Joni Ernst Is a Far-Right Conservative: The GOP’s Iowa Senate Candidate Is More Conservative Than She Appears.
Among other stances, Ernst has endorsed impeachment for President Obama, expressed the belief that states could nullify federal laws, and supported “personhood” anti-abortion laws that would outlaw most forms of contraception. In addition, she’s slammed Medicaid recipients for not taking “personal responsibility for their health”—even though recipients have to apply for coverage—and talked extensively about “Agenda 21,” a decades-old U.N. recommendation for environmental sustainability that forms the basis for conspiracy-mongering on the far right. “The United Nations has imposed this upon us, and as a U.S. senator, I would say, ‘No more. No more Agenda 21,’ ” she said during a January forum for GOP Senate candidates. Of all of Ernst’s positions, her most mainstream is support for private accounts in Social Security, which has intellectual respectability in the GOP, even as it’s opposed by most Americans.