Kill wolves from helicopters?
Castrate pigs?
Shoot Prius with assault weapons?
Kill misbehaving puppies?
Is this what it takes for a Republican woman to be a credible candidate for higher office?
opinion columnist
Robin Abcarian
Former Alaska Governor Sarah Palin started this strange trend in 2008, when she was Republican presidential candidate John McCain's running mate. Palin leaned heavily on her Alaska outdoorswoman bona fides to demonstrate She was no sissy.
There is no evidence that Palin ever hit a baby seal, but she definitely endorsed what many consider the inhumane practice of shooting wolves from the sky as a way to keep a feral population in line. She often called herself a “grizzly mom” and liked to joke that the difference between a hockey mom (herself) and a pit bull was “lipstick.”
A few years later, when Iowa Republican Joni Ernst ran to succeed Iowa Democratic Sen. Tom Harkin in 2014, she ran a memorable, if repulsive, campaign ad touting her experience castrating pigs on her family's farm. . It was intended to be fun, because of course cutting off the testicles of young pigs, usually without anesthesia, is a real hoot.
“This way, when I get to Washington, I'll know how to cut pork,” Ernst said with a big smile. “Washington is full of big spenders. Let’s make them scream.”
In 2022, Marjorie Taylor Greene burned a Prius to show how she would “destroy the Democrats’ socialist agenda.”
And now, of course, comes Governor Puppy Slayer herself, South Dakota Republican Governor Kristi Noem, who bragged in her upcoming campaign memoir that she killed Cricket, her 14-month-old wirehaired pointer, because the dog failed in hunting.
“I hated that dog,” Noem writes, according to The Guardian, which obtained a copy of the book “No Going Back.” Cricket, Noem claimed, was “untrainable,” attacked a neighbor's chickens and was “dangerous to anyone he came into contact with.” She was “less than useless as a hunting dog.”
What choice did he have but to put a bullet in Cricket's head?
I mean, you know, besides training a still young dog more? Or accept that perhaps Cricket should not be a working animal or simply give it away?
“It wasn't a pleasant job,” Noem writes, according to The Guardian, “but it had to be done. And when it was over, I realized there was another unpleasant job to do.”
He then shot a family goat that was “nasty and mean.”
The reaction has been bipartisan, prompting Noem to issue a pair of statements defending her decision as simply part of rural life.
“We love animals,” he posted on X, “but difficult decisions like this happen all the time on a farm. Unfortunately, a few weeks ago we had to put down 3 horses that had been in our family for 2 years.” If I were one of his cats, I'd be curled up in the barn right now.
I notice two common trends in many of today's Republican women running for national office.
First, they want to show how tough they are by shooting guns, preferably at animals, but occasionally at cars driven by Democrats. And second, they aspire to the beauty standards set by Fox News hosts. Dental veneers. Cheek and lip fillers. Botox. Hair extensions.
Performative cruelty and full lips are what it takes to succeed as a woman in Trump's party.
“Do you remember Sarah Huckabee Sanders?” asked Debbie Walsh, director of the Center for American Women and Politics at Rutgers University. “They had to give her a makeover, or thought they did, to make her fit that role.”
But I digress.
I called Walsh on Monday to ask why so many Republican women think they need to demonstrate their machismo.
“The reality is that women running for high-level positions, particularly executive positions and the Senate, still have to prove that they are tough and strong enough to make difficult decisions,” she told me. “But there is a difference between being tough and being cruel.” In Noem's case, she suggested: “This is clearly a line that has been crossed. And the fact that she is doubling down on her efforts is a problem.”
Did Noem tell this story because she's trying to impress the former president while choosing a running mate? If so, the cultural consensus is that she blew it.
“Given the various people he has to choose from who are willing to serve as his vice president, he doesn't need to turn to someone who creates as much chaos as he does,” Walsh said.
Voters don't elect a president based on the running mate, he added. “But they do want to know that the person who would be one step away is someone with good judgment. “That Kristi Noem thought this was going to be an advantage shows a lack of judgment.”
Think of it as Cricket's revenge.
