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Noem Contradicts Self, Persists in Extremist Slogans and Lies That Lost Georgia

Gary Melvin, editorial cartoon, January 2021.
Gary Melvin, editorial cartoon, January 2021.

Jetsetting Governor Kristi Noem has emitted an incredible volume of malarkey in the past week. She flew all the way to Florida Thursday for a free lunch and for the chance to tell Republican Party leaders the obvious:

…speaking to RNC members Thursday during a private luncheon in Florida during the party’s annual winter business meeting, two weeks before Trump leaves office, Noem said Republicans have fallen short on issues ranging from healthcare to immigration to fiscal discipline. The governor blamed those failures for what happened in Georgia on Tuesday.

“Republicans have had chances to deliver for the American people, and, in the past, we haven’t always followed through,” Noem said. “So, here’s the facts, the facts [are] that we got our butts kicked in Georgia on Tuesday. A 33-year-old with no accomplishments and a smooth-talking preacher got elected [David M. Drucker, “‘We Got Our Butts Kicked’: Kristi Noem Tells RNC Party Failures Led to Georgia Losses,” Washington Examiner, 2021.01.07].

Yet in the very next breath, she epitomized why she’s a big part of that backside-booted “we”:

“And the idea that Georgia would elect two people who embrace the pillars of socialism and communism is ridiculous” [Gov. Kristi Noem, in Drucker, 2021.01.07].

Noem revised that line for publication in the right-wing Federalist to directly call Senators-Elect Raphael Warnock and Jon Ossoff “communists”:

The idea that Georgia, of all places, could elect two communists to the United States Senate was ridiculous [Gov. Kristi Noem, “The Republican Party Has Fail America, and Here’s How It Needs to Change,” Federalist, 2021.01.08].

Noem is, of course, repeating a disproven lie:

Warnock, a Democrat, has spoken in support of small business owners impacted by the pandemic. The false claim that he is a “communist,” which has been repeated during the campaign, appears to have roots in an event from the mid-1990s, when then-Cuban dictator Fidel Castro spoke at a church in Harlem at which Warnock was a junior pastor.

According to the Austin American-Statesman, who investigated the event’s ties to Warnock, said “there is no evidence Warnock was involved in arranging Castro’s appearance or welcoming him.”

Similarly, The Washington Post in October debunked the attack line Perdue used to claim his opponent, Ossoff, had been endorsed by the Communist Party, which is not true [Christopher Vondracek, “Noem Slams Georgia Democratic Senate Run-Off Winners as ‘Communists’, 2 Days After Warning of ‘How We Talk to Each Other’,” Grand Forks Herald, 2021.01.09 ].

Noem just got done telling us that “there are consequences for how we talk to each other in this country.” But she spent her holiday break touring Georgia and practicing exactly such extremist lines on the Georgia electorate… and the immediate consequences were that the Trumpublicans for whom she was campaigning lost.

A rational reading of Noem’s words and the plain evidence of Republican failure in Georgia would lead to the conclusion that Noem is a poor prospect for 2024, as she epitomizes the Trumpist prioritization of mean Tweets and attention-seeking over governing. But Republicans at lunch are not rational:

When a committee member took an informal survey on whose closed-door speech on Thursday members had liked better, that of Gov. Kristi Noem of South Dakota or of Nikki R. Haley, the former United Nations ambassador, the response was clear. The party officials preferred Ms. Noem’s, because she had not criticized Mr. Trump as Ms. Haley did in her remarks, a Republican familiar with the sampling said [Jonathan Martin, “In Capital, a G.O.P. Crisis. At the R.N.C. Meeting, a Trump Celebration,” New York Times, 2021.01.08].

McCarthyism lost Georgia, but if Noem and Republicans want to run on the worst part of Karl Mundt’s legacy in 2024, far be it from me to stop them from losing more elections.

*     *     *

In other self-contradiction, the Rapid City Journal notes that Governor Kristi Noem’s executive order Friday on Amendment A either was a lie or admitted a lie:

Gov. Kristi Noem said in an executive order Friday that she directed the Highway Patrol superintendent to bring a lawsuit against the voter-approved amendment legalizing marijuana after her spokesman previously told the Journal she hadn’t.

“On Nov. 20, 2020, I directed Colonel Rick Miller to commence the Amendment A litigation on my behalf in his official capacity,” Noem wrote in the order. “At all times thereafter, Colonel Rick Miller has acted as petitioner and plaintiff in the Amendment A litigation under my direction.”

Ian Fury, Noem’s spokesman, said in a Nov. 23 email that this wasn’t the case.

“Gov. Noem did not ask Col. Miller or Sheriff Thom to bring the lawsuit,” Fury wrote.

Legal filings also make no mention of the fact that Noem directed Miller to file the lawsuit [Arielle Zionts, “Gov. Noem Says She Ordered Marijuana Lawsuit in Executive Order,” Rapid City Journal, 2021.01.08].

Spokesboy Ian offers this laughable parsing:

The order is procedural, Fury told the Journal on Friday. He also said that the lawsuit was originally Miller’s idea although this is never mentioned in the order.

“She didn’t ask; he volunteered. Once Col. Miller volunteered to be the plaintiff, Governor Noem delegated her authority under the Constitution and instructed him to bring it,” Fury wrote in an email [Zionts, 2021.01.08].

Follow a horse girl, expect to step in lots of horsehockey.

11 Comments

  1. Chris S. 2021-01-11 08:23

    I’m not shocked by much these days, but My Governor Kristi referring to Senator Raphael Warnock, senior pastor at Ebenezer Baptist Church, the mother church of the civil rights movement, as a “smooth-talking preacher”? You can almost *feel* how badly she wanted to say “shucking and jiving,” or just flat-out call him the N-word, simpering coquettishly as her audience hooted and hollered in racist glee. What a despicable disgrace she is.

  2. Ray Tysdal 2021-01-11 08:31

    If Noem is so upset with socialism maybe she’ll get the family farm to give back the $4.88 MILLION in farm subsidies.

  3. Jenny 2021-01-11 08:34

    “We are in danger of destroying ourselves by our greed and stupidity” – Stephen Hawking

  4. Scott 2021-01-11 09:39

    Ray,

    Does that include the $200,000 in Covid bailout money that Racota Ranch got?

    How about the $56,000 that the 1st gentleman’s insurance agency got in the covid bailout?

  5. Mark Anderson 2021-01-11 11:41

    It will take the Republican party years to rid itself of all the extremists that they have allowed into their party. Good luck with that one.

  6. kj trailer trash 2021-01-11 12:51

    She is horrible. Her every word is a disgrace to South Dakota.

  7. Chad 2021-01-11 16:04

    I don’t remember her having any accomplishments when she stepped on the stage in 2007 or 2011. She would have been 36, 40 respectively.

  8. mike from iowa 2021-01-12 09:07

    noem gonna need new sugardaddy to finance her losing potus campaign. Sheldon Adelson left the building. No more financing the ugliest and worst candidates for elective office.

  9. o 2021-01-12 09:49

    Mark, I’m not even so sure Republicans are making the choice to go that path. Welcoming in the Dixi Democrat racists, the Tea Party extremists, and now the MAGA personality cult hasn’t resulted in the party showing anyone the door yet — except the “RINOs” who are willing to be reasonable and compromise to govern and move any issues forward.

  10. Donald Pay 2021-01-12 10:34

    Sen. Mundt was certainly a commie hunter, though what he hunted was more headlines than commies. I read once that he turned into a rabid righty because he claimed he and others had not adequately addressed the pre-World War II Nazi threat, and he didn’t want to be caught ignoring the threat posed by communism. I found that just far too pat an explanation. Hitler, like Trump, Noem and Mundt, also accused everyone of being a communist. It’s a time-honored strategy. It seems as likely that Mundt back then and Noem today simply copy the Hitler way, finding the usual suspects to blame for their own failures in politics or life, or to keep the rabble riled up enough to commit atrocities like Auschwitz or the insurrection at the Capiltol Building.

    Demagogues need to find someone to pick on. Hitler had Jews and communists to pick on. Noem picks on communists, which hardly exist in the US outside of the vivid imaginations of right wing extremists, and, get this, the black and the Jew who won in Georgia. Pretty clear there who Noem will build here socialist ovens for.

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