O.K. let's get serious: Congresswoman Kristi Noem is not going to get a seat on the debt super committee. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid just named fellow Democrats Max Baucus, John Kerry, and Patty Murray to the Debt Politburo. Their qualifications:
- Senator Baucus: Senate Finance chairman, Simpson-Bowles commission member
- Senator Kerry: Senate Foreign Relations chair, Senate Finance member
- Senator Murray: member of Senate budget and appropriations committees
Reuters sketches frontrunners for the other nine seats. From the House GOP, Reuters names four contenders:
- Rep. Dave Camp: chairman, House Ways and Means, Bowles-Simpson member
- Rep. Eric Cantor: House Majority Leader, debt-ceiling talks big dog
- Rep. Jeb Hensarling: Simpson-Bowles member
- Rep. Paul Ryan: GOP budget guru, Bowles-Simpson member
Rep. Noem's thin résumé does not earn her a seat next to these folks. Even Hensarling at least brings five terms of experience to the table. Unlike Noem, he managed to graduate from college, with a bachelor's degree in economics. The stakes are too high for the House GOP to give up one third of its representation on the super committee to a freshman member who has established no serious national budget chops and who can hardly assemble a coherent statement on specific policies. Noem is a pretty knife, but Speaker Boehner will not send her into this big-gun fight.
Then again... Huffington Post says that many big-timber House Republicans are steering clear of the super committee, leaving the door open for more radical Tea-types to take the GOP seats and wreck the train. But wait: Kristi Noem is trying to shed the Tea Party label! Confused yet?
Update 18:25 CDT: Noem did not make the list: her House colleagues Camp, Hensarling, and Michigan's Rep. Fred Upton... Grover Norquist drones all.
Boehner wilts in the polls.
GOOD!!!!!!!!!!!