Last week, in response to the Occupy Iowa protests, Terry Branstad said that he has never participated in a protest. From the Des Moines Register:

“when asked if he had ever participated in a protest, Branstad said he was ‘too busy working on the farm’ and ‘didn’t have time for that.’”

Except that Branstad wasn’t too busy on the farm to join counter-protest to the Vietnam protests in 1967. The Des Moines Register quoted Branstad at the protest who not only participated, but was flabbergasted that someone would protest against the federal government.

“In a hallway Friday, one of Wednesday’s counter demonstrators, Terry
Branstad of Leland, encountered a demonstrator, Kathy Chimera of
Sundusky, Ohio, who was wearing a button that said ‘Resist.’ He told
her that the button made her a philosophical kin of Mississippi’s
anti-integrationist Jim Clark, which started one of those wide-ranging
college arguments that covers everything but US space policy with
another demonstrator, Paul McMullin of Luther. ‘Why, why,’ sputtered
the astounded Branstad at one point, ‘you’re attacking the federal
government.’ ‘Well, well, of course, said McMullin, astonished at the
astonishment and sputtering too.” – Des Moines Register,  11/5/1967

A Republican Governor upset that someone would protest the federal government? Oh how times have changed.

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