CPAC: Noem and Stefanik lead charge of the wannabe Trump VPs

On Saturday, the Conservative Political Action Conference, or CPAC, will end with a straw poll. But given Donald Trump’s lock on the Republican nomination, attendees will not be asked who they want for president. They will be asked to choose between 17 possible vice-presidential picks.

On Friday, four such names were on the speakers’ roster.

“There are two kinds of people in this country right now,” the South Dakota governor, Kristi Noem, told an audience in general uninterested in non-binary choices.

“There are people who love America, and there are those who hate America.”

As an applause line, it worked well enough. Noem hit out at “agendas of socialism and control”, boasted of taxes cut and railroads built, and decried conditions at the southern border, claiming other countries were using it “to infiltrate us, and destroy us”.

But she earned perhaps her loudest response with more simple red meat: “I’m just going to say it: Joe Biden and Kamala Harris suck.”

Perhaps tellingly for her straw poll chances, Noem’s statement that “I’ve always supported the fact that our next president needs to be President Trump” also earned cheers. Bland at face value, the line was a dig at other possible vice-presidential picks such as Tim Scott, the South Carolina senator who challenged Trump then fawningly expressed his love.

“I was one of the first people to endorse Donald Trump to be president,” Noem said. “Last year, when everyone was asking me if I was going to consider running, I said no. Why would you run for president when you know you can’t win?”

That was a question for another VP contender, Vivek Ramaswamy. Having made a brief splash in the primary – clashing with Nikki Haley, a former South Carolina governor and Trump’s last remaining