Joel Rosenthal speaks! One of South Dakota's smarter and saner Republicans responds with incredulity to the elevation of Texas Senator John Cornyn to Senate Minority Whip, the number 2 spot in the GOP Senate caucus:
Go figure – Senator Cornyn just completed his term as Chairman of the Republican Senate Campaign Committee. While certainly during this election cycle were some interesting turns of events (politically insensitive blurting’s by GOP Senate candidates in Missouri and Indiana; Under Cornyn’s leadership Republicans pulled defeat from the jaws of Victory losing a net of two seats.
Consider there were elections for 33 Senate seats. Democrats were defending 21 plus 2 Independent seats (who caucus with the Democrats (Lieberman and Sanders)) while the GOP were defending only 10 seats. It was widely expected that Republicans should have gained majority status. Republicans gained only one seat (Nebraska) while losing two (Indiana and Massachusetts). The GOP blew real opportunities in Missouri, North Dakota, Montana, Virginia and arguably Connecticut. The buck stops with John Cornyn. The NRCC was John Cornyn’s political shop. Overall in hindsight, the Senator provided poor political and campaign management [Joel Rosenthal, "HUH," South Dakota Straight Talk, 2012.11.27].
Rosenthal sees Senator John Thune's choice not to pursue the whip seat awarded to Cornyn as a good move. Rosenthal says remaining at number 3 as Republican Conference Chairman gives Thune "great visibility" and "affords him the ability to seek National office." So Rosenthal appears to agree with me that Thune's decision not to run in 2012 was all about letting Romney build the Rolodex for him and waiting to run when he'll have better odds in 2016. Cool! (Dems, build that bench and have someone in the chute to run for Thune's open Senate seat in 2016!)
Rosenthal offers some cover fire for Rep. Kristi Noem's decision to cut her workload (now a negative number) by bailing out of her leadership position. He says the House imposes term limits on the class liaison positions. That seems odd: when Rep. Noem announced she didn't want to next to the leadership any more, she didn't mention term limits. She said, "I have decided that I will not run for the sophomore class leadership position."
The unifying theme here: at the national level, the GOP leadership rewards incompetence by picking Cornyn as whip. At the South Dakota level, we reward incompetence and laziness by re-electing Noem.
Good to hear from you again, Joel!
He also said Noem won in a landslide. 57% is a strong win but a landslide looks more like TJ '88 71%, Thune 75% '98, SHS in '06 69% not Noem's 57%.
Noem will go down in '14 against Brendan JOhnson.
Noem and other GOP mythology proponents are talking sweet about eliminating loop holes as a solution that doesn't infringe on pledge of fealty to Grover Norquist instead of to US and SD. The problem with this smoke and mirrors nonsense is that it doesn't come close to being sufficient to solve the fiscal cliff or more correctly, the Republican quagmire. It is more irrelevancy.
Good point on the landslide comment, Mike.
And Douglas, very true, Noem is not offering any substantive plan. She never will; she's waiting for someone to hand her a plan to talk about. And it's guaranteed to do nothing, since that's what Republicans sent her to Washington to do.