South Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem speaks at CPAC on Saturday. | Joe Raedle/Getty Images

South Dakota’s governor got a great reception at CPAC. Her interview on Face the Nation hours later was a different story.

South Dakota governor and rising conservative star Kristi Noem was a big hit at the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) on Saturday, where she bragged about her state’s response to the coronavirus during a headlining speech. But an interview she did hours later with CBS highlighted how her attempt to turn reality on its head doesn’t survive scrutiny.

In reality, South Dakota’s laissez faire approach to the pandemic — including Noem’s refusal to enforce a mask mandate — has amounted to “a failed experiment in herd immunity,” as Bloomberg recently put it. The state has one of the 10 highest mortality rates in the United