Chet vs. Terry: Clash of the Pussies

The Iowa primary elections are finally over. Now that the major-party candidates have been selected, the Iowa governor’s race looks to be a battle royal between two moderates which may heat up all the way to tepid. Current Iowa Governor Terry Culver (D) is being challenged by former Iowa Governor Chet Branstad (R), leaving Iowa voters with a stark choice between a career politician with a moustache or a career politician without one.

Although we often think of the Democrats as the ones who seek to destroy the economy with massive taxes and the Republicans as the ones who seek to destroy it with massive debt, the Iowa race seems to juxtapose the two parties normal roles. In his tenure, Governor Branstad (Republican, moustache) increased the state sales tax by 67%, raised the state’s gasoline tax and proposed a state income tax on Social Security recipients.

Governor Culver (Democrat, no ‘stache), in his single term, has added about $750 million in debt just on his pet “jobs-creating” stimulus project called I-JOBS. I-JOBS has helped change Iowa’s unemployment rate from 5.3% , when it was introduced, to 6.9% today, while tripling the state’s debt.

Although there are not yet any scheduled debates between the two candidates, there was a foretaste of the verbal fireworks to come when, in their acceptance speeches, both candidates took “jabs” at each other.

In his primary victory speech, former governor Chet Branstad said: “In November, Iowa families will show the Democrats that we will no longer tolerate them referring to ‘six’ as ‘half-a-dozen’ and exposing their bare upper-lips to decent, hard-working Iowans.”

At his own victory celebration, current governor Terry Culver shot back: “The Republicans want to take this state backwards. Back to a time when furry-lipped men called ‘half-a-dozen’ by the nonprogressive term ‘six.’ Governor Branstad may try to hide from his long record of moustache-bearing by referring to it as merely a ‘cookie-duster’ or ‘soup-strainer,’ but in November, Iowa’s working families will show that we are not so easily fooled.”

Revelers at each candidates’ respective victory party then feasted on bowls of plain oatmeal and glasses of room-temperature tap water. Hang on to your hats, Iowa!