Iowa Republicans are only pivoting toward the center to save their hold on the state
Opinion by Lyz Lenz
After Iowa Republicans rejected incumbent U.S. congressman and notorious racist Steve King in last June’s primary, GOP consultant David Kochel told me he was breaking out the booze. A fellow Republican operative tweeted a video of Kochel squirting something from a flask into his mouth with the comment, “King Slayer @ddkochel drinks blood after the kill.”
Kochel himself appended several clapping emojis to a Democrat’s tweet that said, “Steve King continues to honor the Confederacy by getting just destroyed on his home turf.”
Iowa Republicans were celebrating. Forget that Kochel used to donate to King. Forget that, just months earlier, two GOP rivals for another congressional seat, Bobby Schilling and Mariannette Miller-Meeks, shared a stage with neo-Nazi Nick Fuentes. And never mind that Fuentes was there by an invitation from a Schilling staffer.
No, they said, they were a new party now.
But the truth is, Iowa Republicans are changing only because the party stands on the verge of losing its current chokehold on the state. Republicans turned against King not because of his racism, which they tend not to comment on, but because he wasn’t an effective congressman.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2020/10/26/iowa-republicans-are-only-pivoting-toward-center-save-their-hold-state/
