Hot off the press, the Minnehaha County Republican Party has announced their Lincoln Day Dinner is March 29th.
And the Keynote speaker is…. drumroll… former Congressman Madison Cawthorne?
I’m not sure where to start on the reasons why this is a bad choice.. Just go to wikipedia and start reading for the readers digest version:
In April 2022, Senator Thom Tillis called for an investigation into Cawthorn for possible violations of the STOCK Act, stating that Cawthorn’s purchase of an anti-Biden “Let’s Go Brandon” cryptocurrency without disclosure may have violated insider trading rules for members of Congress. By December 2022, it was reported that Cawthorn had violated the STOCK Act a total of three times that year for failing to disclose hundreds of thousands of dollars’ worth of sales in Let’s Go Brandon coin, Bitcoin, and Ethereum.
and..
In August 2020, during Cawthorn’s campaign for Congress, several women accused him of sexually aggressive behavior, sexual misconduct, and sexual assault.
and..
On October 17, 2020, a group of Patrick Henry College alumni released a public letter accusing Cawthorn of “sexually predatory behavior” while he was a student there for a little more than one semester, as well as of vandalism and lying. The letter originally had ten signatories but the number increased to over 150 alumni in less than a week. Cawthorn claimed that most of the signers did not know him personally and his campaign posted a response letter of support for him signed by six alumni, two of whom work for Cawthorn’s campaign. Cawthorn’s response letter implied support by former Patrick Henry College President Michael Farris; Farris disavowed the support letter and asked that he not be associated with it.
and..
On May 4, 2022, a video began circulating online that showed Cawthorn naked in bed, thrusting his genitals toward another man’s face while moaning. Cawthorn said of the video, “Years ago, in this video, I was being crass with a friend, trying to be funny. We were acting foolish, and joking. That’s it.” He called the video “blackmail” on Twitter after he had released an eight-minute video addressing it and other controversies.
And there’s more. Too much more.
Not sure what Minnehaha County was thinking. I’m not sure why they settled on Hawthorne. Was Mark “I’m a black nazi” Robinson that Toby Doeden was trying to bring to South Dakota unavailable?
Whoof. I think the challenge for the evening will be how many people aren’t going to want to sponsor the event. Much less how many candidates will be there getting a picture with the keynote?
I thought this was a joke at first. It is too early for April Fools.
LMAO
Laughable. I’ll enjoy popcorn when these folks try to claim moral high ground. Thank goodness for Chuck Edwards.
SDGOP getting exactly what it deserves
This is the minnehaha gop. But, yeah.
Minnehaha isn’t an island. Do you seriously think this is an isolated issue?
Lincoln, Pennington, Lawrence, Brown, Turner, Davison, Custer, Bon Homme, Jones and how many others have left reason behind?
At some point the average voter is going to think that if most of the GOP county leadership is on the crazy train, the state party clearly is too.
If he moved to Brown they would run him for the legislature in D1 or D3.
They would market him as a Constitutional Conservative, Christian, hero and patriot in the county that is called Brown.
Mess with the bull, you get the horn, baby.
I’ve seen a lot of dumb shit in my day but this takes the cake. The Republican Party has been infiltrated and this all has to be done on purpose to try and burn it down, right?
Yes, the Democrats have led a successful infiltration.
Just kidding, the GOP started inviting in the whackadoodles around 2015.
Pat, are you sure that the State GOP leadership didn’t plan this? Or the Free Dumb Caucus? You just can’t make this crap up!
Everything Cory Peterson has done is crap. Cory and Kim are both trash and hurt the county.
There’s so much more on this degenerate. I’m just in shock that they could actually think this was somehow good, and be such strange souls as to act on it. At some point somebody is going to sober up and with a very bad hangover, blame the others in the clown car.
Another Dakota First Action (Dumpsterfire PAC) PAC sponsored event?
When I ran for Minnehaha County Party chair last year, I explicitly said that the new Majority Leader Thune (resident of Minnehaha!) had to be our featured speaker at the Lincoln Day Dinner. And anything less than raising $100,000 for the party would be a failure. The Party is choosing failure and showing a disconnect from our biggest leader in the state who would be the biggest draw for an event to build back party infrastructure from the doldrums of complacency and incompetence. Clearly, things have to get worse before they can get better.
Thune isn’t all that great. Cow-tows to 4547.
The whackies are in charge because they organize and show up in droves. They run the state convention these days because they run droves of whackies as delegates. They run many county parties. They get whackies elected to the state legislature.
They have no agenda other than they Are. Against. Everything.
They don’t know how to run anything. They do know how to wreck everything.
We are watching the slow death of the GOP, nationally and in SD.
I’m currently reading “The Girl With All The Gifts,” and “The Boy On The Bridge,” two zombie-apocalypse sf stories by M. R. Carey. There are so many parallels you can infer between a fictional zombie feeding stampede, and the takeover of the GOP by the non-political fear-mongering MAGA-TEA Party illiterati. So many. So many.
There is really no way to drag MAGA back toward a much-needed bipartisan dialog with Democrats again, and this is by design from people who want to keep a solid oligarchy in place and shut down institutions like Congress and the court system forever. A grooming of sorts has us struggling to stay afloat in a sea of activated outliers using guns and hammers to kill democrats, and an armed thugocracy of masked apparatchiks roaming in sanctuary cities.
The rolling unending debacle of local party organizations makes the prospect of ever restoring balance and function to the GOP a slowly fading dream. Quietly build a new thing and let this thing go. If the absent brain trust is already working on this, please don’t tell us. Just do it.
I struggle to understand why any GOP entity in this state hates the delegation to DC and refuses to use conventional wisdom when it comes to fundraising.
Embarrassing is what it is. Any other state would use the Majority Leader’s status to raise funds, but they chose a disgraced former one-term member who’s now one of four or five carpetbaggers running in an open district of Florida. Something tells me this is a shadow event of Toby Doeden and his ilk.
What’s the point of even being registered as a Republican in this state when leadership doesn’t know its arse from its elbow?
*in Florida
Minnehaha county GOP has been a clown car ever since they elected R. Shawn Tornow as their chair. Since then its been one clown after another.
A College dropout, sexual harasser, inside trader, crypto crook, relationship with his male cousin, disgraced former congressman? This is your Minnehaha County Republican Party. Sad.
He would make a great Doedite!
I think you forgot about the cocaine and drugs.
All Right(wing)! Maybe he will bring some of his coke fiend and sex orgy friends from his days in DC with him. Could be quite a show for the SDGOP squares in attendance.
I’d go if Nikki Minaj was keynote
Edgelording masquerading as governance.
Mark Robinson should easily be available now and probably real cheap for speaker fees.. They could have flown him in.
J6er pardoned by President Trump Neo-Nazi Jake Lang.
White nationalist and Holocaust denier Nick Fuentes.
This could be or could have been a 5 alarm Dumpster Fire event with protesters and all kinds of press coverage.
I personally witnessed a then-married then-congressman Hawthorne hit on college girls at the 2021 TPUSA AmericaFest. He is certainly NOT representative of mainstream conservative values. It’s a shame the Minnehaha GOP selected him as the keynote.
RFK Jr, Hegseth, Gingrich, Giuliani, Boebert, Greene, the president himself. I think Cawthorn might be a perfect representation actually.
You forgot our ex governor
Thanks for this very informative post. Sounds like the kind of guy that fits into the lawless and orderless administration on the federal level. Could Republicans not find one good man?
Oh yes, nothing says “serious local leadership” quite like booking Madison Cawthorn as your keynote for the LRDD. When you want to inspire confidence in the Minnehaha County Republican Party, obviously the best move is flying in a former congressman best known for chaos headlines rather than, you know… actual accomplishments. Bold strategy. Let’s see how that plays in Sioux Falls. Sigh….. smh…..
IF they continue on this path, I would hope there would be $0 spent flying anyone anywhere. At least on this person. Whoever he is. There will be even less (if that’s possible) dollars incoming.
SD ‘Publicans incestuous relationships are coming home to roost No new ideas, build walls, suppress initiative, referral and voting
Oofta.
Wasn’t Korry Petterson kicked out of office at a meeting in the fall? How is he still in office now pulling the strings to get this disgraced congressman to be the LDD speaker? He must be scraping the bottom of the barrel, or perhaps he had to dig beneath the barrel to find someone with this caliber of controversial moral and ethics to be the speaker at his event.
I’m shocked this guy was overlooked for a cabinet job in the Trump administration.
He spilled the beans on the GOP sex and drugs parties and got banished.