Iowa's U.S. reps share mattress  

"Them GOPs and Democrats, each hates the other one / They's always criticizing how the country should be run / But neither tell the public what the other's gone and done"

("The Country's in the Very Best of Hands," by Johnny Mercer and Gene de Paul, from 1950s Broadway musical and movie Li'l Abner.)

That condemnation is as spot-on today, as when icon Mercer first put pen to lyrical paper. And it now seems to describe Iowa U.S. Representatives Ashley Hinson, Marionette Miller-Meeks, Randy Feenstra, and Zach Nunn; all abetted the nastiness detailed below.

Recent reports revealed that 357 House chair warmers -- 182 Democrats and 175 Republicans -- voted against an absolutely just bill offered by South Carolina Republican Rep. Nancy Mace. It would have made public the names of officials who've withdrawn taxpayer monies from a behind-the-curtain slush fund, to pay off/silence alleged victims of members' sexual harrassment and abuse.

Hinson, Miller-Meeks, Feenstra, and Nunn all lodged terrible votes in defense of protecting credentialed wrongdoers.

A House Ethics Committee statement that sought to rationalize stabbing voters in the backs was issued by chairmen from both major parties. The phrase "partners in crime" leaps to mind.

Some 18 million of your and my tax dollars are said to have been so squandered. Even the severely allergic don't find that amount anything to sneeze at.

(Observers might wonder how Democrats who took up arms in opposition to openness, can turn about and shout over Epstein files. But, of course, hypocrisy is a Washington river that runs deep.)

Woke Democrats and ostensibly MAGA Republicans, including all Iowa representatives, massed shoulder-to-shoulder to cover for predatory sexual deviants in official ranks, and spit contemptuously in the eye of John Q. Public.

Behind this unabashed betrayal of voters, why should any of us support a guilty politician's future electoral efforts? To do so would be tantamount to squeaking "Thank you, may I have another?"

On another hand, Ronald Reagan famously counseled "the person who agrees with you 80% of the time is a friend and ally, not a 20% traitor." 

There was wisdom in his words. Congresspeople who behaved abominably in this matter may do fine things in future days. A whiskered political axiom holds "Never say never."

Numerous weighty issues are currently prominent. And shrewdness dictates sometime acceptance of wrongs, that unrelated goals can be attained. (Which is a fancy way of saying holding your nose.)

Still, those who've cast themselves against letting folks back home know what banks-of-the-Potomac muckety-mucks have been up to (or down to), have demonstrated they put club welfare before interests of the public that elected them.

Hawkeye State voters' attitudes toward Hinson, Miller-Meeks, Nunn, and Feenstra should match that of a parent whose 15 year-old comes through the front door long after curfew: "You'd better have a damn good explanation!"

Mercer was on the money.