It was a simple question

Kristi Noem doesn’t answer hypotheticals. She made that clear. Crystal clear.  She wanted to talk about the sex criminal who impregnated a little girl in Ohio. It was a curious diversion given that even in 2022 America there seems to be no evidence of disagreement about the evil and horror of either the child sex abuser or the sex criminal.

On Sunday, CNN’s Dana Bash asked Governor Noem a direct question. The answer was revealing mostly for what the ambitious Governor didn’t say.  It was an abortion question, and it wasn’t complex. It was basic. In fact, it simply required a statement of the obvious, a basic understanding of South Dakota law and an assertion of conviction from the putative Presidential candidate who claims deeply held beliefs. Why didn’t she do that?

Bash asked a question that Noem tried to elude through a mix of pablum, personal details and diversionary clap trap. Why? Why wouldn’t Kristi Noem say what she believes out loud proudly?  Why wouldn’t she celebrate the victory for life and deliver a squinty-eyed glint to the camera and say, “Damn right. South Dakota is a pro-life state, and it is illegal for the 10-year-old child who was raped to terminate the pregnancy. She will carry the rapist’s child to term in South Dakota. The tragedy of the rape cannot be made more tragic with child murder.”

That is the consequence of the law after all. It is the consequence of a radical Supreme Court decision that will profoundly destabilize American society in the immediate future. Why not own it? Why not celebrate it?  The simple reason is because now that the Kabuki is over, Roe is gone and the extremists are ascendant with an iron grip on the tainted, tarnished, radical, political and activist Supreme Court. The last line of defence for personal freedom is in the hands of voters, who will reject the dogma of government control if they understand it clearly. 

Noem has become a code talker and her elliptical responses are as indecipherable to voters as Navajo code was to the Japanese.  That is her strategy and the strategy of an extremist movement that seeks power through lies and deception for the purpose of establishing control over every facet of private behavior imaginable – that is, if you are a woman.

It is important to remember that there is no Big Government quite like the big government peering through the bedroom window. Puritan politics mixed with political hypocrisy and religious zealotry has a bad track record in America. Yet despite the clear record of disaster and misery they have produced, their apostles remain undaunted in 2022.  The failure to effectively challenge, confront and push back on the extremism is the signal failure of both the Biden Presidency and the moribund Democratic party, which has somehow managed to put itself into a position of imminent electoral annihilation against an assortment of extremists, criminals, frauds, seditionists, liars and weirdos who support an agenda of craziness – one that is rejected by an overwhelming popular majority. It is a staggering achievement.

Men don’t like to talk about abortion. It makes them uncomfortable. There is no subject that triggers more twitchiness, eye darting, crossed arms, shoe staring, run for your life body language than abortion on the male focus group participant. These issues are perpetually framed as women’s issues when they might more precisely be thought of as freedom issues. It  is certainly the case that men have a role in most pregnancies. What legal penalties will be imposed by the State on men involved in an illegal abortion? It isn’t a trivial question.

Noem made clear that women having an illegal abortion in South Dakota would not face jail time, only the doctors and nurses who perform them would.  Why though?  How could a doctor be jailed for performing a medical procedure on a consenting woman while the consenting woman is held harmless?  It makes no sense. Perhaps Noem is a smart enough politician to answer that question through an “I’ll tell you what I really think later – when it’s too late to do anything about it” lens.

Clarence Thomas, the aggrieved husband of serial cult member, political extremist and seditionist Ginni Thomas, has been clear that the radical Supreme Court abortion ruling will be the gateway for radical social engineering imposed by the Court through unprecedented revocations of established rights ranging from gay marriage to birth control.  When Noem was asked about the sanctity of marriage, she deferred to Alito’s ruling, putting herself in the middle of an awkward triangle.  Her answer was that gay marriage was safe according to Alito, who was the same person who said he had respect for precedent during his confirmation hearings, which I managed in the Bush White House.  It seems important to note that the Governor, who is trying to avoid saying what she believes about gay marriage and her hopes for the legal obliteration and erasure of loving marriages through a cruel policy of state nullification, is the same sycophant who handed Trump a scale replica of Mount Rushmore with his likeness preposterously carved into it.

Never before in American history have established rights been stripped away from American citizens. What will happen when a state that has made abortion illegal acts to protect the life of its unborn resident in another jurisdiction? Has Samuel Alito thought through what happens when law enforcement agencies from two states draw their weapons on each other to protect life? Will women be protected from Big Tech companies who are looking to track them, their menstrual cycles and possible pregnancies for state agencies, law enforcement or bounty hunters?

We have indeed entered a brave new world. All of these issues and more deserve answers from politicians like Noem, regardless of their hostility to hypotheticals. It’s not hypothetical anymore. All of it is very real.  

Kristi Noem is another politician who shares a uniquely American characteristic: a lack of reticence around stating that her political ambition is ordained by God. Generally speaking, when a packaged politician writes in their pre-presidential campaign book that they worried about not running for their previous office because it would have been disobedient to God to pass on the race, it’s a bad harbinger. It represents a specific type of narcissism that is endemic to our broken politics and a type of religious fanaticism that should be disqualifying for any person seeking a public trust. Is fanaticism the right word? Perhaps not. It is certainly the case that supporting government-mandated pregnancy for a 10-year-old girl impregnated by her rapist carry is a fanatical position. It is as extreme as it gets, and that is why Kristi Noem doesn’t want to talk about what the radical Court has unleashed. Don’t be confused. Noem loves the outcome. She just doesn’t like talking about the consequences of it.

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