Since When Is Heidi Heitkamp “Dynamic?”
Rep. Rick Berg, who is running against liberal Democrat Heidi Heitkamp to replace retiring Senator Kent Conrad, must have really gotten on the wrong side of certain Washington DC conservatives. Groups like the Club for Growth, as well as conservative Senate kingmaker Jim DeMint, have been flirting with challenging Berg’s candidacy for some time now. The only thing that seems to be keeping them from taking an active role in challenging Berg is that the only Republican alternative to him is Duane Sand, a walking and talking political punchline.
Even Stephen Moore in the Wall Street Journal is running Berg down, writing today that his challenger Heidi Heitkamp is “dynamic, folksy and colorful—all the things that Rick Berg isn’t.”
Ouch.
It’s true that Berg can seem aloof from voters at time, and he certainly hasn’t done a lot to enamor himself with conservative voters in the state who don’t seem to be letting votes like his assent to the “debt deal” go. But let’s not let criticism of Berg turn Heidi Heitkamp into a candidate she isn’t.
Heitkamp is less dynamic than intemperate. She is quick to anger, as evidenced by a question about Obamacare at the Democrat state convention launching her into a fit of pique, and so far has run a ham-handed attempt to transform from the way left-of-center political activist she’s become since she last won a statewide election in the 1990′s to a moderate US Senate candidate.
Whatever problems North Dakota voters, particularly North Dakota’s more conservative voters, have with Rick Berg, don’t think there’s any amount of colorful behavior that’s going to win them over to Heidi Heitkamp. Not with her support for Obamacare and – even worse – her attempts to dishonestly whitewash her record through lies and disappearing video.
Tags: election 2012, Heidi Heitkamp, North Dakota News, Rick Berg
