Honestly I think this is one of those things where well-off Democrats and rural Republicans are on completely different pages and neither really grasps how hard the other side disagrees.
"well-off Democrats" and "rural Republicans" is not a binary lol
And no, I don't think the majority of rural Republicans think shooting your dog because you had no idea how to train it is okay
He wasn’t saying it was. He was merely contrasting two different groups that seem to be represented here and to have strongly contrasting views.
I suspect that most Republican voters living in a rural area (below some threshold of density) think it is okay to put down a dog that bites you and attacks your neighbors chickens.
Exactly. I don't personally condone Noem's actions, but this idea that white hipster New Yorkers (and lots of other people, to be sure) have that dogs are part of the family like just as much as people is not as common of an attitude in the red states. I don't think that most people who are voting for Trump are going to see her as a "murderer" or find this disqualifying to her political career.
The fact that she did it herself is a little jarring. There's a plethora of vets and animal shelters that will put down a pet humanely for
any reason (or maybe there's not in the blue states, I don't know, but there definitely are in the red states), much less one that is biting and present a hint of danger to humans - in fact, a vet or shelter would probably urge the owner to euthanize in that case. Also it's a bit jarring how flippant she is about it, rather than sad and disappointed. But neither of those jarring things is going to matter to most people who would like the idea of her being Trump's VP. (And let's get real, the rest will fall in line anyway the day Trump picked her.)
Edit to say that I just don't see this as a huge, shocking, career-affecting story that a lot of people online seem to think it is (and I don't mean Twitter bots, but legitimate journalists and TalkElections posters I respect). I don't know if it's a red state/blue state thing or something else entirely, but this just seems like something that happens to families from time to time, a pet turning out to be dangerous and having to be euthanized for everyone's safety. Noem is awfully cavalier about it, and who knows if the dog was truly as dangerous as she says, but this story just isn't packing that "OMG can you believe this shocking, out-of-the-ordinary scandal!" punch to me.
