Slaughter wolves from helicopters?
Castrate pigs?
Shooting Priuses with assault weapons?
Murder misbehaving puppies?
Is that each one a Republican woman must be a reputable candidate for higher office?
Former Alaska Governor Sarah Palin began this bizarre trend in 2008 when she was Republican presidential nominee John McCain's running mate. Palin leaned heavily on her real-life Alaskan outdoorswoman character to prove she was no wimp.
There isn’t any evidence that Palin ever hit a baby seal, but she actually advocated what many viewed because the inhumane practice of shooting wolves from the air to maintain a wild population in check. She often called herself “Mama Grizzly” and liked to joke that the difference between a hockey mom (herself) and a pit bull was “lipstick.”
A couple of years later, when Iowa Republican Joni Ernst was running to switch Democratic U.S. Sen. Tom Harkin of Iowa in 2014, she made a memorable — if repulsive — campaign ad through which she recounted her experiences castrating pigs on the island revealed her family farm. It must be funny because after all cutting off the testicles of young pigs, often without anesthesia, is admittedly fun.
“So when I get to Washington, I’ll know how to cut pork,” Ernst said with a broad smile. “Washington is full of big donors. Let’s make them squeak.”
In 2022, Marjorie Taylor Greene burned a Prius to point out how she would “blow away the Democrats' socialist agenda.”
doubling
And now, after all, comes Gov. Puppy Slayer herself, Republican South Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem, who brags in her upcoming campaign memoir that she killed her 14-month-old wirehaired dog, Cricket, since the dog was a failure at hunting.
“I hated that dog,” Noem wrote, in keeping with the Guardian, which received a duplicate of the book “No Going Back.” Cricket, Noem claimed, was “untrainable,” had attacked a neighbor's chickens and was “dangerous to anyone she came into contact with.” She was “anything but worthless as a hunting dog”.
What selection did she have but to place a bullet in Cricket's head?
I mean, , apart from more training for a still young dog? Or to just accept that perhaps cricket shouldn't be a workhorse, or – to paraphrase here – to provide cricket away?
“It wasn’t a pleasant job,” Noem writes, in keeping with the Guardian, “but it had to be done.” And when it was over, I spotted there was yet one more unpleasant task to be done.”
She then shot a family goat that was “evil and mean.”
The backlash was bipartisan and led Noem to issue a lot of statements defending her decision as a part of rural life.
“We love animals,” she wrote on , I might probably be cowering within the barn at once.
Beauty and machismo
I notice two commonalities amongst a lot of today's Republican women searching for national office.
First, they wish to prove how tough they’re by shooting guns, preferably at animals but occasionally at cars driven by Democrats. And second, they aspire to beauty standards set by Fox News hosts. Dental veneers. Cheek and lip fillers. Botox. Hair extensions.
Performative cruelty and pouting are the prerequisites for being successful as a lady 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 redesign her, or at least they felt they would, to make her fit the role.”
But I digress.
I recently called Walsh and asked why so many Republican women feel they need to prove their machismo.
“The reality is that women running for high-level positions, especially leadership 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 harsh and cruel.” In Noem’s case, she suggested, “This is clearly a line that has been crossed. And the fact that she’s doubling it is a problem.”
“Given the number of people he has to choose from who are willing to serve as his running mate, he doesn't need to turn to someone who will cause as much havoc as he does,” Walsh said.
Voters don't select a president based on the vice chairman, she added. “But they want to know that the person who is a heartbeat away is someone with good judgment. That Kristi Noem thought this would be an asset shows a lack of judgment.”
Consider this cricket's revenge.
Robin Abcarian is a columnist for the Los Angeles Times. ©2024 Los Angeles Times. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency.
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