Iowa Senate candidate Joni Ernst has refused to talk issues with her hometown press but she happily appeared on Fox & Friends this morning for a substance-free interview in which the hosts fell over themselves admiring her.

Ernst has come under criticism lately for canceling major editorial board meetings in Iowa in which she would have been asked substantive questions about her policy prescriptions. This as she has deliberately hidden her Tea Party persona under an Iowa-farm-girl persona. As Greg Sargent wrote in the Washington Post, Ernst’s candidacy “has been all about sanding the rough ideological edges off of Ernst’s actual views and policy positions, such as they are, and playing up her biography and personality to make her more palatable to swing voters.”

Media Matters has pointed out some of Ernst’s extremist positions:

Ernst is a climate change denier and has promoted a Glenn Beck conspiracy theory about the “United Nations’ superseding U.S. laws, states nullifying federal laws and impeaching Obama.” She has claimed that Obama has “become a dictator” and should maybe be impeached. The Washington Post has criticized Ernst for trying to “cover her tracks” on her previous support for a ‘personhood’ amendment that would ban abortion and some forms of contraception.

But while Ernst was dodging the tough questions from Iowans, she happily appeared on Fox & Friends. In a 4-minute interview, the Curvy Couch squeezed in two campaign commercials. Ironically, Ernst said her latest ad “just emphasizes my southwest Iowa farm roots.” As she snubbed her home state.

Predictably, that bit of Ernst unpleasantness was never mentioned. Instead, she got softball questions such as this one, from co-host Peter Johnson, Jr.:

It appears you’ve captured the imagination of voters and the national voters’ imagination. Tell us about your background. Why is your experience as a lieutenant colonel in the national guard, an experience in Iraq, and a tour there, how will that assist you in this campaign and how will that assist you in being a United States Senator if you win?

Ernst gave just the kind of shallow, general answer you’d expect from her: She said her military experience gives her “perspective on our international front” and “it’s very important.”

Co-host Brian Kilmeade chimed in to agree: “More now than even when this campaign started, considering what’s happening locally and what’s happening overseas.”

Kilmeade had earlier described Ernst as having “burst on the scene, one of the more exciting new candidates in the midterm elections.” He later teed up an opportunity for Ernst to attack her opponent, Democrat Bruce Braley. In a phony nod at balance, Kilmeade played an attack ad from Ernst’s opponent. Rather than press Ernst on any issue Braley raised, Kilmeade asked, “Your response to that.”

Sure enough, Ernst spent the next – and final – 30 seconds or so of the segment talking down Braley and talking up herself. Uninterrupted, of course.

Watch the lapdogs below from this morning's Fox & Friends.

Update: Ms. Ernst's name was misspelled in the original post.