Wednesday was a difficult day for The American Independent News Network, which is the larger entity that operates The Iowa Independent. Our chief executive and founder announced two of our sister sites would close and their content would be moved to The American Independent.
A recently introduced bill could have far-reaching impact on the U.S. sugar industry, including American Crystal Sugar, a farmer-owned cooperative that locked out 1,300 Midwest workers on Aug. 1.
The chairman for Herman Cain’s Iowa effort says the campaign “relied more on the word of farmers than Washington regulators” in deciding to run an ad containing claims the Environmental Protection Agency says are false.
The Iowa Senate will remain under the control of a slim 26-25 Democratic majority when it reconvenes in January 2012.
[Commentary] Boston Globe columnist Peter Canellos recently wrote a thought-provoking piece titled "Riding the antiabortion tide." The news peg is the mini-controversy over whether former Tennessee Sen. Fred Thompson, the "Law and Order" actor, once lobbied in support of abortion rights.
Canellos writes:
The sheer number of Republican leaders who've morphed from abortion-rights defenders to strict moral opponents invites both skepticism and credulity: There has to be some element of political expediency in all these shifts, but the leading lights of the GOP can't all be craven opportunists. To some degree, at least, they must be mirroring the journey of their constituents.
Kim Lehman, president of the Iowa Right to Life Committee, recently told Iowa Independent that social conservatives would accept candidates that drop their previous support for abortion rights. "We support people that turn to the right side. We don’t discourage that at all," she said. "People do become pro-life, and that’s our ultimate goal."
But is the switch real? And perhaps more importantly, does that matter?
In today's political climate, candidates are on a quest to attain that elusive trait known as "authenticity." So, changing positions on such a fundamental issue as abortion inevitably invites criticism of flip-flopping (Have you seen the kid in the dolphin costume calling himself Flip Romney?).
But several of the Republican presidential candidates seem intent on making that leap in hopes of appealing to, or at least appeasing, social conservatives. Besides Thompson and Romney, Rudy Giuliani — once a prominent supporter of abortion rights — is attempting to thread the needle on abortion. While in Council Bluffs on Wednesday, he told social conservatives that if he were elected, he would appoint "strict constructionists" to the Supreme Court in the mold of justices John Roberts, Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas.
That's a required talking point for Republican hopefuls today — even for someone like Rudy Giuliani. Now, he won't be getting the endorsement of the Iowa Right to Life Committee anytime soon, Lehman said. But Romney, who only turned against abortion two years ago, has acceptable anti-abortion credentials, she told Iowa Independent.
Canellos seems to want to give these candidates the benefit of the doubt: "…the leading lights of the GOP can't all be craven opportunists."
Really? They're politicians — and Republicans, at that. But such opportunism doesn't seem to matter for many social conservatives today as long as it trends their way. For the Thompsons, Romneys and Giulianis of the world, that's good news.
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