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Fred Romkema Tunes Message to Tea Party Audience

You might think Rep. Fred Romkema would face an uphill battle for Tea Party votes in the District 31 primary. Like fellow candidate Tim Johns, Romkema has a long career in local and state government, which might trigger Tea Partiers' purported suspicion of the political Establishment. Unlike challenger John Teupel (who has his own Establishment connections), Romkema doesn't ostentatiously mingle "Christian conservative!" and "Bidness!" as campaign slogans (and remember: the Tea Party thinks Jesus was a capitalist). And unlike Gary Coe, Romkema isn't looking behind every issue for signs of socialist subversion.

So let me give Rep. Romkema credit for pitching without pandering to the Tea Party at the Legislative candidates forum hosted by our local Revolutionary War/Cold War re-enactors last Tuesday. (I can't tell which war they are fighting in their fervid imaginations. Neither can candidate Gary Coe, who conflates both wars by asserting at both local forums that our Founding Fathers were fighting socialism.)

Romkema uses his opening statement at the Northern Hills Patriots forum to show he did his homework. He charges through his bio, then cites the group's mission statement and ties it to his record:

Romkema actually looked up and printed off the Northern Hills Patriots' mission statement. That's more initiative than Kristi Noem showed at a Rapid City Tea Party forum in February, when she hilariously claimed that the reason she hadn't joined Michele Bachmann's Tea Party Caucus was that they hadn't sent her a copy of their mission statement yet. (Good grief, Kristi: get on the GoogleTubes!)

Romkema brings up the NHP mission statement again later in the forum:

Now any candidate can say he or she will continue to fight "government waste, abuse, fraud, and corruption." But at Tuesday night's meeting, Romkema was the only candidate to explicitly demonstrate an interest in the published statements of the group to whom he was speaking. But Romkema didn't have to play Romney, making stuff up and forgetting his own history to allow himself to say whatever his audience wants to hear. Romkema was able to point to the Tea Party goals and say, Yup, that's what I've been doing; send me back to do some more.

I ought to be nervous about praising a candidate for showing his Tea Party cred. But on Tuesday night, Fred Romkema, the least Tea-flavored candidate on the stump, did the best job of telling the Tea Partiers that he's their guy.

Despite Romkema's efforts, Gordon Howie's Tea Party candidates scorecard for District 31 continues to give Fred Romkema a 0%. Howie's unrevised and bogus scorecard shows that Howie isn't paying attention to anything but the echoes in his own head and the sycophants who bark at his call (like his former campaign manager Gary Coe, who gets 100% on the District 31 report card).

10 Comments

  1. grudznick 2012.05.19

    Mr. Howie's scorecards bogusly represent only his insane band of hack cronies. He had to throw out Common Sense Conservative issues from their bogus scorecard because some of his insaner followers would have scored below the magic threshhold line.

  2. larry kurtz 2012.05.19

    Cory: you know that few political junkies love Madville as much as I.

    It is with some consternation, however, that you have chosen to spend such valuable server space divining the machinations of the candidates of a political party with whom you have no intention of supporting.

    We could all take turns peeing into the anthill that is the Republican Party, Wakan Tanka knows how much fun that is; but, frankly, only far more unusual means are necessary to disrupt the entire colony:

    http://www.npr.org/blogs/thetwo-way/2012/05/02/151890185/zombie-ants-and-the-fungus-that-saves-them

  3. grudznick 2012.05.19

    I enjoy Mr. H.'s videos of Mr. Romkema and Mr. Nelson. The other two candidates seem insane in a Mr. Howie sort of way.

  4. larry kurtz 2012.05.19

    Just being in that room would have made my skin crawl: how could anybody hear anything with all that mouth-breathing?

  5. larry kurtz 2012.05.19

    Ok, fess up lurking LawCo Republicans: how many of you actually read Madville Times?

  6. grudznick 2012.05.19

    I'm positive Messrs. Romkema and Nelson read it, as it has become the best SD blog ever since Mr. PP killed that DakotaWar one.

    Mr. Coe, I don't think, reads it.

  7. caheidelberger Post author | 2012.05.19

    Mr. Coe read it long enough to notice that I misattributed a quote to him in my video post on the April 30 forum.

    Larry, I understand your consternation. But there are no Dem events to attend out here. Getting these GOP events on the record is worthwhile... especially since the Black Hills Pioneer left out all the juicy stuff about Gary Coe's socialist family.

  8. Steve Sibson 2012.05.21

    "Larry, I understand your consternation. But there are no Dem events to attend out here."

    So you decide to support the SDGOP establishment candidates.

  9. caheidelberger Post author | 2012.05.22

    Sibby, to the extent that pointing out that they are presenting themselves as more competent candidates than their opponents, I guess I am "supporting" them. But notice: I'm not contributing to their campaigns. I'm not re-registering so I can vote for them. I'm still unhappy with the lack of a Dem alternative. But I'm playing the cards dealt... and the challengers to the establishment haven't dealt a hand worth betting on.

  10. Steve Sibson 2012.05.22

    "and the challengers to the establishment haven’t dealt a hand worth betting on"

    So throw out principles (such as Constitutional ones) by following the deceptive practice of pragmatism (see John Dewey).

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