Kristi Noem personifies the Republican Party’s problem

Kristi Noem personifies the Republican Party’s problem

James Downie — Read time: 4 minutes

By James Downie

Digital opinions editor

Today at 7:52 p.m. EST

Gov. Kristi L. Noem (R-S.D.) is a woman of action. She has kept her state open during the pandemic despite it running well above the national average in covid-19 deaths per capita. Ignoring concerns about civilian oversight of the military, she deployed 50 National Guard troops to the southern U.S. border, with funding from an out-of-state donor. And when a state agency denied her daughter’s application to be a real estate appraiser, Noem summoned the agency’s head for a meeting. Her daughter’s application was later approved, while the agency director was asked to resign.

In kicking off the interview, host Shannon Bream asked Noem if she was out of step with the majority of Americans who want to preserve Roe v. Wade. Not at all, Noem replied, before some statistical sleight-of-hand: “Seventy-one percent of Americans believe there should be some reasonable restrictions on abortions. … And the bill that I’m bringing this year to our legislatures says that when a heartbeat is detected, that then abortions should not be an options for people, that we need to protect those babies.” But much of that 71 percent wouldn’t find Noem’s bill reasonable. In fact, a recent poll found that Texas’s heartbeat law, which Noem cites as a model, is opposed by 58 percent of Texans, including 59 percent of Republicans.

Noem’s answers only got less substantive from there. Asked what South Dakota was doing to help poor women and women of color who are worried about the hardship of having a child, Noem could only agree that it was a problem: “That’s one of the things that we need to do a better job of across the country is taking care of mothers, letting them know that there is options.” Similarly, when asked what the state is doing to bring down coronavirus cases, Noem replied, “We are doing exactly what we’ve been doing the last two years … we haven’t focused on cases. We focus on hospitalization rates.” Incidentally, those rates are up 9 percent in the past week.

Perhaps most telling was Noem and Bream’s exchange over a bill that bans transgender women and girls from competing in women’s school sports leagues. Noem falsely claimed she hadn’t vetoed a previous version of the bill, back when she was more worried about the state losing business than about her 2024 prospects. The new bill, she insisted, “is about fairness. … So, now I’m bringing a bill to the legislature that will be the strongest bill in the nation in protecting fairness in girls’ sports.” But if there was any evidence of an epidemic of trans women dominating South Dakota high school sports competitions, Noem forgot to mention it.

Any interview with a politician will be some mix of talking points and actual policies. But with Noem, the dial is all the way over toward the first. This approach is similar to that of Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin, another GOP star who sticks to sound bites over solutions. Indeed, Noem echoes not just Youngkin, but other Republican hopefuls such as Sen. Ted Cruz (who’s still apologizing for calling the Jan. 6 insurrectionists “terrorists”), former vice president Mike Pence (who compared that attack with ending the filibuster) and Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (who wants to create election police for a state that’s had two demonstrated cases of voter fraud in the past three years). In all cases, the policies and principles don’t really matter; what matters is Republican voters’ approval.

There are many reasons Donald Trump rose to prominence in the past decade — why this wannabe authoritarian easily took over one of the two major parties, and just as easily has held on despite losing reelection. Noem — and Youngkin, Cruz, DeSantis and so on — personify a key factor that gets lost in the shuffle: Aside from Trump, the party’s most prominent figures are willingly empty vessels in thrall to the GOP base. Until that changes, the GOP will stay the party of Trump.

Democrats — for all their many problems — have more consistently had multiple would-be leaders with competing visions. Most of the party’s recent presidential primaries have had clear ideological divides, with factions rising and falling depending on the politics of the era. That was once true for Republicans as well: Just 10 years ago, voters cycled through multiple alternatives before settling on Mitt Romney.

In 2022, though, there’s no alternative to Trump in sight, only a series of toadies who want the voters to tell them what to do. In the short term, the pandemic and inflation may paper over these challenges. But U.S. history shows us that political parties can’t last purely as personality cults.