Half of the Republican field of U.S. Senate candidates spoke at a debate at the School of Mines and Technology in Rapid City last night. John Tsitrian says we didn't miss much:
The choir these two were preaching to was small (around 60) in numbers but sizable in enthusiasm, with repeated bursts of applause for answers that to me seemed generally incoherent and rambling. Nelson was especially fond of interspersing his comments with irrelevant references to his service in the United States Marine Corps that apparently were intended to make some sort of a point but essentially carried him off into tangents that had little to do with the discussion at hand. Bosworth explained that she decided to go into medicine because, having been raised on a farm, she "hated to do hog chores," which struck me as a rather flip, if not altogether disdainfully condescending, disregard for the huge bloc of voters that will come from the agricultural production communities in this ag-oriented state of South Dakota [John Tsitrian, "Too Many Windmills, Not Enough Tilt," The Constant Commoner, 2013.11.21].
The conventional wisdom says that to have any chance of competing with Marion Michael Rounds, challengers must run right. But there is a big chunk of moderate Republican voters who will have no truck with Tea Party yahooliganism but who are looking at Mike Rounds and thinking, "Is this insurance salesman really the best we can do?"
Maybe the right rocks to throw at Rounds aren't the "Right" rocks. Maybe the problem with Rounds isn't that he's not conservative enough, but that he's not anything enough. He doesn't really stand for anything. He didn't really achieve anything as Governor (except throwing money down friends' rabbit holes). He probably wouldn't achieve anything as Senator other than keeping the seat away from Democrats.
Now our experience with Kristi Noem shows that, for a lot of Republicans, simply raising money and keeping the seat is all the job of serving in Congress is about. But there must be some Republicans out there who'd like to get some basic competence in their Congressional package, some vision, some fight that's more about South Dakota as a whole than about currying favor with one noisy faction.
If you want to win in the marketplace, differentiate yourself from your competitor. There are lots of ways good Republicans can differentiate themselves from Marion Michael Rounds. Playing to the Rapid City Tea Party choir is one way; playing to mainstream Republicans statewide who just want government to get things done is another.
