When Stephanie Strong announced her candidacy for U.S. House, I made clear that I was eager to see her make the ballot and give Rep. Kristi Noem heartburn. Strong's vague opening pablum and shoddy website drove me to offer some free campaign advice, some of which Strong took. When Strong and her paid circulators failed to make the ballot by a mere 49 signatures due to incomplete voter information on the petitions, I criticized her for not reading the instructions, then offered friendly advice on how to do petitions right. Just another day in the classroom....
And how does Stephanie Strong respond? She opens with a reasonable constitutional question: do the address requirements for petition signers take away the ability of the homeless and folks in transition to participate in such political activity? Not that Strong's question will get her far with a Secretary of State committed to keeping people out of the voting process, but we defenders of voting rights might want to consider it.
Alas, as I ask Strong to consider with her limited resources whether she wants to concentrate on a court challenge to defend voter rights or a new Independent petition drive, Strong gets shaky. She asks whether I have any idea how hard it is to do a petition drive (short answer: yes, yes, and yes). She starts making Tea Party speeches about voter qualifications spelled out in the Declaration of Independence. She sends a non-sequitur e-mail declaring "We are not a Democracy, we are a Republic" (always a sign of getting off topic).
Then comes the full meltdown:
I want to know how Barack Obama got on the South Dakota ballot without submitting the proper paperwork and nobody questions that. I am short 49 signatures and they are still Republican signatures, Republicans who don't take government assistance, but make their own way and are not recognized because they do not have a physical street address. Are you kidding me? While our President cannot even prove that he is an American, something needs to change and we all should speak out as our elected representatives will not.
While I may not be able to correct my petition to suit the State, I will not stop perusing [sic] the injustice that is happening. My voice will continue, I may get my name on the ballot. Either way, these people will be tired of hearing from me [Stephanie Strong, comment to C.A. Heidelberger, "Stephanie Strong Fails to Make GOP Ballot Against Noem," Madville Times, 2012.03.29].
In ascending order of offensiveness...
- Strong sings in the shower with her closing lines, pretending she is a great orator battling injustice (only to douse her almost-soaring battle cry with an ill-worded last line begging for a punchline).
- She makes the counterfactual claim that President Barack Obama did not submit the proper paperwork to get on the ballot. (Per statute, here's his official letter of intent; here's his slate of delegates.)
- She makes the counterfactual claim that President Barack Obama is not an American. Strong forgets that no one who signed her petitions or even Strong herself has ever presented as much evidence of American citizenship as Barack Hussein Obama. If Obama is not an American, Strong and her signers aren't Americans.
- She suggests taking government assistance somehow impugns a voter's status. I suggest that Strong ask her signers next time whether they have attended public school, been helped by police or firemen, received food stamps, unemployment insurance, or free or reduced-price lunches at school. When we reach out to help people, we do not make them less American; we make them more American.
I should have seen this coming: the primary result of my effort to help Strong has been to reveal that she can not mount a credible campaign. Strong's grasp of petition instructions and practical law is clouded by her poorly osmosed talk-radio rhetoric. Her muddle-headed hatred of President Obama and folks whom we help prevent her from focusing on the task of getting on the ballot and hammering Noem's many conservative weaknesses. Strong's presence on the ballot would make the obviously vague and inattentive Noem look as erudite as her predecessor, Stephanie Herseth Sandlin.
Some shows are so bad you can't bear to watch. Stephanie Strong on stage debating Kristi Noem would have been one of those shows. We are better off without such a spectacle.
I dare say Cory, that you have written more sane prose about Ms. Strong both pro and con than she or her supporters ever did or probably will. Let this be her 15 minutes of fame and hope she moves on. The world can only handle one Orly Taitz at a time, I'm thinking. (...oh, and one Sibby, of course...)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rZeXVVw8EZ0&feature=related
Thanks, Bill! It takes language like Strong's last remarks to shake my weakness for underdogs.
These people are so into their imagined victimhood that they can't get it together to do the second most basic right and responsibility of political participation (after speeking up), ie., petitioning. While petitioning can be a difficult, it becomes nearly impossible when you act like a paranoid schizophrenic.
The first thing that ought to jump out is the paid circulators. If a candidate doesn't have enough support to have good volunteers to give them good advise and to do it right, or the candidate doesn't have the drive to do it alone, that person has no business running. The process serves to weed out the sorts of chronic complainers that add nothing to the political process.
Tangent topic... are you going to cover this, Cory?
http://rapidcityjournal.com/news/local/communities/spearfish/atheist-and-christian-to-debate-at-bhsu/article_d084c4a2-7ae5-11e1-b1f8-001a4bcf887a.html
[CAH: not sure I'll hear much from either guy that I haven't learned from you folks here on the blog. Maybe I'll go just to get some signatures on my referral petitions!]
I would suggest Ms. Strong look into running for the legislature. Often times it is easier to start lower and work up. If she was able to collect that many signatures she would be able to do a lot of door to door.
I will say that someone like Lora Hubbel would have been a more ideal type of candidate to run against Noem. She has a position in the legislature and for all I know Lora signed Strong's petition.
It would also be a good educational experience for her.
Some local Black Hills conservatives were urging Strong to follow the same course, Mike. I get the impression some people run for Congress because they don't pay attention to state and local news and don't realize the important issues decided in Pierre. Strong sounds like I did in the 1990s, when I spouted off generalizations about national politics and ignored practical policy in South Dakota. Now I spend much more time reading the SD Blogosphere and press than I do listening to MSNBC, Jon Stewart, Huff Post, or any of the national left-wingers. I don't get all that interested in Bob Ellis and Steve Sibson and Gordon Howie's constant shouting, in part because they mostly only ape the national-level anti-Obama culture warrior stuff with all too infrequent discussion of the state and local issues that none of the big national media machines are going to bother to discuss. (Sibby is a bit better about looking at state issues than Bob and Gordon, but he keeps derailing with his New World Order talk.)
If Strong wants to make a difference in politics, a run for Legislature as an Independent may be the most practical route. That, and turning off the radio for a bit.
Yeah, Sibby jumps from the kitchen table to a global conspiracy in a heartbeat, as in :
"Hey Bill, see that salt? The Romans used to think that was money. And so the Masons started throwing salt over their shoulder for good luck. Then they conquored the world. And now our money isn't worth anything any more. We just have to get back to Jesus so we can be the salt of the earth again, before the devil turns us into a piller of salt like God did to Lot's wife."
"...oh, and by the way, Bill, is that some of that New Age sea salt? Or is it the Kosher, Jewish kind? Or just the regular Mormon salt? You know Morman and Morton are just one letter apart, right? And that little girl with the umbrella? You know who she is, don't you? That's Brigham Young's secret third wife...and..."
Gotta love that Sibby.
He taught us all how to appreciate the paranoid political mind.
it's not paranoia if someone or something is really chasing you, bill.
Are you chasing after Sibby again Larry? Tsk.
He's just so darned cute, Bill: likely just a one-night stand though.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kPqpDDEJgb8
"I get the impression some people run for Congress because they don’t pay attention to state and local news and don’t realize the important issues decided in Pierre."
I think you're mostly right about this, but I'll add a few reasons why people look to Washington first.
First, there seems to be a large current of anti-intellectualism motivating some people. They seem to think that the country is in a mess; smart people have been in charge; less smart people will fix what smart people broke.
Second, SD is a one party state where incumbents with an R behind their name have greater job security than members of the USSR's Politburo used to have.
Third, in a statement that I thought I never thought I'd right, Ann Coulter is right when she asserts "the conservative movement, does have more of a problem with con men and charlatans than the Democratic Party....†In SD, the far right is a larger part of the voting population and can have greater illusions of grandeur than moderates or liberals.
Good eye, LK.
What this interested party found striking about Ms. Strong's resistance to Rep. Noem is that a good share of the earth hater party in the chemical toilet believes Noem lied her way into every political position she has held.
The GOP is circling the drain nationally but buoyed by the eutrophication of the Upper Missouri Basin.
It's unsustainable.
Perhaps part of the attractiveness of running for a national congressional seat is the appearance of easy money... taking home a fairly substantial paycheck and a lifetime pension, and not really having to do any work for it, especially if you are a Republican.
I mean, how hard can it be to just show up and vote "no" all the time? ;^)
LK's first point is probably the most important and the most ominous. We have reached a point in our verbal culture where fence-post ignorance is dismissed as differences of opinion, and Ms. Strong resorts totally to fence-postings.
The anti-intellectualism is a kind of class envy in which the ignorant can assert themselves only with puerile defamation of those who aren't. On the national level Mitt Romney keeps saying things which are genuinely stupid, and the commentators in the national press keep reporting them with the caveat that it doesn't understand why a smart man can keep saying such things, dismissing them as lapses of mind. When a person persistently says inanely obtuse things, it is a pretty definite indication that the person does not possess much in the way of mental acuity. And in the case of Romney, there is another factor. His campaign strategy is to keep up a constant barrage of ad hominem assaults on Obama's character and intelligence in his contention that Obama lacks any leadership qualities. He does not engage in specific criticisms of Obama's policies; he rests his criticism on Obama's native abilities. For example, a health care mandate is fine when Romney signs onto one, but when Obama does it, it is a matter of some devious mental design. His attacks on Obama's native abilities are reiterations of the reasons that the LDS disqualified blacks from full church membership until the civil rights movement. The intensity of these attacks emanates from some deeply ingrained attitudes that are nurtured in the reptilian cortex.
Ms. Strong's contrafactual offenses rise up from the same impulse. The GOP seems to have abandoned being a political party for the option of becoming a cult which thrives on ignorance and verbal incompetence.
I'll add to your list Cory. I would ask Ms. Strong if any of the Republicans are farmers or ranchers and if they ever have received any government help?
I think you know the answer to that as well as I do.
Prof. Newquist is right. I am reminded of the bumper stickers I see that say:
"My kid can beat up your honor student."
I pity the children of those parents.
The system is not served by highlighting the nut cases. But they do sometime lighten our days.
Strong's signature count indicates she's not wholly ignorable. Those 2000 signatures, valid or not, indicate that a lot of people share the anti-intellectual urge that Dr. Newquist diagnoses in the candidate.
Cory, not necessarily. I was approached by a Stephanie Strong signature collector outside the Safeway store and both the sig collector and I were bummed because I wasn't a Republican and so, was unable to sign. Otherwise, I would have signed it in a heartbeat. I love to see people run for office. Does that make me an "anti-intellectual?" (okay... never mind... I don't want to know the answer ;^)