“All of which leaves us with a question that has no obvious answer: Why in the world would Noem admit to something like this? I won’t pretend to know what the governor was thinking, but there are plenty of possibilities:
Maybe she doesn’t want to be Trump’s running mate. If Noem were determined to self-sabotage her chances of making her party’s ticket, this would make sense.
Maybe she’s trying to appeal to Trump by focusing on one of his phobias. It’s not a secret that the former president and dogs don’t get along.
Maybe she’s trying to convey something resembling “toughness.” Can J.D. Vance, Tim Scott, and Elise Stefanik also say that they also shot family pets?
Maybe this is some weird Second Amendment thing. If Noem wanted to remind Republicans that she has and uses guns, I suppose this is one way to go about doing so.
Maybe she was trying to get ahead of the story. A Politico report added, “Noem writes that some construction workers saw her shoot Cricket. ... Could it be she was trying to tell a bad story on her own terms before someone else did?”
Maybe she’s just bad at this. “I guess if I were a better politician I wouldn’t tell the story here,” Noem wrote. Yes. Exactly.
As New York magazine’s Margaret Hartmann added, “Indeed, you don’t have to be a keen political analyst to predict that a story about hurting dogs wouldn’t go over well with Americans. You just have to be a person who was alive in 2012 and remembers Mitt Romney being roasted for making his diarrhea-ridden dog ride on the roof of the family car. Or even someone who knows the plot of 101 Dalmatians.”
Whatever the explanation, Democrats are having a field day with the story, making it that much less likely that Noem’s vice presidential ambitions will be fulfilled.“
http://www.msnbc.com/rachel-maddow-show/maddowblog/world-kristi-noem-admit-shooting-dog-rcna149770
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