Iowa GOP Official Hoping US Attorney Will Challenge Harkin?

So ICE decided that today was a nice day to stop by Swift’s Marshalltown meatpacking plant for a checkup, and they arrested a few folks who missed the first ICE bus back in December.

Ted Sporer credits Matt Whitaker, US Attorney for the Southern District of Iowa, with this success:

Today’s actions, which involve the indictment of both a Swift human resources manager and a local Marshalltown labor leader, demonstrate Matt Whitaker’s willingness to expose and disrupt that collusion.

Moreover, the additional indictments show Matt’s commitment to fighting the demand for illegal labor and not just the supply.

That’s all well and good, and it’s what US Attorneys should be doing across the country: enforcing the rules on the books rather than furthering political interests in elections — or getting fired for refusing to do so.

But the really interesting point comes at the end of the post. Keep in mind, Sporer is a Top Dawg at the Iowa GOP (emphasis added):

One has to wonder how the voice of a front line immigration warrior like Matt Whitaker in the United States Senate would have affected the debate over immigration. Since the USA has to eventually address this problem perhaps our future leadership should have some reasonable knowledge of the nature of the problem if we are implement an efficacious solution.

It’s well known that Republicans have had a hard time recruiting candidates to run against Tom Harkin in 2008. Steve King and Tom Latham are both rumored to have flirted with the idea, and King said this week that he wasn’t ruling anything out, but Harkin has beaten more sitting Republican Congressmen than any other US Senator (he has beaten five). Businessman Steve Rathje, a guy with virtually no political experience or name recognition and not much institutional support (at least not yet), is the only declared candidate.

Harkin announced impressive fund raising numbers this week, and his $2 million war chest can’t make the GOP feel any better about their chances. Could Matt Whitaker, a loyal Republican with extremely strong ties to evangelical and conservative organizations but no voting record to attack, emerge as the strongest challenger to Harkin?

I’ve heard all kinds of crazy ideas from different folks about possible challengers to Harkin. Whitaker’s name is the first one that worries me — even if it’s only a little bit.