SDPB debate: it's The Kristi and Matt Show!

If South Dakota Representative Kristi Noem had an "interesting new position" last night: it doesn't hurt to practice a little muscle memory this morning.

Stephanie Rissler served as host for Bill Janklow's idea of public teevee as Rep. Kristi Noem defended her House seat against challenger, Matt Varilek.

The debate opened with Noem in a rhetorical battle with the Veterans Administration over funding decisions affecting its facility in Hot Springs creating an illusion that she gives a shit about veterans while voting to cut care because government is bad unless she says so.

She touted her imaginary impact on the insect trying to reverse ponderosa pine infestation in the Black Hills but appeared to mellow on ObamaCare and voiced her support for coal because it benefits a Canadian-owned railroad while ignoring the mercury being dumped on South Dakota by upwind plants.

While he is clearly too rational for the likely codependent, myopic, red state, blue-haired South Dakota voter, Matt Varilek responded effectively (his voice sometimes dripping with incredulity) to Noem's obfuscations albeit it in often lengthy, wonkish rebuttals with his dais-mate as he controlled the tempo of the slugfest over an often-errant, shrill incumbent.

Noem said she believes in the sovereignty of tribes although she votes against supporting the needs of Native women. Varilek recently appeared on KILI, the Voice of the Lakota. He even used the word, "habitat" in a discussion of gun rights where Kristi stressed the importance of her God-given right to ritual wildlife slaughter with her family.

@StephanieSDPB had at least one awkward moment as she posed a follow up on the Affordable Care Act that seemed to reflect a personal bias, if not an outright poke at a hornet's nest. It is the view of this interested party that a journalist using first names to address learned guests is rude and off-putting: imagine Candy Crowley glad-handing Barry and Mitt, for example.

Reading back through Argus Leader reporter David Montgomery's tweets during the debate revealed one journalist's lean, finely ground reporting as a middle-class roving writer with little stake in the outcome of a campaign as he mused about most tweets coming from the party faithful (we party faithful used #SDPBdebate that DM somewhat begrudgingly used at the end to move traffic to his own site).

Someone tweeted something like, "i wish this one be done so we can start reporting on the next one."

If the last two debates were about Noem's handlers to get her to "first, do no harm," she hasn't learned that at all well, either.

Hell: Bill Janklow is dead and still giving part of nearly a million dollars of his hoarded campaign trove to people just like Rep. Noem. Kristi's place-holding days could be numbered but why should she care? She's making over three grand a day, learning the lobbyist gig, and taking her negative net worth into the black at South Dakota's expense...all orchestrated by the afore-menschened Horsemen mostly-ably assisted by DWC.

South Dakotans: wake the fuck up! We are choosing between an overpaid actress reciting her party's lines and an analyst committed to making a difference.

Another two years of a GOP House looks like the proverbial definition of insanity: fool me twice, shame on me.