They want Iowa Normal back

Back and forth all over Iowa I trundle hawking my book — "Dear Marty, We Crapped In Our Nest." Everywhere I go one message emerges: We want our good old Iowa back.

That is moderate, centrist and unassuming where you greet everyone with a smile and a hello. That is what Iowa used to be until we tried to become South Dakota. Our roads were better and so were the schools, along with our attitudes toward each other.

From Okoboji to Des Moines to Iowa City I draw a crowd of largely responsible matrons who do not countenance rude. They want to make sure everyone has enough to eat and that they see a doctor if they have a cough longer than a week. They want to get along and share a jug of wine. They believe in vaccines. They want to know that the grandkids are getting a decent education, including about slavery, how we expropriated Native lands and starved their children, and that discovery through science is a marvelous thing.

That was Iowa. For realz. Solid rural towns like Laurens full of brick homes and local manufacturers. Number One in test scores and hogs. Nothing wrong with that, so long as the farmer owns the source of wealth creation (the livestock) and we trade in an open market. Pretty simple, conservative stuff. Educate the kids, and let them compete with as little interference as possible.

We turned radical. No “divisive concepts” in the curriculum. Advocacy is frowned upon inside the ivy walls among the faculty; Ames and Iowa City are locked down. Women are denied control over their bodies and lives. Our rivers are toxic. Property taxes are outta sight. Farmers lost an open market and are serfs to the ag supply chain — and those in the bottom half are hurting.

None of this is moderate. For sure not conservative — talk about the heavy hand of government.

Across the state, people want unassuming and polite, not cruel or indifferent. Practical but first-rate. That’s us.

Gov. Reynolds led us to Iowa Nasty: Lock up the immigrants, gag the professor, drive off the gynecologist to Illinois, shut down the nursing home on low Medicaid rates. Tell them they are on their own, cowpoke.

That is not the Iowa we know. We recall a place where community is part of your identity. When you say with no small amount of pride that you are from Storm Lake, someone will ask if you know their cousin. Then you start talking about how the community’s diversity is its strength.

Reynolds assumed her role from the longest serving governor in U.S. history, Terry Branstad. She won two elections over Fred Hubbell and Diedre Dejear thanks entirely to the power of incumbency and latent Midwestern racism. Democrats gave up on Iowa. The Republicans took the bit and ran with it for a decade.

That run might be nearing its end.

Democrats are winning special elections, including a head-turner in Sioux City when Catelin Drey defeated Republican Christopher Prosch, who wanted to make us more like South Dakota. Drey won the senate district by 11 points. Trump won it by 10 points. She led the group Moms for Iowa. Not exactly radical leftists.

When momma ain’t happy, ain’t nobody happy. Those Des Moines women are fired up. About 200 of them started gathering in February as sort of a support group for shunned moderates-to-liberals with money. About 80 showed up for my book reading at Central Presbyterian Church, which is hardly Antifa. They cheered when I said Democratic State Auditor Rob Sand can win the governor’s race. They are not radical. Former Chief Justice Marsha Ternus was there. The National Guard was not needed to protect the church.

They don’t ask that much: Quit diverting revenue from K-12 public education. Let teachers teach. Let women be free as men. Respect and support your neighbor, because it is the right and practical thing to do.

You don’t need to bind up the farm in red tape. However, you don’t need to farm into the river, and we can’t handle any more of those corporate hogs. It reeks like never before. Rural communities will stabilize if we quit closing schools, driving off independent farm operators, and treating immigrants like hostile actors.

The stage is set for a reversal and return to Iowa Normal. How do you do, dear neighbor? This Iowa Nasty thing isn’t working out like it was supposed to. Taxes are lower for some but our economy is in the tank. Hard-working people in Storm Lake and Denison are paralyzed with fear of being ripped from their adopted hometowns. Enough is enough, the women in Des Moines are saying. They are not a trifling lot. They will persist.