Republicans play class warfare. Consider today’s post from Dakota War College, in which Pat Powers slimes Democratic candidate for U.S. House Tim Bjorkman for riding in the Sioux Falls Fourth of July parade in a BMW.
Powers attempts to portray Bjorkman as an elitist compared to his Republican opponent Dusty Johnson, who was “pounding the pavement” in Belle Fourche. Strangely, Powers does not mention Bjorkman’s own Independence Day pavement-pounding in Kranzburg and Watertown:
Hope you had a great Independence Day! I was able to be in Kranzburg and Watertown parades, both great parades with awesome crowds! Overall our campaign had a presence in 14 different parades! Thanks to all the volunteers who made that possible! #TimBjorkmanForSD pic.twitter.com/8draBj6zkA
— Tim Bjorkman (@TimBjorkmanSD) July 5, 2018
The GOP spin machine’s hang-up with BMWs isn’t some new fawning for Trump. In 2014, Powers thought Democratic U.S. Senate candidate Rick Weiland’s BMW somehow disqualified him for public office. In 2009, the SDGOP greeted Scott Heidepriem’s announcement of his Democratic gubernatorial bid with an irrelevant and counterfactual swipe at his erstwhile BMW ownership.
Besides, is there anything wrong a driving a nice solid piece of German engineering? Do Republicans really want to posit that anyone who drives a vehicle of a certain price—say, a Ferrari F430 F1 Coupe, a custom Cadillac limousine, a Lamborghini Diablo VT Roadster, a Rolls Royce Silver Cloud, and a Mercedes-Benz SLR McLaren—cannot serve in public office?
And it’s not like Bjorkman or Weiland or Heidepriem ever bought a BMW with taxpayer dollars. That’s Republican Scott Pruitt’s gig: he made us upgrade the usual EPA chief’s Chevy Tahoe to a larger Suburban LT decked out with leather. Actually, Pruitt made us lease out two new Suburbans for him, even while keeping the old Tahoe on the books. Three SUVs for one public official—that’s the kind of thing that disqualifies a guy from public office.
Update 17:19 CDT: What’s next, Pat: picking on Billie Sutton for his parade wheels?
Update 17:31 CDT: Also burning up affordable shoe leather on the Fourth of July: Bernie Sanders, age 76, in Warren, Vermont:
Hey, are those fancy German sneakers Bernie’s wearing?
Update 19:00 CDT: Bjorkman backers Owen Reitzel and Frank Kloucek mustered this BMW—Bjorkman Multi-Wheeler—for the parade in Menno:
Update 2018.07.06 12:52 CDT: Gee, what kind of image does John Thune project by having his daughters ride in the 2016 Fourth of July parade in Belle Fourche in an expensive convertible?
Pat Powers is a fat little Man. All his stories are so biased and full of hatred. The sad thing is people read his garage and believe it to be true. I’ve also heard he is paid by the GOP to write bad stories about other GOP candidates. It’s really a sad situation. He attacked Krebs, Noem, and Fitzgerald relentlessly.
Lots of BMW’s made in Spartanburg USA
I’ve got one
The SDGOP playbook has only 4 or 5 pages. This post is from the “make the opponent look like an out of touch elite” page.
The next dog eared page to be consulted will be “the Tim Bjorkman will sacrifice the blood of kittens and babies on an alter dedicated to Nancy Pelosi” page. That page likely has the “a vote for Bjorkman is a vote for Trump impeachment” variation on the theme.
My wife is very glad we are cord cutters and don’t have to deal with political ads.
Here’s a nice petty republican tidbit I found on Bob Newland’s Facebook page awhile ago, “SD legislator Stacey Nelson told me that women use their free will to be raped. He then denied having said it. When I asked him to clarify what he said he called me a crackhead
And thus the corrupt GOP crony messaging begins. Koch Brothers-1 are undoubtedly very happy here. Tim, prepare for a visit from TRUMP & his pack of wolves to SD. The salivating gnashing of Thune, Rounds and Noem will be in the gladiatorial stands awaiting Democratic bones. They all read the same playbook. We must be absolutely united, Dems, Progs, Indies against the clear enemies of 99% of South Dakotans. They hope to make our island and surrounding ocean of prairie into another Cayman Islands money laundering/tax haven using the existing simpleton republican legislature.
Roger, I hate to get into hearsay. It can be as unreliable as a typical Powers post.
Notice also that Powers didn’t establish whose BMW Bjorkman snagged for the parade. Is it his or a supporter’s car? I’m not even sure I see Bjorkman in the car in the picture Powers posts.
If you’re fielding entries in fourteen parades around the state on the same day, and a supporter volunteers his car, should you really turn him down just because the car is a BMW?
I was handing out candy, fly swatters and bags yesterday with Frank Kloucek in Menno yesterday in their parade.
Our mode of transportation was a old golf cart which was generously given to us to use. Don’t believe the cart was made by BMW. I should send the picture to Powers
Mercedes, BMW, Toyota, Honda, VW, all from American factories with foreign owners. Budweiser, Coors, Miller, Pabst, all from American factories with foreign owners. Republicans like Pat Powers prove daily what ignorant souls they are and especially, with business.
Donald Trump, to his Fargo supporters, last week: “We’ve got more money and more brains and better houses and apartments and nicer boats. We are smarter than they are. They say the elite. We are the elite. You are the elite.”
What has 600 eyes, 300 noses, 600 ears and 12 teeth? The front row of trump supporters at that Fargo rally. Most definitely elite material to work with there, probably all wondering where the hell South Carolina is and what the hell a BMW is.
At least he was riding in a 4th of July parade in the good ol’ US celebrating American independence. He wasn’t in Russia attending the ballet and waving a white flag of surrender, right Big John?
Trump’s boast about having more money, nicer boats and houses, and (sic) “more brains” doesn’t exactly evoke memories of ‘four score and seven years’ or ‘ask not what your country can do’. But I guess it plays well with his crowd. I know we’re not supposed to use the term “deplorable” any more, but what would you call it?
Curt, I still say “deplorable.” I have a hard time calling things anything other than what they are.
This is the response I submitted as a comment to Mr. Powers’ blog post today at around 7 pm tonight. I’m also submitting it as a comment to your post on this topic.
“Mr. Powers, I’d like to set the record straight about your post
concerning my dad. He wasn’t in the Sioux Falls parade, something that
would have been clear to anyone who tried to verify truth. My dad never
rides in any parade. He is a fit guy and actually walked and, at times,
ran through both the Kranzburg and Watertown parades, taking time to
shake many hundreds of hands along the routes. He arrived in Kranzburg
just after 9:00 am for that parade, and was at the Watertown parade
until after 4:00 pm. The man in the picture that seems to have been
passed on and published by you without effort to verify is a volunteer
who drove his own car in the Sioux Falls parade, which began at 10:00
am. These links will show my dad in the parade. Please see the photos of
the parades in the links below.
https://www.facebook.com/timbjorkmanforcongress/
https://mobile.twitter.com/TimBjorkmanSD
This disappointing effort of yours reflects how misinformation is so
casually passed on these days in the name of politics and why it turns
off so many people.”
Thanks, Cory.
Sam
Thats all they’ve got?
That’s the best they can do?
Stop the presses! News Flash!
SDGOP doesn’t like Tim Bjorkman’s car in a 4th of July Parade!
smh
Tim was in Kranzburg and Watertown, where he walked and ran through both parades, greeting folks and enjoying Independence
Day. A volunteer drove the decorated nice classic car he and his wife own in the Sioux Falls parade while Tim supporters, including me, passed out mints and material to enthusiastic and supportive crowds. They loved it. Pat Powers should be ashamed of his lie and distortion, and he should apologize. I won’t hold my breath waiting.
I had to chuckle at Pat’s post. I was at the SF parade and did not see Tim in it. I had actually asked someone if he was going to be in the SF parade ahead of time and they said ‘NO’. I see later it was clarified that the guy driving the car was a volunteer supporter. However in the same parade I saw many Republican candidates in Big, New, Ford Trucks, and ironically, Republican Minnehaha County Commission Chair, Cindy Heidberger in the EXACT same car Pitty Patt refers to. Oh the irony. Maybe she had a ‘Heidberger’ sign on one side and a ‘Bjorkman’ sign on the other side?
Kal is right. It’s a playbook. Remember when Ms Noem called Matt Varilek (her opponent at that time) an out of touch elite? That he was a jet-setter, studied abroad, and presented “environmental papers”….. At the time, the SDGOP exec director said, “She’s South Dakota, he is not”. Gawd
Why do they do that? Because it works. Lemmings
Powers is just a little tattle tale, who has not matured past 12. A perfect fit for the trumpers, petty and smug to go with his elite status. BMW, American made and nicely equipped $33.000.00
Big New Ford trucks, Canadian made, $55.410 nicely equipped.
So there ya go. Tim Bjorkman is someone who appreciates quality of his American made BMW as do the Ford truck owners appreciate their value in Canadian made Ford trucks, Sometimes it is good when a middle schooler tries to be an adult, in Powers case, it just shows his insecurity as a gossip.
Isn’t that the bedrock of South Dakota, to work to keep our fiscal house in order? Tim Bjorkman will do just that in Washington, let us send him to do that job.
Sam, Tom, and South DaCola all confirm that Bjorkman was not riding in the Sioux Falls parade as Powers claimed. Powers gets his facts wrong, but he doesn’t apologize or correct the record. Instead, he offers this flaccid dismissal of the facts as subordinate to his preferred narrative:
Let that stand as reassurance that you can’t trust what Powers says, and you can’t trust him to set the record straight when he’s proven wrong.
I was at the Watertown Parade and was initially disappointed that I sat on the wrong side of the street to get a chance to shake Tim Bjorkman’s hand, but then after a bit, he came running down our side of the street, making sure to greet everyone. That kind of effort will get him elected. Dusty wasn’t in Watertown that I saw. Neither Governor candidate was there although there was a loud cheer as the Sutton contingent walked by and silence when the Noem group passed. Very odd that Kristi wasn’t there since she lives just down the road a bit.
Pat Powers is a man child. He is the bully that never grew up. He just rails on irrelevant people because he has no logical arguments to make to actually foster logical discussion within his blog. Then again, his main audience doesn’t understand a dated BMW isn’t worth half as much as a new truck driven by Republican candidates.
Someone remind me. How many planes does Mike Rounds own? Aren’t they more expensive than BMWs?
Hank, Kristi appears to have chosen to spend the 4th in the Black Hills, appearing in Belle Fourche, Spearfish, Lead, and Deadwood.
The plague is devastating America. This plague infects the language and makes it unusable for anything but destroying all human enterprises for doing good. Powers was a carrier of this linguistic plague which developed into the pandemic that enabled Trump to spread the disease from the highest office in the land. Orwell forecast the plague when he wrote, “Political language…is designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable, and to give an appearance of solidity to pure wind.” It is significant to note that we have reached a point where Powers and Trump intensify and openly display their derangement. That seems to be because nationally 40 percent of the people have lost their ability to discern or care about facts and truth, and in South Dakota it is a clear majority. The mistake in dealing with this plague is in assuming that those infected can be cured with reason and integrity of language. Plagues are best dealt with by quarantining the infected and the carriers and letting the disease run its course with them, while the healthy work on strengthening the antidotes of education and communication. Engaging the Powers and Trumps only contributes to the deterioration of the language and the derangement of the people. Our obligation to each other and our children is to arm them against the spread of “political language.”