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.
A Rasmussen poll released Monday found that while the GOP has been trending ahead of the Democratic Party of late in generic head-to-head matchups, if voters are given the option to vote for a Tea Party, the Republicans drop to fourth place.
The poll found that 36 percent favor a generic Democrat, 23 percent favor a Tea Partier, 22 percent are not sure who they like, and 18 percent favor a Republican.
The Tea Party movement consists of a series of protests organized around the country against a perception of big government, although numerous other conservative issues also permeated the movement, ranging from immigration to global warming to the same-sex marriage. Many also believe the protests were conservative lobbyist-created “astroturf” projects and not spontaneous grassroots protests.
Poll respondents were asked to assume that the Tea Party movement organized as a new political party. But as Rasmussen correctly points out, a real-world application of this poll wouldn’t be so easy. The nation’s electoral system has built in advantages for the two major parties, making it unlikely that a third party, regardless of ideology, would do as well as the poll indicates.
But the numbers do serve as a stark reminder of the inner turmoil currently facing the Republican Party. They could also portend more contentious campaigns like New York’s House District 23, where party unity crumbled under the weight of a conservative third-party challenger to the GOP nominee.
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