Learned something new this afternoon.
While listening to House Bill 1164 (to revise the process for nominating candidates for lieutenant governor) being debated on the Senate Floor this afternoon, one of the opponents, the awful Senator Tom Pischke, noted that the South Dakota Republican Party had testified against the bill to allow the Governor to pick the running mate of their preference.
I had to go look and yes, yes they did.
While there were no opponents testifying in the House, when it came to the State Senate it had the same proponents, but newly elected party officials of the SDGOP – Chair Jim Eschenbaum and Vice-Chair Janet Jensen in literally their first act as elected party officials – stood against the Republican Governor and testified against a bill that Governor Larry Rhoden sent a representative to testify in favor of:
We’ll have to see how it goes the first time Chairman Eschenbaum and VC Janet ask the Governor to sign a fundraising letter for the GOP.
There are a lot of Republicans that are in favor of this bill. It’s stunts like this that will drive people away from the Republican Party.
Surely someone will have a ballot measure that removes the Constitutional Candidates from convention and moves them to primaries. I think voters would happily vote for it.
That ballot measure needs to happen. The party establishment won’t like it but they also won’t have any money to fight it.
I see that Kali Healy testified. Apparently they’re letting her back in the Capitol. She’ll fit in nicely. Makes a strong case for more mental health counseling
Besides having been escorted out of Capitol by security in the past, she’s an assistant to the short weird dude Arch caned
I notice that Anthony what’s-his-face has been pretty low profile since the poke heard round the Capitol.
He must have realized that when you play stupid games, you get stupid prizes.
I believe the new SDGOP chair also testified in favor of HB 1052 in Senate Stare Affairs. I think we all know how that one turned out today too.
The governor is equivalent to the President of the U.S. but on a smaller scale, which is statewide. If the President gets to choose his running mate, the governors should also be allowed to do the same. They need to be in sync with each other. It’s just common sense.
Anybody with any sense knows the Republican party fringe convention efforts in 2018 and 2022 to nominate a candidate for LG were intended to sabotage the gubernatorial candidate’s campaign, if not the administration.
They almost succeeded. They didn’t care if that might have given the election to the Democrats or if it would have paralyzed the executive branch of the state government. They just wanted revenge on the person who won the primary..The convention delegates did not care that the voters in their own precincts had chosen the winner in the primary. They didn’t care at all what the “voice of the people” was telling them. A comparison of the primary votes vs the convention votes proved the delegates were not representative of their constituencies. Not at all.
And comparing 2018 to 2022 is interesting, It was many of the same people who supported Jackley for Governor in 2018, who were so angry when Noem won the primary, who turned on him at the 2022 convention. They supported him for Governor in 2018 but not for AG in 2022. They will eat their own.
These are the people who have taken over the SDGOP. They don’t represent anybody but themselves.