The Corner
EMILY’s List: Selecting Iowa’s First Female Senator to Respond to SOTU Just ‘Window Dressing’
EMILY’s List, a liberal group that aims to elect pro-abortion female legislators, derided newly elected Senator Joni Ernst as “window dressing” in response to the announcement that she’ll deliver the Republican response to the State of the Union next week.
“GOP Chooses Window Dressing Over Substance to Appeal to Women” reads the statement’s subheadline. The statement appears as an edited version of the group’s statement from 2014, substituting the name of the former Iowa state senator and National Guard veteran for the name of Representative Cathy McMorris Rodgers, who delivered last year’s GOP rebuttal.
Hmm… @emilyslist statement on Ernst giving GOP SOTO response pic.twitter.com/kC6XhB1Il2
— Zeke Miller (@ZekeJMiller) January 16, 2015
“Choosing Joni Ernst to give the State of the Union response is a transparent attempt to appeal to women without having to offer any policies that appeal to women,” the group’s communications director, Jess McIntosh, said. “What they don’t seem to realize is that Ernst being a woman politician does not make her a pro-woman politician.”
It’s not the only slight Ernst has suffered after the State of the Union announcement this week. NBC News correspondent Luke Russert wrote the following of Ernst, who before her upset Senate victory had been a state senator and lieutenant colonel in the Iowa National Guard:
Joni Ernst's meteoric rise continues. This time last year she was an unknown pig farmer, on Tues she will deliver GOP SOTU response.
— Luke Russert (@LukeRussert) January 15, 2015