Kristi Noem should give it up.

Suddenly, the South Dakota governor isn't the tough-minded, laconic, ranchy cowman-type making tough decisions out on the farm that she claimed to be.

Now she's gone into 'mom' mode, shifting her story about why she cruelly shot and killed her young dog named "Cricket" for disturbing her hunt and having a good time, from being a tough decisionmaker, to being a mom protecting her children from a vicious animal.

It's as fake as something Kamala Harris might try, with backpedaling, damage control, explaining out again and again what she did, and she really ought not do it.

She seems to be pleading to not lose those that popularity with the public that she had, which has surely gone down after her revelation and her bad judgment of making it.

Her first explanation was that the dog was shot for disturbing her hunt and "having the time of her life" and then attacking and killing a neighbor's chickens. She said she "hated that dog" so she got rid of it for that, which sounds like an anger issue on her part. Now it's all different: she's a protective mom, defending her young from a vicious animal.

Don’t believe the #fakenews media’s twisted spin. I had a choice between the safety of my children and an animal who had a history of attacking people & killing livestock.

I chose my kids. pic.twitter.com/ZTtN7MpQvf

— Kristi Noem (@KristiNoem) May 2, 2024

Well, which is it? Why did she play tough-ranch hand first making tough decisions for political gain in her book, which she is reportedly revising, instead of desperate mom? Seems she's not tough guy she claimed to be after all, and it was all an act.

That kind of inauthenticity turns off voters. Obviously, she told the story to boost her political chances and become President Trump's vice president. When it fell flat as she should have guessed it would, she's now backpedaling.

It just doesn't sound like she's telling the true story. After all, she didn't say it was as vicious as she claims now, and she did take the dog on a hunt to "calm" her, according to the book. She said the dog disturbed her hunt (and no doubt embarrassed her in front of her friends), and that she "hated that dog," which is why she shot it.

It might have worked a couple weeks ago when she reportedly defied aides to put that story into her upcoming book, but Twitter's community notes added some context.

The claim about a vicious animal is pretty hard to take. If it were really that, it probably would have been easy to kill the beast a lot earlier than she did, as well as keep it away from her kids and the other dogs on the hunt. It also doesn't explain why she reported that her kids were upset at her killing of their pet, which doesn't happen if a dog is vicious.

It sounds more like an untrained dog, which contrary to what she claims now, was indeed a puppy, evident enough as various kennel club representatives for the breed have told the press that such dogs are never fully trained for hunting until they reach two years of age and shouldn't be thrown into one before that. As for the dog killing chickens, again, it appeared to be a problem of training, as its breed, the German Wirehaired Pointer, is bred to hunt birds, and thus, acting according to its nature, but in this case, untempered by training.

She didn't say if she got another German Wirehaired Pointer to replace the dog she shot in the gravel pit, so if she did, that buttresses her argument that it was a specially vicious dog, but if, as I suspect, she didn't, it points to a failure of training as another dog of the same breed would have behaved the same way.

The casual cruelty of what she described first is probably the version most people are going to buy, and it's going to be a hard one to shake, as there are many dog owners who love dogs and know how dogs are when they are untrained.

To my mind, I find it more disturbing the earlier stories that she was carrying on an open, in-everyone's-faces love affair with former Trump aide Cory Lewandowski while married to another man. Besides the self-control issue, it's intriguing that Lewandowski has been accused of cruelty, too, manhandling a reporter at a campaign event and sidelined for it, (albeit not permanently). Is she suggestible to Lewandowski's reputed casual cruelty and in putting out the first cruel dog story, was she trying to be like Lewandowski?

If so, bad judgment in more ways than one.

Nevertheless, she can get over it by going back to being a good governor and accept that, as Hawaii's governor, Linda Lingle, once put it, that "sometimes, it just isn't your year."

It's happened. And it leaps through my mind that La Rouchefoucauld once said in his famous Maxims that there almost always is a way to recover from a bad reputational fall.

Florida's Gov. Ron DeSantis bounced back quickly after the slings and arrows of the presidential primary against President Trump and was one of the first to accept that it wasn't his year in that morass. He got back to work as Florida governor and his popularity now is stronger than ever with his resolute response to campus antisemites and transgender nonsense. He's now a viable vice presidential candidate, and I sure hope President Trump picks him.

She should just go back to being a good governor and not fight this, which only makes her look desperate. Owning up to her mistake would be even better. But at a minimum, she should stop digging. Going back to being a good governor will supercede anything bad coming from this bad voter-repelling blunder.

Sometimes, damage-control is worse than the damage.

Image: Screen shot from Fox News video, via Twitter