A few days ago, South Dakota Governor Kristi Noem vetoed a bill that had the ostensible purpose of preventing women’s sports in  South Dakota from the infestation of male-to-“female” transsexuals who, having discovered they don’t have the skill or ability to compete as males, have decided to compete with girls and women. I say the ostensible reason was to protect women’s sports because, as many have pointed out, the law seemed much more like it was designed to draw a court challenge and perhaps end up as a test case in the Supreme Court.

READ

Why South Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem Is Right, and Her Critics Are Wrong on the Girls’ Rights Legislation

Behind Gov. Kristi Noem’s Hedge on Legislation Guaranteeing Girls-Only Sporting Contests

Kristi Noem May Have Blown up Her 2024 Chances Already

Tucker and Kristi Noem Go at It Over Transgender Bill, and Folks on the Right Are Upset

Report: Kristi Noem Blinks on Bill Banning Biological Males From Women’s Sports

This is a battle about transsexuals muscling into women’s sports, to be sure. It is about the danger that disproportionately strong men competing against smaller and less muscular women and the damage their presence does to the idea of women’s sports:

And in that battle, a solid legal test before the Supreme Court has a place, perhaps a place exceeding that of effective legislation. And we can’t lose sight of the fact that this is also about 2024 and Noem creating a buzz as a potential vice presidential nominee…or maybe presidential.

Given the veto, which disappointed many on the right, and the politics, Noem and her inner circle could not have been surprised at the avalanche of critical coverage that her veto decision received. The surprise, to me, was the way she and her advisers shamelessly glommed onto a line of attack that was developed and extensively used by the left.

“Governor Noem is very used to fighting off criticism from the left,” Noem spokesman Ian Fury said in an email to The Daily Caller on Wednesday. “After all, in the past year, she was the only governor in the entire nation to never order a single business or church in her state to close. The left bullied her incessantly, but she didn’t cave.”

He added, “But if any number of conservative pundits are to be believed, that same governor who refused to cave is now caving to the NCAA and Amazon on the issue of fairness in women’s sports. What? Apparently, uninformed cancel culture is fine when the right is eating their own.”

Stop! Right t.f. there!

Noem has not been hit by a “cancel culture” of any kind. No one is trying to drive her from public life. No one is trying to deprive her of employment opportunities. She is a politician. It is the electorate’s right and duty to decide if a politician is adhering to a platform or a system of acceptable beliefs. Disagreeing with Noem’s decision and letting her know about it is a sign of a political ecosystem that is healthy and functioning as it should.

If you want an example of the “cancel culture” as it relates to politics, then look at Georgia, where the North American Man-Boy Lincoln Association had a pair of Georga state legislators dismissed from their full-time jobs over their votes on a ballot integrity bill.

Two Georgia Republican lawmakers have lost their day jobs, cut off by their employers in what appears to be retaliation for their support for Republican efforts in the General Assembly to overhaul voting laws in the state.

Earlier this month, Rep. Barry Fleming, R-Harlem, was asked to resign from his role as the attorney for the Hancock County Board of Commissioners.

The board voted unanimously to dismiss Fleming after protestors on the courthouse steps demanded he be fired for his sponsorship of House Bill 531, the sweeping House-passed legislation that would reduce Sunday voting, limit ballot drop boxes, and require a driver’s license or other identification to request an absentee ballot.

In a county where 71% of the voters are Black, commissioners agreed Fleming needed to go.

A week after that, Fleming also endorsed a bill that would expand weekend voting and maintains Sunday voting as an option.

This past weekend, Sen. John Albers, R-Roswell, also lost his job as the chief information officer at Fisher Phillips, a large national law firm with offices on Peachtree Street in Atlanta.

Albers’ dismissal followed a series of now-deleted tweets from the Lincoln Project obtained by The Atlanta-Journal Constitution, which tagged more than a dozen of his firm’s largest clients, including Starbucks, USAA, Walmart, and FedEx.

“These companies currently use @tabor_attorneys, helping pay @johnalbers salary while he sponsors bills to suppress and strip votes away from millions of black Georgians.”

The next tweet pointed to Albers’ co-sponsorship of Senate Bill 62, “a bill meant to suppress black votes & institute a new Jim Crow.”

One of these events is an example of the “cancel culture.” One is not.

I don’t object to Noem’s staff defending their boss. What I do object to is them lying to make that defense…perhaps because the truth might be unconvincing?…and using the left’s language to tell the lie.

Ever since “canceling” people, that is depriving them of their job, and perhaps any professional employment because of their offenses against the woke orthodoxy, became a sport on the left, particularly at places like the Daily Beast, the left has attempted to confuse the petty and subhuman behavior they engage in as any disagreement with anyone. Here is an example from that noted paragon of journalism, BuzzFeed, which has supplied a lot of new entrants to the fields of coding and making solar panels in the past year. Note how conservatives refusing to buy Dixie Chick music in protest became a part of the “cancel culture.” Never mind that no one cared if they performed or not. Colin Kaepernick was also “canceled.” That’s a shock. Nike was canceled. Ellen DeGeneres was canceled. Using this moron’s logic, Cesar Chavez “canceled” California grape growers. Rosa Parks canceled the Montgomery bus system. And a handful of Black students canceled the Woolworth’s lunch counters. This effort to argue that a boycott based on principle is the same as hounding an individual from their house and profession is a conscious strategy by the left. Here you see some clown named Paul Waldman writing in the WaPo making the same argument as BuzzFeed…or vice versa…or whatever. And it appears in The Nation. too, among others.

If Noem plans on playing in the big leagues, she needs to stand up and own her decisions. As Shipwreckedcrew pointed out, a defense of the veto on the merits is not hard to make. She should have done that and made her case to the people of South Dakota that her decision to take defensible action rather than be the stalking horse for a court challenge was the right and moral thing to do. She couldn’t be troubled to do that. So she sent out her flacks to dissemble and to attack the people who were criticizing her using a line of attack that is a trademark of the left. This is not a good look, and it should make any conservative think a couple of times before jumping on any effort to promote Noem to the presidency or vice-presidency.