best. But she seems to believe the script she was handed.

And as for her insistence that “well, we all are going to die,” two can play at that game. I think more than a few Iowans—along with this Florida-transplanted author from North Carolina—may have an equally sincere challenge for the mean-spirited Senator Ernst:

“Okay, you’re right—but tell you what, why don’t you go first, and show us how it’s done?”

Next time: One more time: Dietrich Bonhoeffer on stupidity