Slaughtering wolves from helicopters?
Castrating hogs?
Shooting up Priuses with assault weapons?
Murdering misbehaving puppies?
Is this what it takes for a Republican woman to be a credible candidate for higher office?
Former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin started this bizarre trend back in 2008, when she was Republican presidential candidate John McCain’s running mate. Palin leaned heavily on her Alaska outdoorswoman bona fides to prove she weren’t no sissy.
There is no evidence that Palin ever clubbed a baby seal, but she definitely endorsed what many consider to be the inhumane practice of shooting wolves from the sky as a way to keep a wild population in check. She often called herself a “mama grizzly” and liked to joke that the difference between a hockey mom (herself) and a pit bull was “lipstick.”
A few years later, when Iowa Republican Joni Ernst ran to succeed Iowa Democratic U.S. Sen. Tom Harkin in 2014, she cut a memorable — if repulsive — campaign spot in which she touted her experience castrating hogs on her family farm. It was meant to be funny, because of course cutting off the testicles of young hogs usually without anesthetic is a real hoot.
“So when I get to Washington, I’ll know how to cut pork,” Ernst said with a big smile. “Washington’s full of big spenders. Let’s make ‘em squeal.”
In 2022, Marjorie Taylor Greene incinerated a Prius to show how she would “blow away the Democrats’ socialist agenda.”
AND NOW COMES Republican South Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem, who has boasted in her upcoming campaign memoir that she killed her 14-month-old wirehaired pointer Cricket because the dog was a failure at hunting.
“I hated that dog,” writes Noem, according to the Guardian, which obtained a copy of the book, “No Going Back.” Cricket, claimed Noem, was “untrainable,” attacked a neighbor’s chickens and was “dangerous to anyone she came in contact with.” She was “less than worthless as a hunting dog.”
What choice did she have but to put a bullet in Cricket’s head?
I mean, you know, besides more training of a still-young dog? Or accepting that perhaps Cricket shouldn’t be a working animal or — just spitballing here — giving Cricket away?
“It was not a pleasant job,” Noem writes, per the Guardian, “but it had to be done. And after it was over, I realized another unpleasant job needed to be done.”
