Note to Dems: SD Natives aren't your "useful idiots"

No doubt those who don't want to hear it weary when folks reference the striking parallel's between the rise of Hitler and the Obama regime. Even so, in his Investor's Business Daily editorial today Thomas Sowell reminds us:

When Adolf Hitler was building up the Nazi movement in the 1920s, leading up to his taking power in the 1930s, he deliberately sought to activate people who did not normally pay much attention to politics. Such people were a valuable addition to his political base, since they were particularly susceptible to Hitler's rhetoric and had far less basis for questioning his assumptions or his conclusions. "Useful idiots" was the term supposedly coined by V.I. Lenin to describe similarly unthinking supporters of his dictatorship in the Soviet Union.

If it hasn't been said somewhere already I'll say it here… Rep. Stephanie Herseth-Sandlin really has only one hope this November and that is to garnish a lot of Native American votes.  And so it's no surprise the Dem's are now in full swing this week courting the reservations of our state hoping that once again natives will be "particularly susceptible to [their] rhetoric." Kevin Woster of the Rapid City Journal writes;

Cecilia Fire Thunder and Matt McGovern seem pleased at the idea of more Native Americans taking an active role in state politics, as Democrats.

Cecilia Fire Thunder likes the number a lot: 111,000.  That’s the rough count of the Native American population in the nine tribes in the state, she said.  The potential clout in a state with a population of about 800,000 is pretty obvious. And the South Dakota Democratic Party was working Sunday on its project to encourage more Natives to get involved as Democratic candidates and voters. “We’ve got a lot of Indians out there untapped to be Democrats,” Fire Thunder, a former chairwoman of the Oglala Tribe, said Sunday evening in Rapid City.

“In four years, I want one Indian from every reservation in South Dakota to be in the Statehouse,” she said. “And if we get two Indians from every reservation in the state in South Dakota, we can change South Dakota - you bet.”

You'll recall Cecilia Fire Thunder is the former Oglala Sioux Tribal President who was impeached by her peers for trying to bring more death to our state's native population. My native friends tried to counter her efforts pointing out there is no D/Lakota word for "abortion" because natives have a long tradition of love and respect for life in all it's forms. But Fire Thunder quickly rose to hero status in the Party of Death.

On this one thing Cecilia Fire Thunder and I agree - "In four years," I too would love to see "one Indian from every reservation in South Dakota in the Statehouse."  However, what Fire Thunder isn't talking about is that natives in South Dakota are waking up to how they've been exploited by the Democratic Party for years and it's been empty promises all over again. 

Democrats disenfranchise natives and use them year after year after year. Flashback to 2004 - there were reasons Tim Giago, publisher of the Lakota Journal, entered the Senate race as an Independant. Sen. Tom Daschle scrambled to meet with Giago and urged him to drop out of the race making empty promises.  As in the past, he later broke his "word of honor."

As the white woman savior rides again toward re-election this fall, let's be on the lookout for the Democratic machine to again be paying $3-per-head bounties for voter-registration cards and the host of other fraudulent tricks to up the native vote.  And, know that Conservative American Indian Republicans are alive and well.

Previously I've made waves with state Republicans because I'm very inclined toward native concerns. Republicans, in my view, for different reasons than Democrats, have also fallen short on native issues. The general attitude has been- don't bother and just concede rez votes as lost votes. One of my contributions, even tonight at a State Republican Party platform meeting, will be to make sure native issues are on the radar and key native leaders are at the table.

Perhaps a follow-up post to this one is in order.  Maybe I'll title it "Note to Republicans: SD Natives are conservative at heart. Have a conversation with them."