I’ve seen a lot of hippie-punching by professional Democrats, but the Iowa Democratic Party’s attack on Iowa Citizens for Community Improvement yesterday was a particularly cynical example.  

Candidate Terry Branstad promised to make it harder for some people to vote. He wants to turn back the clock, reversing a national trend of thirteen years.

In the early days of the USA only property owners could vote. A hundred years later all barriers to voting were gone except the one that kept women away from the polls. Then new barriers were built against Blacks and felons, notably poll taxes and other tests that were unfairly applied.

Branstad thinks it terrible that everyone might be able to vote: “All of the sudden you're just going to make 50,000 people eligible to vote,” he fretted. Imagine that!  
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The iowa Farmers Union has endorsed Chet Culver for Governor.  IFU President Gary Hoskey warned in last weeks' Iowa Farmer Today that “Branstad … can't be trusted” to do what's in Iowa's best interests.

This diary is actually a response to a desmoinesdem post earlier today.  I was going to make a comment, but my response was more robust, so here are my two cents that attempts to answer the burning question:

How did former Governor Terry Branstad avoid a Tea-Party challenger, when so many other Republicans around the U.S. have not?

Let’s be clear.  Everyone knows that Terry Branstad was not a pure conservative while he was governor of Iowa.  However, this year we have seen several candidates who were challenged from the right because many believed that they were not conservative enough, whether it be Charlie Crist in Florida, or Senator Bob Bennett in Utah.  To be clear, this is happening on the Democratic side too (i.e. Senator Blanche Lincoln in Arkansas and Senator Arlen Specter in Pennsylvania), so this is not only one party’s quest for purity.  However, this post is about the GOP.