Art Cullen on Kovid Kim (Storm Lake Times)

Editorial: Rising star from Iowa

February 25, 2022
Art Cullen | The Storm Lake Times

The ascendancy of Gov. Kim Reynolds onto the national Republican Party stage is confirmed by her nomination to rebut President Joe Biden’s State of the Union Address to Congress on Tuesday night. Her selection also speaks to an ascendancy of a hard brand of conservatism that long has bloomed in rural America.

Reynolds is in a prime position. She is heading into a midterm campaign with a budget surplus, a Republican-controlled legislature that should do well in November, a humming economy, and a seething anger at the grassroots where pranks like banning books can play well.

...

Reynolds dumped on the poor and elderly by helping usher Medicaid to private insurers. She led an assault on collective bargaining and workers compensation. She is trying to reduce unemployment compensation. Yet she says that she is on the side of workers and families. Rural Iowa continues to drain out. Our only hope for the future, education, suffers from budget anemia. Teachers are under attack. Corporations fund our state universities while tuition rises.

That all seems to be working for her.

Education is of and for the elite. Parents know calculus better than teachers. Unemployment is for the lazy. Workers comp is for moochers. Unions are curled up in the fetal position. If you get crushed by an overhead manure conveyor, you should have been looking up. And if the manure is in the Rock or Raccoon rivers, avert your gaze and carry on...

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