Governor Kristi Noem is not governing this week… but how could anyone tell the difference?
Our Governor is out of the office, gallivanting around the country campaigning for Donald Trump while coronavirus undermines her record back here at home:
South Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem is on a multi-state campaign tour as an official surrogate for President Donald Trump’s reelection campaign, her office said Tuesday.
…State health officials reported 105 new cases on Tuesday, the same day Noem was speaking at a Women for Trump campaign event in Ohio. The governor has said she is focused on hospitalizations from COVID-19, which stand at 68.
[Noem spokesboy Ian] Fury said Minnesota and Oregon are also on her travel schedule, and she made stops in four other states in the lead-up to the convention in August. He said that state funds have not paid for Noem’s travels [“South Dakota’s Noem Hits Campaign Trail as Trump Surrogate,” AP, 2020.09.08].
Note that only one of those three states is considered a tight battleground in Politico‘s latest analysis. Perhaps Team Trump knows Noem is pretty but also pretty boring as a speaker. They only send her into the fire in Minnesota because she’s close by and may draw more press attention there with her familiar Midwestern boringness.
At her Ohio meeting with Republican women, Noem inspired calls to impeach her fellow Republican Governor Mike DeWine:
It was supposed to be a Women for Trump meet-up.
But at times a gathering Tuesday of a little more than 100 people in the president’s Ohio campaign headquarters — at least three-quarters of whom were not wearing masks — sounded more like rally against Republican Gov. Mike DeWine.
…Noem described how she disdained a push by state health officials to require masks, limit business activities and take other actions to halt the spread of COVID-19.
Nothing was said about how all those actions contrasted with those of her fellow GOP governor, DeWine.
That is, until Judi Phelps, owner of a weapons training center and shooting range in southeast Ohio, stood up to ask the first question.
“I thought you were an interesting choice given we have a spineless governor in our state,” Phelps told Noem as most of the Trump supporters gave her sustained applause. “This is pretty hypocritical that they would invite you, although I’m glad they did.”
Noem did not specifically talk about DeWine, but she did say that her state could serve as a template.
“What I would say is that we can be an example that you can point to,” Noem said. And she warned the Ohioans that trouble comes when leaders overstep their authority in a time of crisis.
That led to repeated cries of “impeach DeWine” from Phelps and others [Darrel Rowland, “Presidential Campaigns Reset in Battleground Ohio After Labor Day,” Columbus Dispatch, 2020.09.08].
Kristi was in Iowa last Friday with her 2024 whisperer Corey Lewandowski. She was out and about for much of August, too, attending the Republican National Convention in North Carolina and Washington, D.C., after personally delivering two of her kids to college and graduate school in Missouri and Tennessee. With this busy travel schedule, one could wonder when she finds the time to do her actual job. We can only hope that Noem’s absence from the Second Floor with her gaggle of proagandists gives the real brains of the outfit, chief of staff Tony Venhuizen, some time to quietly direct state government toward more intelligent performance.
Maybe they fenced her out of the guv’s mansion in Pierre.
Do her job? What job? Isn’t her job to talk on Fox & Friends, and whenever there’s a crowd and a horse, to ride the horse carrying a flag? What more do you want? What more could any South Dakotan want, where our freedoms are safe from any control or oversight whatsoever? Unless, of course, you actually want some sort of oversight on her spending or perhaps some money for coronavirus supplies at schools or… Well, it’s easier to just not be here and so unavailable for questions, isn’t it? Gag.
How soon before the entire country realizes the SD Snow Queen is nothing more than a Sarah Barracuda, a flashy, self-promoting empty suit/pair o’ jeans with no real policy or leadership value? How’s that workin’ out for ya? You betcha! !@#%^&*
Loren, the rest of the country may figure it out sooner than South Dakota, where the press and the opposition are too often too cowed by the one-party apparatus to call out real government incompetence and corruption. People in the rest of the country are less motivated to put up with Noem’s horsehockey. She’ll draw crowds from the hormone-driven Trumpists, and that is certainly a powerful group in terms of votes and donations. Lewandowski is evidently trying to build Noem into a Trump-level celebrity who can make up for her lack of previous national cachet with her photogenicity and her actual experience in government.
“Focused on hospitalizations”? Isn’t that convenient? Let’s just cherry pick the number that makes us look best out of the morass of numbers. Let’s just ignore the fact that we tested minimally and contact traced not at all. Let’s not focus on the real problem which is that the positivity factor has gone through the roof for our four most populous counties while our governor is flying around solidifying her political future.
They say Governor Noem is handing out $400,000,000 to small businesses. Do blogs constitute a small business?
Frequent flyer miles to her personal account fast accumulating? Let’s track her next vacation.
Robin, Noem is doing a fine job of cherry-picking her stats.
Former iowa guv Braindead quits as dumbassador to China so he can campaign for drumpf in iowa. I must be on glue.
https://www.rawstory.com/2020/09/is-the-gop-really-that-desperate-ambassador-to-china-resigns-so-he-can-campaign-for-trump-in-iowa/
Despicably desperate deplorables.