Kim Reynolds says 'Biden and his party have sent us back in time' in GOP response to SOTU

• Kim Reynolds said Biden has failed to unite Americans during the GOP's State of the Union response.
• She focused on how Iowa and GOP governors have managed the pandemic in contrast to Biden.

Iowa Gov. Kim Reynolds said that "Biden and his party have sent us back in time," in the Republican Party's formal response to President Joe Biden's State of the Union address.

"Instead of moving America forward, it feels like President Biden and his party have sent us back in time to the late '70s and early '80s," Reynolds said. "When runaway inflation was hammering families, a violent crime wave was crashing on our cities, and the Soviet army was trying to redraw the world map."

The Iowa Gov. wore a pin bearing the American and Ukrainian flags and said that the US "can't project strength abroad and be weak at home," arguing that the administration has failed in its Afghanistan and Russia policies.

Tuesday marks a breakout moment of sorts for Reynolds, who has yet to cut a national profile like her fellow GOP governors Ron DeSantis or Kristi Noem. But while Reynolds has yet to test the 2024 waters like her counterparts in Florida or South Dakota, she leads Iowa in almost a mirror image of their examples.

Like DeSantis, Reynolds has positioned her state as an alternative to Biden's management of the pandemic. She signed a ban on school-imposed mask mandates into law. When Washington pressured businesses to mandate that their employees get the COVID-19 vaccine, Iowa responded by granting unemployment insurance to any worker that was fired for holding out. Reynolds lifted a limited mandate last February and chastised local cities that defied her wishes as the Delta and Omicron variants spread.

"What happened to our kids over the last two years is unconscionable," Reynolds said, stressing that "Republicans believe that parents matter."

During President Biden's address, he said that, "Our kids need to be in school," which prompted lawmakers from both sides of the aisle to give him a standing ovation.

Reynolds added that "keeping schools open is only the start of the pro-parent, pro-family revolution that Republicans are leading in Iowa and states across this country."

"That's why Iowa was the first state in the nation to require that schools open their doors. I was attacked by the left; I was attacked by the media. But it wasn't a hard choice. It was the right choice," Reynolds said.