Of the four leading Republican candidates for Iowa’s open U.S. Senate seat, three have denounced this week’s vote to suspend the federal government’s debt ceiling.

The odd man out is trying to avoid the subject.

For now I’m setting Paul Lunde and Scott Schaben aside, because I don’t see how they figure in the GOP Senate primary in any significant way. Depending on whether Bob Vander Plaats jumps in, that leaves four Republican candidates: Sam Clovis, Joni Ernst, Matt Whitaker, and Mark Jacobs.

Clovis, Ernst, and Whitaker have all said repeatedly that they oppose any further increase or suspension in the debt ceiling. Here’s the latest comment from Clovis on February 11. For a college professor, he is surprisingly ignorant about what this vote means:

With the current vote on the debt ceiling, there is no stopping Obama now. Here is what Sam Clovis had to say about the vote in his release:

“Not only did they not raise the debt ceiling, there is now no limit on what the federal government can spend,” stated Clovis. “We now have a total dilusion of our dollar and a devaluation of the wealth of our nation. This is one of the most ludicrous moves I have ever seen from our elected officials. In fact, it was a total lack of courage and foresight from our leadership.”

SUPPORT A TRUE CONSERVATIVE AND SEND SAM TO THE U.S. SENATE. TO STOP RUNAWAY SPENDING SEND SAM TO THE U.S. SENATE. TEXT “SAM” TO 313131 TO SUPPORT SAM!

Whitaker struck a similar tone, with bonus points for his pipe dream promise to eventually “eliminate the need for a debt ceiling”:

The United States Senate has once again chosen political expediency over the tough choices it would take to get our country back on a solid fiscal path. I’m disappointed that the Senate has suspended the debt ceiling, without any plan to curtail spending.

This gimmick means that there is no debt ceiling until March 2015 and means that our government will sell debt whenever it needs too. I would have voted no if I were in the Senate today.

I’m running for the United States Senate, because I believe we need to make the tough choices required to balance our budget. 49 states are able to balance their budget every year and the federal government can too.

When I am elected by Iowans, I promise to work to balance our budget and eliminate the need for a debt ceiling.

Ernst took advantage of another chance to throw a punch at Mark Jacobs:

Yesterday the senate voted to increase the debt ceiling. During the Pottawattamie Co. debate last month, I said I would vote no to raise the national debt on the backs of our veterans, but Mark Jacobs continues to evade the question. It’s time for Jacobs to give Iowans an answer on this important and timely matter. ‪#‎IASEN‬

Ernst attached a devastating YouTube clip to that Facebook post; I enclose it below. But first, let’s recap what happened during that Republican debate in Council Bluffs:

Q-What would you do next month regarding raising the debt ceiling?

Clovis, Whitaker and Ernst all said they would not support a debt ceiling increase and said we need to cut spending.

Mark Jacobs indicated he would because we “cannot threaten the full faith and credit of our government”. He added that the debt ceiling issue is “a false choice our elected leaders put us into”.

That was one of the few areas of disagreement during the debate. On substance, Jacobs is undoubtedly correct that it would be “silly” not to raise the debt ceiling. Taking that stand would not reduce the federal deficit in any way; it would only make it impossible for the government to meet its obligations. In the worst-case scenario, by not acting Congress could force the U.S. into default. But even if we could avoid default, it would be disruptive and bad for the economy to allow the federal government to hit its debt limit.

Jacobs must have gotten a lot of blowback from his comments at last month’s debate, because I haven’t seen anything on his campaign website or Facebook feed explaining whether he would have voted for or against the bill the Senate approved on February 11. Jacobs did allude to the debt ceiling in this Facebook post of February 7:

For the 4th time in 3 years our country will hit the debt ceiling. The fact that this is a reoccurring issue is evident of the dysfunction in DC.

Elect a proven business leader with experience to fix our runaway deficits, click here: http://bit.ly/1eQNVBo

Here’s the audio clip Ernst’s campaign uploaded to YouTube on February 12. Just under ten minutes long, it’s an excerpt from Jacobs’ January 25 appearance on Simon Conway’s drive-time WHO Radio program. (You can listen to Conway’s podcasts here.) The conservative host challenged Jacobs for saying he would raise the debt ceiling and repeatedly sought in vain to get a straight answer.

Listening to the clip, you can tell Jacobs understands defaulting on U.S. debt would cause a crisis. Presumably, he has been advised not to tell Conway or his multitude of conservative listeners that we can’t pay our bills without raising or suspending the debt ceiling. He keeps dodging and trying to get back to his talking points, but Conway is a bulldog when it comes to follow-up questions.

Here’s my partial transcript, beginning around the 0:40 mark:

Jacobs: And I think what we’re seeing here is that the folks in Washington, our elected officials are not doing their jobs, and–

Conway: OK, but you said you would vote to raise it.

Jacobs: Well, I’m concerned–

Conway: I want to focus on these issues.

Jacobs: Sure.

Conway: Would you, or would you not–let’s be clear–would you, or would you not, if you were in the United States Senate right now, and given a vote in the next couple of weeks to raise the debt ceiling, would you or would you not vote to raise the debt ceiling?

Jacobs: I’d have to see what all was involved, and I would hope that we would be able to also make some progress on some of the spending issues to do that, but I tell you what I’m concerned about, Simon, is, you know, our elected leaders in Washington, we lurch from one crisis to another. And I tell you, I think the idea here, we are, I think, putting Iowa families and Iowa businesses at risk, because the consequences of some of these actions of lurching from one crisis to another, risk our credit rating, risk interest rates going up, and I think that’s going to be bad for families.

What we should be doing, we should have a balanced budget amendment. We should do what we do here in Iowa, which is, we don’t spend any more money than we take in. That’s what I did as CEO of a business. When we went through the budgeting process, we didn’t spend more than we took in, and I think that’s the way that we ought to be aiming for this to work in Washington.

Conway: OK. Let me put it to you like this. Because we out here in the real world, know that no matter what the Republican leadership is saying right now, they probably will not get anything whatsoever from the president in terms of [spending] cuts, and they will be forced to raise the debt ceiling, or say no. That’s gonna be the vote. Raise the debt ceiling, or not raise the debt ceiling. There’ll be no sweeteners to that deal whatsoever, we all know it. […] If you are there, do you vote yes or no?

Jacobs: I’d have to see, again, what the deal looked like–

Conway: I’m giving it to you real clear. We raise the debt ceiling, you get nothing in return.

Jacobs: Yeah, I’d have to see what the deal looked like. Again, I’m very concerned–

Conway: There’s no deal, sir. That’s the point I’m making to you. There’s no deal. You’re not getting a dime in cuts. Not a dime. So you either raise the debt ceiling, or you don’t.

Jacobs: Yeah, again, Simon, let me come back to how I answered the question the first time, which is, I’m concerned here that we’re going to hurt Iowa families and we’re going to hurt businesses in this state by lurching from one crisis to another. And it doesn’t do us any good to lose our credit rating in the United States and have interest rates go up, because that’s going to hurt everybody.

Conway: So the answer is yes, you would.

Jacobs: I think the answer is that I’m very concerned about lurching from one crisis to another.

If his song and dance on the debt ceiling were Jacobs’ only departure from current right-wing orthodoxy, he might be able to get away with it. But he has committed other cardinal sins, such as supporting cap-and-trade legislation to address climate change and giving money to Arlen Specter after Specter became a Democrat. Even with great message discipline and all the money in the world, it’s hard to see how Jacobs can win a GOP primary.

Any relevant comments are welcome in this thread.

UPDATE: On further reflection, it occurred to me that the “broken record” technique Jacobs employs here is often effective as a negotiating or conflict resolution tactic in the business world. Clearly it doesn’t work in this setting, especially when a person keeps reverting to an unnatural phrase such as “lurching from one crisis to another.” That sounds like a rehearsed answer rather than something a normal person would say.

Perhaps Jacobs’ business background is a handicap in this respect. His campaign advisers didn’t prepare him well for this kind of grilling.