There is a familiar moment in Republican electoral politics when an obscure politician thrust into the limelight during election season comes under intense public scrutiny and is found to be not quite as first impressions suggested. This was Sarah Palin in 2008, or Ben Carson in 2016, and the inflection point is the moment at which the supposedly promising new face shades into what Mitch McConnell once delicately referred to as the Republicans’ “candidate quality problem”. Or, as most of us know it colloquially, the moment we realise: oh, this person is unhinged.
So it was last week for Kristi Noem, the formerly obscure governor of South Dakota, propelled into the big time as a possible running mate for Donald Trump, and who at first glance appeared appalling in all the ordinary ways. The 52-year-old, who was elected to the governorship in 2018, echoes the Republican party’s hardline positions on abortion, immigration and offshore drilling in ways indistinguishable from the rest of the VP field. She is telegenic, charismatic, reliably rightwing, and, according to her forthcoming memoir No Going Back: The Truth on What’s Wrong With Politics and How We Move America Forward, also killed her 14-month-old puppy, Cricket.
