Being hot matters. I was there in 2008 at a political conference when John McCain’s announcement of Sarah Palin for Vice President went out. The first response from the mostly male crowd was “who?” And when her picture came on the screen some drunk intern at the bar raised his martini and slurred “she’s hot!” It angered me of course, not because I’m some beta male or anything but because my preferred candidates Ron Paul (and then Bob Barr) were not hot.
Don’t tell me this isn’t important. Don’t act like this isn’t something we should talk about plainly and openly when it comes to the impact that being attractive has on a candidate’s success. Plenty of actual political science has been done on how much being tall or attractive helps to win a campaign… maybe not in Sarah Palin’s case but still. Here in Missouri we have a candidate for Secretary of State whose entire shtick is that she’s a surly hot Latina who burns leftist books with a flamethrower and goes for angry jogs in tight tracksuits. What does that have to do with secure elections? Hell if I know, but she’s the only candidate for secretary of state anyone in Missouri could probably pick out of a lineup and say “yes that person is running for office and I have seen her lovely face in my twitter feed and in my dreams.”
Kristi Noem locks in that important white male Trumper vote who were dejected in 2020 and stayed home. The latest WSJ poll shows more minority men crossing over from the Democrats and Biden to Republicans because of the left’s woke nonsense. I’m guessing they love hot women too, because if they didn’t they’d stay with the Democrats. As the great Scott Adams recently tweeted, “The Democrats are the party of women, and the men who are afraid of them.”
Now on to the substance. Pandemic governor rankings were a big deal in 2020. Maybe that’s diminished in 2024 slightly, but it will matter if Noem takes the VP spot. While she may not have been number 1, she was definitely top 5. Noem initially tried to pass pandemic restrictions but was overturned by her state legislature. She acquiesced to the will of the people, and realized that COVID restrictions were a mistake. Then, like DeSantis and others, she became an early critic of restrictions. Rolling Stone gave her the moniker of “COVID Queen of South Dakota,” claiming her efforts “ravaged” the state. Still seems to be plenty of roping steers going on in South Dakota, just like there’s plenty of...well, you can guess at Rolling Stone. But I digress.
Let’s be honest, the right is making a big play against the identity politics of the left, but we all know Republicans love tokenism as much as Democrats. Kristi Noem’s MAGA makeover, hair, makeup, and teeth, is going to get her a lot of women votes, and those are the ones Trump needs. Maybe it didn’t help John McCain, but Donald Trump is no John McCain. The one coalition of voters that Trump is weak on is suburban women, and as we can see from commercials, TV, and brainless flicks like the Barbie movie… those women voters are gonna vote with their vaginas every time. And since Trump’s made the right moves with his recent abortion comments, I’m gonna go out there and say that putting up a token female in the VP spot is a great move to get the Range Rover driving soccer moms out to the polls for Donald Trump. If representation is what the ladies care about, I’m guessing there are a lot more female voters that look like Kristi Noem than Kamala Harris.
