Anyone following this year's crop of GOP hopefuls may have noticed a thread running through these folks. From Rand Paul in Kentucky, to Sharron Angle in Nevada, from Orly Taitz in California to Rick Barber in Alabama, they are uniformly the most extreme group of far right candidates fielded under the Republican banner in a generation.
Sure there are other standouts from other ages, but as a group it's hard to find another with beliefs as strange and out of the mainstream or rhetoric as ignorant and turgid. And it is the needlessly extreme – in cases violent – rhetoric that has me concerned.
A day or so before the California primary, readers might remember me trotting out the terrible tale of Orly Taitz, the so-called birther queen who wanted to be Secretary of State so she could make her enemies crawl. Crawl!
Her campaign was simply redolent in the stench of crazy and as such not even the right wing establishment of the California GOP, the California Republican Assembly could stomach her and eventually she lost. Too bad, incumbent Democrat Sec. of State Debra Bowen would have feasted on her living skull meats in the general election... so to speak.
Don't worry though... that "stench of crazy" – a potent mix of fear pheromones, hate induced sweat, the tingling of ozone and melted plastic from a burned out wall plug, and the earthy organic scent of the masses – is rising up throughout GOP ranks swelled with new winners in recent primary elections.
Take Sharron Angle, a woman whose family is steeped in fringe right wing "Third Party" movements. Sarah Palin-like, Angle realized she would never attain real political power as a member of the American Independent Party, which weds in unholy matrimony elements of radical pro-gun/anti-government libertarianism with Christian social conservatism and fear of the New World Order's black helicopter brigades.
According the Comrade Joshua, over at TPM, "the small party attracted considerable controversy in 1994 when it took out a newspaper ad titled 'Consequences of Sodomy: Ruin of a Nation' which suggested HIV could spread through the water."
Well, Angle is now the GOP banner carrier against Senate Majority Leader, Democrat Harry Reid in November.
We all know (or at least should by now) Rand Paul's take on civil rights and his personal beliefs that personal property rights convey kingship on the property owner.
He has taken a good amount of heat on this, and frankly, he can't seem to put his face out in public with stepping on his own taint whenever a camera is running. This is the price you pay for pandering to the worst instincts of your base, while trying to put a human face on for the rest of us.
Apparently, Rick Barber from Alabama has either not been paying attention or does not grok the lessons of Rand Paul, however. This state senate candidate from Alabama has engaged in some fairly extreme rhetoric in his campaign, which could be taken by some as a call for armed revolt against the United States.
The previous link includes video of a commercial which starts with a close up of a restless hand next to an ornate matchlock pistol, then picks up Barber talking about his desire to impeach President Obama (an important part of the job of an Alabama State Senator), then his whinging about taxes, apparently to three of the founding fathers – Sam Adams, George Washington and Ben Franklin – in a kind of if-I -could-go-back-in-time-tattle-on-Democrats-to-the-founders fantasy.
The Commercial ends with Barber's impassioned imploring of the founders to help him start a new revolt, asking in a demanding tone "Are you with me?" And a comically grave George Washington saying "Gentlemen, gather your armies..."
Now in reality, only a complete idiot would ask George Washington to start an anti-tax revolt, given that he not only levied the nation's first tax, but then raised a militia to put down anti-tax protesters in the so-called Whiskey Rebellion. (As an aside, this was all part of the plan of Treasury Secretary Alexander Hamilton, another Tea Party favorite, to centralize the nascent nation's finances and fund a national debt.)
But as long as we're talking reality, it is difficult to see this commercial as anything other than the juvenile political fantasy of a n00b politician with teh delusions of teh bitchenezz... and not an earnest call for armed insurrection against the U.S. government.
There is a connection, however, between the crazy spewing from these candidates and the actions of less-than-balanced members of their fan clubs... It used to be that this kind of rhetoric was bottled up in the mostly harmless swamp of hate radio and Right Wing Blogistan.
With the advent of these goofballs getting a primary nod and having to face a much more diverse audience to get elected in the general, the amount of back pedaling, cognitive dissonance and general shame for unrepentant racism, tribalism, and ignorance is going to be amusing.
What will not be so funny is when these guys get elected and some folks feel empowered by this to take action or feel disenfranchised to the point of violence when their candidate gets stomped like narc at Sturgis, and again feel they must act.
Rhetoric is floating around out there in dog-whistle politics land about how the Mexicans and Blacks have destroyed the White Man's property rights, how the homos are spreading AIDS in the water and hunting children, how the United States has been taken over by an Islamist puppet of the United Nations New World Order...
Yeah, we laugh at this stupidity, but there are plenty out there who see it as actual existential threats. My concern is what happens when these people feel empowered to exercise these ideals or feel so cheated out of the process they have no other recourse other than to act.
Anyone remember Jim David Adkisson? And this guy was just taking cues from O'Reilly and Hannity...
mojo sends
