Posted on 04/27/2024 10:09:55 PM PDT by SeekAndFind
I have been an admirer of South Dakota Governor Kristi Noem ever since she first showed up on my radar after her election in 2019. She has established a solid record as a conservative with ambitious policy goals that have served her state very well and she's an excellent communicator. She's been well up on my list of potential Trump veepstakes picks because she brings a lot to the table. But all of that came crashing down for me yesterday evening when The Guardian published a review of her upcoming book, "No Going Back: The Truth on What’s Wrong with Politics and How We Move America Forward." It sounds as if most of the book is a fairly typical political analysis of the dangers of rampant progressivism and the need to restore traditional American values. But it also contains one highly disturbing episode from her life when she killed one of her own dogs, a German wirehaired pointer named Cricket who was only 14 months old. Her description of the incident is rather horrifying and I fear it speaks poorly of her character. (Warning: Potentially disturbing content ahead.)
In 2012, as the Republican presidential nominee, Mitt Romney was pilloried for tying a dog, Seamus, to the roof of the family car for a cross-country trip.
But in 2024 Kristi Noem, a strong contender to be named running mate to Donald Trump, the presumptive Republican nominee, has managed to go one further – by admitting killing a dog of her own.
“Cricket was a wirehair pointer, about 14 months old,” the South Dakota governor writes in a new book, adding that the dog, a female, had an “aggressive personality” and needed to be trained to be used for hunting pheasant.
What unfolds over the next few pages shows how that effort went very wrong indeed – and, remarkably, how Cricket was not the only domestic animal Noem chose to kill one day in hunting season.
Noem describes attempting to train Cricket to hunt pheasant and the dog's failure to adapt to typical hunting procedures. Rather than locating game and "pointing" (hence the breed name) at birds so the hunter can take them, Cricket would "go out of her mind with excitement, chasing all those birds and having the time of her life”. It sounds as if Cricket wasn't well-suited to be a hunting dog, but was certainly very happy. Noem even described Cricket as "the picture of pure joy."
Despite all of that, she took the dog out to a gravel pit and shot her with a rifle. She later returned and did the same to a goat. She reports that the uncastrated goat was "nasty and mean." Having worked summer jobs on family farms growing up, I can assure you that uncastrated male goats kept for breeding are aggressive and territorial. It's just their nature.
In a way, I suppose I can understand why Noem would choose to share this story. She's trying to make the point that she is "willing to do anything, difficult, messy, and ugly if it simply needs to be done." That can be true at times in politics to be sure, but as a leader, character also counts for a lot. As I've written here before, my wife and I first met volunteering at an animal shelter. Dogs mean a lot to us and we've had many over the decades we've been together. If you have a dog that you're raising for hunting and it doesn't work out, you can find a new home for the dog, particularly when it is so young and "the picture of pure joy."
Even if you can't manage to find a new home yourself, you could take the dog to a shelter. If all else fails, you might feel you have no other choice, but you should euthanize the dog humanely. We've had to take too many of our dogs to be put to sleep but they were all suffering from extreme old age and/or painful, untreatable diseases. (We probably could have paid off our house five years earlier with all the money we've spent on veterinary bills.) If the Noem family was operating a farm, they obviously knew and had access to a veterinarian. It's a requirement for such an operation. You don't just drag the dog to a gravel pit and shoot it.
In the book, Noem writes, “I guess if I were a better politician I wouldn’t tell the story here.” The Guardian correctly describes that passage as possibly being "the greatest understatement of election year." I agree. I wish I hadn't learned this about her.
To be clear, this doesn't take away from Noem's commendable performance as the Governor of South Dakota. And if Donald Trump does wind up picking her to be his running mate, I won't hold it against him or fail to vote for him. (We vote for presidents, not vice presidents.) But if she were to move forward and run for national office on her own, I would be forced to find a third-party candidate to vote for. As I said above, character is also important in leaders. I could not, in good conscience, vote for Kristi Noem. That's how important this is to me.
The dog was killing her neighbor's chickens. That's not behavior that can be tolerated.
Yes- they are.
Whether it is demogoguery with out lies or base name-calling to diminish considered opinions in opposition to your own. We get the elected leaders we deserve (unfortunately)
Another weakness is the lack of boldness in either candidates approach to convincing people their ideas should be favored- or grounded in something longer lasting than their preferred sound bite or the shilling of their current fortune building adventure.
LBJ never recovered from lifting his dog by it’s ears. Kristi Noem’s career is over.
Noem is too attractive to be taken seriously. Jealous women won’t vote for her.
“The dog apparently killed some neighbor’s chickens and so on. Any dog doing similar in farm country is likely to be shot.”
The issue is not so much she shot her young dog to death, but she chose to write about it in her book. Poor judgement. What did she expect would be the reaction?
“Trump will pick a non-political person to be his running mate. He doesn’t need to worry about a VP who will be looking to run in 2028 to replace him.”
Why not? You expect Trump to run yet again?
“We supposedly need some soccer moms to vote for Trump. Soccer moms are not going to vote for a dog-killer.”
No supposedly about it. But they won’t vote for him, because of who he is and how he treats women, and this is why Trump will lose again to a demented Joe Biden.
“So go ahead and vote for Biden.”
With friends like you, who needs enemies?
“Ben Carson will be Trump’s VP pick and has been all along really”
LOL
I meant to say succeed instead of replace. Mistake acknowledged. This forum is like an English class. lol
So, instead of covering up a couple of very unpleasant and demeaning incidents, she confessed to them, and that’s a DQ offense?
A critical mass of “americans” are spineless, brainless, castrated, emotionally incontinent, ignorant, arrogant, unintelligent, and cowardly.
And many of these wretched excuses for human beings infest FR, and have posted on this thread.
If you feel that I’m talking about YOU ... you’re right.
Hang your head in shame.
A statement like that I would expect from a left wing troll.
But I digress, she's been happily married for 32 years despite the baseless lies about her floating in the internet.
The phrase the author leaves out was that the dog “was dangerous to anyone she came in contact with.”
That’s it right there. That dog needed to be put down and should be put down by any responsible dog owner. Any dog that bites people unpredictably needs to be killed or sent off to live on an island with no people.
Our next door neighbor’s dog bit my son’s ankle and hand after my son went into their yard to retrieve a soccer ball.(They had given my son permission to do so earlier). He got loose out in the street once and people were jumping up on top of their cars to get away from him. Later, the dog bit my wife as she trimmed flowers under our mailbox. I went over to talk to the neighbor and when he saw me, he said: “I know why you’re here. We are going to put him down.” And they did.
What Fauci did to multiple puppies is so much worse!
Geez. The left loves to murder babies and everyone is getting their panties in a wad over putting a 14 year old dog down? That’s 98 in dog years.
I put down a 12 year old cat once. Does it disqualify me to run for office?
No perspective.
Oops. 14 months.
Still....
Poor fella.
RE: This matters because?
Because we’re talking about voters who vote BY EMOTION instead of by RATIONALITY, and there are lots of them.
They’re a majority!
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