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Schoenbeck’s Critique of Ineffective Freedom Caucus Applies to Noem

Senate king Lee Schoenbeck levels his party’s Fox/Breitbart-addicted radicals with a critique on his party’s radical “Freedom Caucus” that could apply just easily to his party’s leader, Kristi Noem:

He wants the party to solve problems for South Dakotans, he said, while he alleged some in his party are only interested in whatever pundits are shouting about in partisan media.

“Sean Hannity has never made sure that a train ran on time or a pothole got filled, but they look to these folks like they’re policy people,” Schoenbeck said, referencing a popular Fox News host.

…Some of the divide in the Republican Party is based on rhetoric and temperament. Schoenbeck said Republicans driven by partisan media rants and social media outrage have a tough time fitting in.

“I think it’s fair to say they irritate normal Republicans because they’re just so vitriolic,” he said.

…Four of 18 bills sponsored by the Freedom Caucus’ leaders this session have passed. Schoenbeck said the Freedom Caucus and their allies’ bills rarely succeed because they are often “not well thought-out” pieces of legislation, and when the bill is a good idea, they haven’t carefully considered the consequences of the language in it [Joshua Haiar, “Republican Leaders Flip the Script This Session, Go on Offensive Against Insurgents,” South Dakota Searchlight, 2023.03.04].

Focusing on national pundits? Wallowing in social media outrage? Failing to pass bills? Wow—Kristi Noem may not be on the Freedom Caucus membership list, but she sure makes a good role model for them.

30 Comments

  1. larry kurtz 2023-03-04 08:47

    It just goes to show that when Earth haters have no Democrats to fight they’ll form a circular firing squad and play Rhoden Roulette.

  2. Donald Pay 2023-03-04 09:35

    I agree with Schoenbeck in some of his assessment. They are way, way too involved in national issues that they really don’t deal with issues affecting real people. But, let’s consider Senate Concurrent Resolution 601, which seems to have originated without any public support. Yeah, it’s not a bill, so there is no immediate impact, but you can tell exactly where this buttlicking resolution came from: the nuclear power industry. They are after subsidies and a site to stick nuclear power in South Dakota, and then they’ll have an argument for why South Dakota should construct a nuclear waste dump, which South Dakotans have rejected.

    So, what SCR 601 does is set up a taxpayer funded “study” of the nuclear power. Huh? Where is the groundswell of public support for sticking a nuke plant on Lake Oahe? I don’t see any hands up out there? But our legislators are going to put taxpayer dollars into doing some dirty work for the nuke industry. And they are going to spend your tax dollars to do it. Who is running the Senate: Joe Biden?

    South Dakota is the Saudi Arabia of wind, which in a few short years weaned itself off any government subsidies it had originally and is outcompeting nuclear power, even with that industry’s massive and continuing government subsidies. For any fiscal conservative out there it should have been a no-brainer. No, and hell no. But it seems the elitists and the Freedom Caucus and the few Democrats couldn’t wait to shovel tax money out the door to pave the way for the socialist nuclear power industry.

  3. Jake 2023-03-04 10:15

    I agree with Don wholeheartedly!! Wind in South Dakota, and SOLAR, could provide all energy we need and more for others also. But our lege, is more interested in socialism $$$ on someone’s ‘behind-the-scenes’ “pet:\” project (scheme) tp make big $$$ off of government research and feasibility studies.

    11

  4. Mark Anderson 2023-03-04 10:49

    Republicans can’t help themselves. Their grievances are their driving force. They also want power over everyone. They used to be the party of small government but that was long ago. Now they look to DeSantis as their new leader. Trump is still way ahead of the shortstop but DeSantis is hoping Trump will get convicted. He’ll act mad and actually be glad. It’s the shortstop’s only hope to be centerfielder. Noem is simply a B team cheerleader. She has delusions of grandeur. It’s a sad state of affairs for a party that has no internal structure.

  5. 96Tears 2023-03-04 11:05

    What too many Republicans in Pierre and Washington disregard is the difference between doing the job of governing and the act of feeding raw meat to the base. The latter should have ended the night of the last election. It’s a hell of a lot more out of control in the U.S. House of Representatives than anything that’s happened in Pierre.

    I applaud Senator Schoenbeck’s attempts to replace radicalization with reasonableness in the art of governing. People can make millions selling their souls to the gun lobby and every other destructive lobby in D.C. But in Pierre, there isn’t much financial incentive to burning down the capitol in exchange for favors and fat checks. The incentive driving most people of either party to serve in the legislature is attempting to do the people’s work, no matter how they define “the people’s work.” Otherwise, it isn’t worth the time of sensible people to spend winters in that isolated cow town with substandard dining and lodging alternatives unless you’re a lobbyist with a big expense account. In that case, you’ve got 105 legislators in your sites and they’re easy pickin’s.

    But as Cory indicates, it doesn’t help when the state’s chief executive with her own separate branch of government spends very little time governing. She’s in campaign mode 24/7 for the fifth consecutive year with her sites on returning to the banks of the Potomac River, not the Missouri River.

    I’m glad the legislature rubbed the Queen of Snowflakes’ nose in the manure she routinely spreads in her quest for national office. She doesn’t talk to South Dakotans. She talks to a small, angry and hate filled audience via Fox News and to the billionaires who bankroll bigotry, misogyny, white nationalism and a rancid, false brand of Christianity to keep the nation divided, distracted and at war with each other. That’s the real strategy at work in America. Keep the people feuding so the corporate elites can keep cannibalizing our economy and our tax system.

  6. grudznick 2023-03-04 11:57

    Nuclear power: clean, efficient, wholesome, environmentally friendly, good for what ails you.

  7. 96Tears 2023-03-04 12:00

    Don, I believe the red cape has been lifted.

  8. sx123 2023-03-04 12:42

    I have to agree with Lee on this. The national rhetoric is at insane levels of crazy.

  9. Jake 2023-03-04 14:06

    Grudz, IF it (nuclear power) WERE what you claim, (but it’s NOT)-I’d be for it also. You need to do some research before making blank statements as you just did…. Witness: Chernobyll, Three Mile Island, the disaster in Japan-just to mention a few ;; how do you respond, sir?

  10. leslie 2023-03-04 14:29

    Sounds like Lee, Mike D. and Helene (and maybe some East River lifer Republicans too) have come around to understanding what the May 2019 Mueller Report and the December 2022 Jan 6 Committee concluded and realize Merrick Garland is playing for keeps. And that covid is/was? a pandemic. And that SCOTUS in its present configuration can’t keep playing games for the “small, angry and hate filled audience via Fox News and to the billionaires who bankroll bigotry, misogyny, white nationalism and a rancid, false brand of Christianity to keep the nation divided, distracted and at war”. Rounds, Thune and Dust Bunnie got a little too close to Putin, … they probably realize now, too.

    Entropy! https://youtu.be/IqX1JQ6Dw4E

    Wonder what these Republican obstruction stooges have cost the nation, the world? Lots of zeros.

    NOW to the climate crisis and economic inequality.

  11. leslie 2023-03-04 14:57

    Let’s get busy. South Dakota News Watch–South Dakota News Watch co-sponsor of state democracy conference set for USD on March 10: The state of American democracy, and the role the media play in creating an informed electorate, will be at the heart of a daylong conference.

    That should be timed just about right for the next SD blizzard!! Alternate route would be Greenland to Alaska to Seattle.

  12. LCJ 2023-03-04 15:20

    First all, Les-lie, you don’t make sense and you never have. Just lies and crap you hear from failing news networks.
    Second when Ambulance Chaser Pro Tempore of the Senate was invited to debate Mark Levine on his show he turned into the chicken shix he really is.

  13. grudznick 2023-03-04 15:20

    Mr. Jake, I knew your pa’s nuclear energy. Your pa’s nuclear energy was a friend of grudznick’s. This is not your pa’s nuclear energy.

  14. Jake 2023-03-04 16:13

    You speak in riddles, sir grudz, and please explain what nuclear energy you refer to!

  15. grudznick 2023-03-04 17:24

    Mr. Schoenbeck is indeed much like that fellow named Bruce Banner, in most ways.

  16. larry kurtz 2023-03-04 19:36

    With thoughts and prayers there will be blood.

  17. Mark Anderson 2023-03-05 08:49

    Mac Stipanovich basically is saying the same thing. He’s also pointing out that the Florida Republican Party welcomed the bozos into the party and continued to believe they could control them. Until the couldn’t.

  18. Ben Cerwinske 2023-03-05 09:21

    Schoenbeck was invited to “debate” on Mark Levin’s show? If Mr. Levin was as tough as he thinks he is, he’d debate on more neutral grounds.

  19. leslie 2023-03-05 09:35

    Well LCJ, twitter-user Dusty speaks:

    @RepJohnson
    Feb 15
    “Marcus Rothlisberger was wounded in action in Afghanistan. Unfortunately, our government neglected to provide him with the Purple Heart at that time.”

    Russian snipers were active in Russia’s Afghan War (1979-89 when Putin was KGB). Today a Russian sniper at work in Ukraine reportedly using a 50 caliber weapon which was captured. Dusty was instrumental in introducing Russian NRA honey pot infiltrator, felon Maria Butina to young “Republican” teens at a Black Hills religious retreat center organized with her felonious paramour. Butina was photographed in sexy fashion with the new ORSIS T-5000 sniper rifle at its Moscow production facility with her handler Alexander Torshin, a Russian official tied to Vladimir Putin, introducing and test firing it with NRA President Brownell and Milwaukee Sheriff Clark. Orsis specifically designed it to pierce US military personnel armor.

    Putin recently said “US forces … tried … to instill their own norms and … political organization of society,” in comments to teenagers at an educational facility in Russia’s far east, per Reuters. Thune, later on July 4, traveled to Moscow.

    “Butina … and Torshin … used their NRA contacts to try to arrange a meeting between Putin and Donald Trump.” She personally called on Trump at one of his campaign stops. https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2018/08/did-alleged-russian-spy-maria-butina-cause-a-leadership-shake-up-at-the-nra-1/

    Dusty is chasing China’s PLA now, having been stung by Putin.

    LCJ-who is Mark Levine (A 2016 study which sought to measure incendiary discourse on talk radio and TV found that Levin scored highest on its measure of “outrage”), that guy? A Koch-backed talking head.

    Pls link us to his run-in w/ the Senate President Pro Temp you are outraged enough over, to bring it up here. An example of projecting “lies and crap you hear from failing news networks” perhaps?

  20. Richard Schriever 2023-03-05 09:41

    Perhaps the only truly safe place for a nuclear fusion plant siting would be the bottom of the old Homestake mine. 2.5 miles under the rock of the Hills. Abandon it and it floods – quickly. Impervious to destruction my atomic weapons.

  21. Richard Schriever 2023-03-05 09:50

    “Florida Republican Party welcomed the bozos into the party and continued to believe they could control them. Until the(y) couldn’t.” Hmmm, you mean like nuclear physicists and those reactor plants they “control”?

  22. larry kurtz 2023-03-05 09:53

    Thanks to Republicans like Mr. Schoenbeck few policymakers dispute the reasons educated people are fleeing my home state of South Dakota.

    The state’s governor is a reactionary cracker. Infrastructure is crumbling. Industrial agriculture is smothering wildlife habitat. Churches are girding for gun violence. Meth has replaced alcohol as the state’s drug of choice. Pierre’s culture of corruption and attacks on kids have ended open government. Native wildlife are being exterminated to make way for disease-ridden domestic livestock and exotic fowl. Jails far outnumber colleges. Bankers continue to enslave landowners and the state’s medical industry triopoly operates without scrutiny. Teachers’ wages in South Dakota surf the bottom because Republicans are Balkanizing education amid a fight over Critical Race Theory.

    Yet, South Dakota is most lucrative state to practice medicine so why isn’t there a regulatory body like the South Dakota Public Utilities Commission to regulate medical care costs? Because the state is a corporatist tax haven for an exclusive set of Republicans while over $3 trillion languishes in South Dakota banks.

    Any registered nurse with at least half a brain will leave for Minnesota, Colorado or the Southwest the instant they graduate so the work force in South Dakota just gets stupider and more Republican. The only worse state for nurses to work is Alabama. In fact, 21 of the bottom feeder states are all red and the best paid nurses work in blue states!

    With friends like Lee Schoenbeck who needs enemas?

  23. chris 2023-03-05 10:46

    The core of the freedom caucus in the sd house- oh, “austrian economics” and toy gadsden flags… & What’s with that haircut, son?

  24. grudznick 2023-03-05 11:20

    grudznick, like my close personal friend Lar, dislikes the exotic fowl proliferating in South Dakota. Not pheasants, they are fine. I’m talking about those Polish Chicken things.

    Mr. Chris, are you referring to Mr. Aylward’s high-and-tight coif?

  25. All Mammal 2023-03-05 13:46

    In the barber industry, it is referred to as ‘the Hitler youth’, Mr. G. Among stylists, the ‘faschy’.

  26. All Mammal 2023-03-05 13:58

    It might be time to cross Leslie and DFP off your sh it list, LCJ. You might be pretending to be a hater of what you secretly love.

  27. grudznick 2023-03-05 17:27

    grudznick is a connoisseur of barbers and the outcomes of their work. I have been curious about Mr. Aylward’s faschy.

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