Marion Michael Rounds and Annette Bosworth Haber are equally fake Republican Senate candidates. In Pierre last night, Rounds gave the friendly Hughes-Stanley Lincoln Day Dinner crowd a display of amped-up GOP puffery:
Rounds, a former governor and one of five candidates seeking the Republican nomination, avoided his prior themes of his experience and pragmatic approach to government. Instead, speaking to his hometown crowd at the Hughes and Stanley County Republican parties’ annual dinner, Rounds nearly yelled at times in his call to “take back our country” with “good, solid South Dakota common sense” [David Montgomery, "Fired-up Rounds Sticks with Partisan Red Meat in GOP Dinner Speech," Political Smokeout, 2014.02.18].
Rounds acting like a fired-up red-meat Republican is about as far from his pragmatic, insurance-salesman politics as one can get.
Also faking it is Annette Bosworth, who obviously hasn't internalized her ceaseless Facebook memes ("Guns! God! Waaaah!") well enough to recognize when her own campaign video contradicts basic Republican thinking. The Displaced Plainsman critiques the cognitive dissonance of a Republican candidate offering to "care for you":
One would think sending someone to Washington to "take care of" South Dakotans would strike Republicans as nanny statism. Perhaps, the few holdouts who still yearn for the George W. Bush administration would see "compassionate conservatism." Neither philosophy seems to be something South Dakota's Republican base is clamoring to hear.
...Having someone in the U. S. Senate to "care for you" should have been a Rick Wieland tag line. Rounds, Rhoden, or Nelson should have no trouble using this ad to show libertarians and tea party members that Bosworth has no political core philosophy. Then all they have to do is overcome the voters' Freudian impulses [Leo Kallis, "Do South Dakota Republicans Really Want Someone to 'Care for' Them?" The Displaced Plainsman, 2014.02.18].
I can't sign on to the hypothesis that Bosworth is just a cardboard candidate running interference for Rounds against a real conservative challenge. But Rounds and Bosworth are sounding like equally fake conservatives.
Related: Annette Bosworth is hosting a meet-and-greet at the Bluffs Clubhouse, 2806 Ridgeview Way, Sioux Falls, tomorrow (Thursday) from 6:30 p.m. to 8:00 p.m. Perhaps raffle ticketholders who've had trouble getting Bosworth and hubby Chad Haber to return their calls can get some face time tomorrow night to ask questions about where their money went.
Saw Bosworth's first TV ad this morning. Just SMH!!!
Bosworth sez "No exceptions!" Bosworth wants to kill and harm women.
I still can't get past that. It /is/ South Dakota, I know.
Definitely out of Rounds character, from the little I've spoken with him. Have to agree that it smacks of posturing.
It is posturing, Aachen. Rounds is simply following Richard Nixon's dictum that during the primaries you run to the extremes, during the general you run to the middle.
Unless you are a Native American, the "take back our country" campaign slogan is pure bunk. "Take back our country"? From whom? I wasn't aware that another country had it or that America had left.
Equally as ridiculous is the "good, solid South Dakota common sense". Does Rounds not realize that every time there is poll showing South Dakota ranking on various topics from education, teacher pay to corruption, we are either number 1 or 2 as the worst or 49th or 50th as the last. That must some of those good, solid common sense approaches South Dakota Republican politicians are so proud of.
I have to disagree with you Roger. Taking back our country has to be the theme of this next election. The only problem is, that Rounds certainly would not be the one to help do it as our representative in DC. We have to take it back from the elites, be it the Bushes and their ilk on the right or the Clintons and their ilk on the so called left. Mr Rounds has shown himself to be in their pocket already by claiming that he will raised 9 big for the 2014 election. He started out with his trip to kiss the foot or ring of Netanyahu and Peres to get the thing kicked off with big donations from AIPAC and the other Israeli lobbies.
You see, we are being hoodwinked into believing that we have to keep fighting in the Middle East to protect "our" oil, when what we are really doing is fighting for the Israelis. You think we are important to the folks in DC, who have the power? Why, when Congress put in the sequester, did they exempt aid to Israel from the cuts that all the rest of the budget, including our own military, suffered? Why did the same congress that has taken 3 years to pass a farm bill, triple the President's budget request for a missile shield for Israel, on a vote of 399 to zip?
I know that folks who know me and know my core beliefs, toward a socialistic bent, have a hard time figuring out why I would be supporting the most conservative candidate on the Republican ticket. It is because he is the only one who has shown the tenacity to stand up and call bullshit, bullshit. And that dear folks is what we need in DC, not someone that the lobbies already own a year before the primary. Our own people have to come first, not foreign countries or the corporations that own our government.
If you're looking for real conservatism, the Republican Party boiled down to its core principle, look no farther than Sioux Falls, where Greg Jamison is running for mayor on a platform of taking from the poor and giving to the rich. Mr. Jamison makes no bones about it. He's going to take sales tax money - much of which is paid by poor people and out-of-towners - and redistribute it up the ladder to those who can afford to own real estate. The more house you own, the bigger the check you get from the city. Don't own real estate? No sales tax rebate check for you, you loser!
http://www.argusleader.com/article/20140219/NEWS/302190036/Jamison-Send-excess-revenue-landowners
Rorschach, here is the comment I posted on line to that article, last night.
Spoken like a true Republican, Mr Jamison. Do a property tax rebate when we are 400 million in debt as a city and proposing to go further. Pandering for votes much?
I didn't post this on line, but it is kinda like we did at the national level, cutting taxes while fighting two wars.
Lanny,
I'll agree to disagree with you and maybe we can split the difference.
If Mike Rounds is talking about taking the country back, I would think he means taking it back from a black president. The first time I heard that slogan was at a tea party rally shortly after President Obama was elected and the context was clear. Or, is Rounds talking about taking it back from the 43% that Romney slammed in the last general election.
When Rick Weiland uses "take our country back" he is likely referring to the 1% and the corporate ownership of America.
By the way, who is that most conservative candidate you support?
Roger,
I am sorry, I didn't make that clear. I have posted it on other threads on this same blog. I support Stace Nelson. I know nothing of Ravensborg, but cannot abide any of the other three on the right. I agree with you at this point that Weiland would not be in the party's pocket. But of course, I thought the same of Daschle and Johnson when it came to cutting taxes and going to war and I was wrong on both counts.
Pierre's Lincoln Day attracted the two most scandalized, unethical candidates in many, many moons. Rounds can't appear on a stage outside the GOP armed camp of Pierre because of his GOED Scam. Look for Annette to appear before a jury within the next six months.