Kristi Noem first won election to Congress in 2010, when the Tea Party ushered in such other luminaries as Marco Rubio and Mike Lee. (Christine O’Donnell, the Tea Party’s Senate candidate in Delaware, flamed out amid allegations that she was a practicing witch.) Though not a card-carrying Tea Partier, Noem courted the group’s members, who enjoyed brandishing protest signs featuring Barack Obama with a Hitler moustache.
During her early years in Congress, Noem seemed like a garden-variety right-winger, but after the 2016 election she heeded the call of opportunism and became an angry drunk karaoke version of Donald J. Trump—much like her partner in toadying, Elise Stefanik. But Noem didn’t try to be as sociopathic as her death-cult’s leader—she tried to be more sociopathic. And her success demands that we stand back and marvel.
