I mentioned the other day how Kristi Noem’s campaign team is trying to make hay over CPAC and the American Conservative Union’s ranking of Jamie Smith’s gubernatorial running mate, Jennifer Keintz, as the second-most liberal legislator in South Dakota. (Remember, being called the second-most liberal legislator in South Dakota is like being called the second-tallest marigold in a sunflower patch.)
Reporter Jeremy Fugleberg notes the greater hilarity and statistical dissembling in Team Noem’s effort to cherry-pick those already conservatively cherry-picked CPAC/ACU voting-record rankings into a ding on Smith, whose occasionally pragmatic votes place him in the bottom half of his Democratic caucus for liberalism:
Team Noem says “Jamie Smith is one of the 10 most liberal legislators in South Dakota,” when Fugleberg’s read of the CPAC/ACU numbers pegs Smith as #10 out of 11 Democratic legislators.
That’s like saying Prostrollo Auto Mall is one of the two worst places to buy a car in Madison. That’s like saying that South Dakota is one of the 49 best-paying states for teachers in America. That’s like saying SDPB is one of the top one jazz radio stations in South Dakota.
That’s like saying nothing… which is the amount of meaning we can expect any time Kristi Noem and her team open their mouths.
Jamie Smith hasn’t taken $5 million in ag subsidies or used his Obamacare DC coverage for cosmetic surgery.
President Thomas Jefferson was a liberal; President Eisenhower was a liberal. America is a liberal democracy whether Earth haters like Mrs. Noem believe it or not.
Now that “liberal” has been pushed into a pejorative space, what is the proper, positive branding for a political figure who wishes to make positive changes?
Liberal is such a cool name, even a city in Kansas has it. “S.S. Rogers built the first house in what would become Liberal in 1872. Rogers became famous in the region for giving water to weary travelers. Reportedly, Liberal gained its name from the common response to his acts of kindness, “That’s very liberal of you.” In 1885 Rogers built a general store, and with it came an official U.S. Post Office. Rogers named the post office ‘Liberal’.
So have a cool drink of water and be liberal, it’s that cool.
We will progress if the majority of South Dakotans ever wake up and finally come out of their “political Stockholm Syndrome”. 🙄
A top thing about being a liberal in 2022 is we have zero need to defend anything we do or don’t do. Just say, “Trump”.
Two sentences in the paragraph below sum up recent damage Democrats will once again have to repair in Republicans’ never ending assault on behalf of billionaires. Louis Powell’s 1971 white paper “started” it after 60’s Goldwater initiation.
Smith is knowingly stepping into the breach.
[The] House Select Committee investigating the events of January 6th, … left an indelible portrait of Donald Trump as a food-throwing despot willing to encourage an armed mob to march to the Capitol. And, in addition to an attempted coup, we have him to thank for 2022’s becoming the turning point of the Supreme Court’s conservative revolution.
In a single week in [this] late June, the conservative Justices asserted their recently consolidated power by expanding gun rights, demolishing the right to abortion, blowing a hole in the wall between church and state, and curtailing the ability to combat climate change. The Court is not behaving as an institution invested in social stability, let alone in the importance of its own role in safeguarding that stability. https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2022/07/11/the-supreme-courts-conservatives-have-asserted-their-power
Conservative Fox News Law ProfessorJohnathan Turley was on late last night BBC surprisingly, but whining that the constitution was born of violence and we should respect that this new 6-3 conservative court is doing exactly what the founders envisioned. Yeah, and Rush Limbaugh told the truth for decades!
The only thing the GOP stands for is swallowing Rupert Murdoch propaganda hook line and sinker. This has been going on since the Goldwater 60s. Even the 50s w/ Trump’s daddy’s lawyer Cohen and the black-listing red scare. And the North/South division over slavery in the 1850s. Which former President John Adams tried before the post-revolutionary war (1820s-30s) SCOTUS, and won (For 8 ½ hours, the 73-year-old Adams passionately and eloquently defended the Africans’ right to freedom on both legal and moral grounds, referring to treaties prohibiting the slave trade and to the Declaration of Independence.) https://www.archives.gov/education/lessons/amistad#background
Smith deserves a majority victory. One state at a time, we must neutralize this racist states rights, science denying religious zealotry, originalist constitutionalist, right-wing belief system that pandemic-infects every good cause in America, on behalf of the greed of the super-rich.
VOTE BLUE against economic inequality and climate change.
“If by a “Liberal” they mean someone who looks ahead and not behind, someone who welcomes new ideas without rigid reactions, someone who cares about the welfare of the people-their health, their housing, their schools, their jobs, their civil rights and their civil liberties-someone who believes we can break through the stalemate and suspicions that grip us in our policies abroad, if that is what they mean by a “Liberal”, then I’m proud to say I’m a “Liberal.” – – -John F. Kennedy
A Noem ad: I’m pretty, vote for me! I’m not a blonde, but I can be! Vote like Fury and Lewandowski.
Poetic, Mark, but could be harsher. It’s been a bad day for me, so I’m fresh outta swear words.
This just in, grudznick has once again been voted the most loved Conservative with Common Sense on this blog place.
At least 5 years running!
Good one. Bear 👍🏻
buckobear, wonderful JFK quote, but that is my point: where has that vitality and positive branding been the past 4 decades? Maybe I’m over sensitized to the perception of a negative connotation (not mine, but what seems to be the VASt majority around me) because of my geography?
Grudz –was the vote Grudznick 1 the rest of the world 0 ?
Arlo, I seconded the nomination for grudz. It was no contest.
What a hideous gaggle of losers the SDGOP is running. There isn’t a single one that doesn’t reek of Trump.
O
I like “intelligent” because it can never describe any Reptilian or Conservative and very few Libertarian legislators.
O, it won’t matter what term we adopt to describe our politics; the Republican propaganda machine will put mock quotes around it and continue to degrade us as enemies of the state, We might as well recapture JFK’s boldness and sell our meanings rather than letting Republicans constantly Newspeakishly steal words away from us.
That’s why I keep Liberal in my masthead. I surrender to no one else’s narrative.
Jamie Smith and Jennifer Keintz, like most good Democrats, are liberals. They believe in progress toward greater liberty for everybody. If Republicans don’t like that, that’s Republicans’ problem.
Wondering what happened to the special session Kristi has been crowing about? Is it possible Ian and Corey have convinced her she has p….. off enough people for now, and should keep her head down?
Good question, Phil—see Thursday’s post on Noem’s failure to follow through on that hasty promise.