Endorsed by Sarah Palin, which is all you needed to know
Where do Republicans
keep digging up these people?
Joni Ernst, the Republican nominee for U.S. Senate in Iowa, appears to believe states can nullify federal laws. In a video obtained by The Daily Beast, Ernst said on September 13, 2013 at a form held by the Iowa Faith & Freedom Coalition that Congress should not pass any laws “that the states would consider nullifying.”
“You know we have talked about this at the state legislature before, nullification. But, bottom line is, as a U.S. Senator why should we be passing laws that the states are considering nullifying? Bottom line: our legislators at the federal level should not be passing those laws. We’re right…we’ve gone 200-plus years of federal legislators going against the Tenth Amendment’s states’ rights. We are way overstepping bounds as federal legislators. So, bottom line, no we should not be passing laws as federal legislators—as senators or congressman—that the states would even consider nullifying. Bottom line.”
Note that she's trying valiantly to couch it in the "would even consider nullifying" language, trying (apparently) to argue that regardless of what you might think of the idea that launched and was ended by the Civil War a hundred years back, the government shouldn't be passing laws that upset any single individual state so much that they would even "consider" marching through those particular woods again. Consider it a state-by-state line item veto of all federal law. You know, like the old Confedera—you know what, never mind. It's a lost cause.
This is flippin' Iowa; while Iowa Republicans are well known for their (ahem) attraction to certain flavors of batshittery, unless there's been one hell of an unremarked-upon earthquake in the last two centuries Iowa has never been considered part of the Deep South. The nullification rhetoric, though, seems to be a new Republican talking point everywhere. There's something about Barack Obama that really brings out the deep-south talking points in the party; again, go figure.