Off on another profile-boosting campaign swing through Georgia over the weekend, Governor Kristi Noem called Vice-President-Elect Kamala Harris “the most extreme liberal Senator that we have“:
Noem also told the crowd to make up with anyone they’d fallen out with over the election and talk to them about voting for Loeffler and Perdue Tuesday.
And she pointed to vice president-elect Kamala Harris, who was in Georgia Sunday stumping for Democrats Jon Ossoff and Rev. Raphael Warnock Sunday, as a primary reason Republicans should get back out to the polls.
“If we don’t win the Senate seats, the deciding vote in the Senate is going to be Kamala Harris, the most extreme liberal senator that we have,” she said. “We don’t want that individual breaking ties in the Senate on the most controversial pieces of legislation in this country. We just don’t” [Patricia Murphy, “Gov. Brian Kemp Absent from GOP Campaign Trial in Closing Days,” Atlanta Journal-Constitution, 2021.01.03].
If I were Bernie Sanders, I’d be jealous of such a mis-designation. GovTrack.us does have a 2019 Ideology Score Report Card in which Harris edges Sanders for the top spot in liberalism as measured by bill sponsorship and cosponsorship. Yet GovTrack itself offers this article highlighting some of the bills onto which Harris signed and suggests they don’t represent any extreme ideological agenda, just a desire to help:
- Harris’s Counting Our Unexpected Natural Tragedies’ Victims Act requires a study to determine how we might improve our assessment of how many people are harmed by natural disasters. Senator Harris filed this bill as a response to the federal government’s sloppy response to Hurricane Maria in Puerto Rico in 2017. So it’s liberal to want an accurate count of disaster victims so we can more efficiently and effectively deploy assistance?
- Harris’s Disaster Victims Passport and ID Relief Act waives replacement fees for U.S. passports, visas, and four other immigration documents lost in disasters like the California wildfires and floods of 2017. So if a tornado blows away your sock drawer, you don’t want the government to give you a break on replacing your passport?
- Harris’s Justice for Victims of Lynching Act passed the Senate unanimously in 2018; the House approved a version of the bill named for Emmett Till 410–4 in February 2020. Does that make all Senators and most of the House, including John Thune and Mike Rounds and Dusty Johnson, extreme liberals?
- Harris sponsored the MORE Act to legalize marijuana. On that, she apparently agrees with at least 54.18% of South Dakota voters. South Dakota must be more liberal than Kristi Noem admits.
- Harris sponsored the Rent Relief Act to give tax credits to renters who make less than $125K a year and pay more than 30% of their income for rent and utilities. If helping people keep roofs over their heads amidst 50 years of wage stagnation is liberal, then call me liberal. (Even if it’s just good sense, call me liberal!)
- Harris’s ENOUGH and SHIELD Acts sought to ban revenge porn at the federal level, just like most states, including South Dakota, have. South Dakota’s most recent toughening of its law prohibiting revenge porn came in 2020 Senate Bill 47, requested by our ragingly liberal Attorney General Jason Ravnsborg’s office. It passed 66–0 in our extremely liberal House and 28–4 in our only slightly less liberal Senate.
- Harris proposed a bill to put a statue of Shirley Chisholm, the first Black Congresswoman, in the U.S. Capitol. That’s evidently only a quarter as liberal as Noem’s plan to perch four statues on the South Dakota State Capitol.
- Harris sponsored the Census Equality Act to add a question about sexual orientation. That’s factual, not liberal. And hey, even if you’re conservative, wouldn’t you want to know how many homosexuals live in each state so you could move to the straightest state you could afford?
- Harris’s Family Friendly Schools Act would offer grants to elementary schools to stay open until 6 p.m., giving working families a break on daycare costs and perhaps helping kids learn more. That sure sounds liberal, but conservative South Dakota rarely turns down extra federal dollars for its schools.
- Harris’s Access to Counsel Act sought to clarify that undocumented immigrants have a right to a lawyer. Here Harris touches on the extreme liberalism written into our Constitution: every defendant has a right to legal representation.
But of course, Noem isn’t speaking to people who want to read thorough explanations of public policy and political philosophy. She’s just shouting at people who foam at the mouth and vote Trumpublican when they hear words like Liberal! and Socialism! coming from pretty spokesmodels.
Noem’s spew may sell with the walking dead crowd, but it ignores the reality of the Senate. First, there’s the undemocratic nature of the body itself that values acreage over voters. Next, there’s the filibuster which values minority positions. Let’s say hey get rid of the filibuster. That automatically means the moderate middle gains immense power, and vastly diminishes the power of either extreme. So, no, Harris will be able to push through moderate, compomise legislation. She will be able to make the Senate work the way it used to
Today Jan 5 2021 in the Rapid City Journal a Rodney Fitts injected a lengthy notice supporting the overthrow of Joe Biden and Kamala Harris election wins and demanding Our South Dakota US Senators Thune and Rounds and US Representative Johnson aid in their overthrow.
If you are a South Dakota resident please consider contacting each thru their email links on their respective website..It is important to counter the conspiracy underway to install Donald Trump….. the supposed KING
DS; I wish I knew the email of Rodney and Olga Fitts! I read the garbage ad they put in today’s RCJournal on pg 6 and I guess as a thinking American, how sad that some people can be so misguided for so long. I read it, and weep for America, my country,
ds, I too saw the Fitts screed and marveled at the honesty of their somewhat misguided approach to challenging the presidential election results. While they made claims of an unfair election, their main point is not whether the election was unfair, rather their main objection is to the imagined policies that would be implemented in the USA if the results of the election are not disregarded. They object to democracy when it results in the election of people that have different policy ideas and goals (although their letter evidences extreme confusion and misunderstanding of those actual differences) than their somewhat peculiar policy ideas. They in essence argue that voters are only permitted to support their chosen candidates, which in this case happens to be that documented grifter Trump (e.g. Trump University, along over 2,500 or so documented public lies, mis-statements and misrepresentation, a/k/a “alternative facts”).
What refreshing honesty! Usually Trumpists like Noem are so embarrassed and ashamed of the policies that they advocate that they feel they must create a fictional narrative to excuse or justify their goals. Here, however, the Fitts said it plainly and clearly: their goal is an America where the laws are flexible enough to make sure the political opponents of the Fitts, and only the Fitts, can never be permitted to prevail regardless of the desire of the majority of voters. And that means if a majority of voters desire “socialism,” as uniquely and incorrectly defined by the Fitts, then that majority must be ignored and the results of the votes simply cast side.
Sounds like Rodney went the “Russian bride” route. Guess he couldn’t find a nice South Dakota girl to agree with him.
Can we just state for the record wingnuts know nothing of what they stand for, know nothing what Dems stand for, know nothing of the constitutiion, no nothing of how our government works, known nothing of learning to get along with and work well with others, etc? They don’t even have a grasp of reality, what constitutes truth and what lies are.
Is this Rodney Fitts that Rodney Fitts?
https://madvilletimes.com/2014/05/28/bosworth-notary-broke-law-by-circulating-petition-before-january-1/
Getting tired of magats complaining drumpf actions are bad for America and bad for magat party when they knew all along drumpf is/was capable of pulling these stunts and could have rid America of this menace a year ago and did not bother to check him.
Their hand wringing at this stage is pathetic and disingenous claptrap.I hope voters do not forget the drumpf reign of terrort in the next several elections.
Kelly Loeffler and Hubby who owns NYSE recently became billionaires with many shady stock transactions and c onflicts of interest. Meanwhile, HRC had emails. Lock HRC up!
OK DS here…requesting we all fight the distortions deception and lies of the FOREVER trump peoples and not use demeaning and disparaging comments about them….even though some of them are so two faced that they might deserve it.
So please email you concerns to Thune Rounds And Johnson…our three South Dakota elected officials who will tomorrow decide if they also support the overthrow of the Biden-Harris election results.
The Fitts “open letter” was in yesterday’s Brookings Register and Argus leader, as well. It wasn’t labeled as an ad in the Register, but it was in a box by itself on a different page than the editorials. It was labeled as an ad in the Argus.
One moar thing about Loeffler, she has missed nearly 80% of votes since the election. Sounds like noem junior in blonde.
This might be the last day of the GOP. Good riddance. They have earned it. Every one of them. If we take Georgia, sweet Georgia, I’ll join a church and leave the church of rock’n roll:)
Come on South Dakotans, you know that the maga supporters rallying around the country are really no different than the ghost dancers of the 19th century. Except this time they will just be laughed at. Ignorance and stupidity are tearing the GOP apart and its nice to watch the death of a party that used to pretend they stood for something.
Wow….
Just Wow.
Apparently these people haven’t actually met anyone who is ACTUALLY a leftist.
I had to explain to someone earlier this fall that Bernie is actually barely left of center by world standards and that actual leftists looked at him as their compromise candidate.
This would be funny as heck if it wasn’t for the blinders that large percentages of the state continually wear.
Anthony, I’ve long wondered if they are as naive as you suggest, or if they intentionally mislead people as to who are actual leftists. One who was in the dark about the actual left until sometime in the last decade, I could believe either way, despite my most compelling (and recognizably cynical) interpretation being that people like Noem, who speak in the most basic, uninformative, stereotypical “patriotic” ways, likely mislead their followers.
Regardless, I think the propaganda which prevents people understanding the left is so old, pervasive, and powerful that to me, this problem of mass propaganda and mass misunderstanding, both in history and now, is one of the most daunting, depressing, and frustrating, seemingly central to so many atrocities around the world which have occurred, are occurring, and may occur.
The whole God damned GOP has to share in the just desserts of their cowardly behavior. Rounds is MIA I hope he inhales while he has his fat head buried in the sand.
Gee Georgians didn’t listen to kristi,how can that be? They must like extreme liberals.
It can be challenging seeing the totality of the national picture from South Dakota. Consider these 2 viewpoints.
“The only reason American democracy survived 2020 is because of historic voter turnout, a handful of principled Republican election officials, and an independent judiciary. None of those factors are guaranteed to survive, and without one of them, the whole system would collapse.”
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2021/jan/04/donald-trump-autocrat-cult-democracy
“Republicans have carefully cultivated rot in the voting system. It didn’t start with Trump and it won’t end after he leaves”
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2021/jan/05/trump-is-trying-to-thwart-democracy-itself-but-the-problem-is-deeper-than-one-man
Rot in the voting system… evidently one primary mission for Democrats is to reawaken and re-engage the electorate that Noem and her party have boxed out of participatory democracy. When we all vote, we all win. And when we get past Noem’s labels of “extreme liberal,” we realize we’re just talking about policies that may weaken Noem’s party and campaign donors but improve the overall quality of life for our nation.