8 Of This Week's Best (Er, "Best") Right-Wing Nutjob Quotes
There were just so many good quotes from Republican politicians this week, so I apologize to any nut-job I overlooked. It's impossible to keep up with all the gems coming from Republican and conservative lunatics. Consider this a mere sampling — a tasting menu, if you will.
1. Paul LePage Makes Jokes About Rape
You may remember Maine's Republican Governor Paul LePage from when he told the NAACP to kiss his ass. Or maybe it's from that time he aptly compared the IRS to the Gestapo. (Admit it. The comparison kinda works.) Well, here's another gem you can add to your treasure trove of LePage-based memories: anal rape jokes.
LePage said that Democratic State Senator Troy Jackson “claims to be for the people, but he’s the first one to give it to the people without providing Vaseline.” In case you were worried that LePage would back down, he added this thoughtful comment later: “Dammit, that comment is not politically correct, but we got to understand who this man is." When a reporter went out on a limb and suggested people may find the whole Vaseline-free friction-heavy anal sex metaphor offensive, LePage said, "Good. It ought to [be seen as offensive], because I’ve been taking it for two years.”
Never give up! Never give in!
2. A GOP County Chairman Compares a Candidate (In His Own Party!) to a Prostitute
Jim Allen, the Republican Party chairman of Montgomery County, Illinois, sent this email to Republican News Watch editor Doug Ibendahl, about Erika Harold, an African American former Miss America and Republican congressional candidate, challenging Rodney Davis (R-Ill.) in next year's primary:
"Rodney Davis will win and the love child of the DNC will be back in Shitcago by May of 2014 working for some law firm that needs to meet their quota for minority hires... The little queen touts her abstinence and she won the crown because she got bullied in school...boohoo...kids are cruel, life sucks and you move on.. Now, miss queen is being used like a street walker and her pimps are the DEMOCRAT PARTY and RINO REPUBLICANS."
He has since resigned. I don't know why.
3. E.W. Jackson Says Government Programs Are Way Worse Than Slavery
E.W. Jackson, Virginia Republicans’ nominee for lieutenant governor, always has something ... original to say. After all, not everyone has the lunatic cojones to say that the gays “poison culture” or call out President Obama's “Muslim sensibilities.” So, we shouldn't be surprised that Jackson had this to say about the decline of two parent households among black families:
"[S]lavery did not destroy the black family even though it certainly was an attack on the black family. It made it difficult but I’ll tell you that the programs that began in the ‘60s, the programs that began to tell women that 'you don’t need a man in the home, the government will take care of you,' that and began to tell men, 'you don’t need to be in the home, the government will take care of this woman and take care of these children.' That’s when the black family began to deteriorate. In 1960 most black children were raised in two-parent, monogamous families. By now, by this time, we have only 20% of black children being raised in two-parent, monogamous families with a married man and woman raising those children. It wasn’t slavery that did that, it was government that did that, trying to solve problems that only God can solve and that only we as human beings can solve."
He's right. We should really let God solve the problems facing our society. I'm sure he'll get to taking care of poverty and sexism and racism ... eventually.
4. A Texas Congressman Tells Us What Fetuses Do In Their Spare Time
During a House Rules Committee debate on the Pain-Capable Unborn Child Protection Act, which would ban abortions nationwide after 20 weeks of pregnancy, Michael Burgess (R-Texas), a Tea-Partying former OB-GYN and the current vice president of the Subcommittee on Health, said:
"This is a subject that I do know something about…. There is no question in my mind that a baby at 20-weeks after conception can feel pain. The fact of the matter is, I argue with the chairman because I thought the date was far too late. We should be setting this at 15-weeks, 16-weeks… You watch a sonogram of a 15-week baby, and they have movements that are purposeful. They stroke their face. If they’re a male baby, they may have their hand between their legs. They feel pleasure, why is it so hard to think that they could feel pain?"
Does everything have to go back to masturbating fetuses? Gosh! If I had a penny!
5. Jeb Bush and Sarah Palin Argue About Baby-Making
Delivering a speech at the Faith and Freedom Coalition’s Road to the Majority conference, Jeb "The Smart One" Bush defended immigration reform thusly: "Immigrants are more fertile, and they love families, and they have more intact families, and they bring a younger population. Immigrants create an engine of economic prosperity.”
While that is a gem in itself, it also provoked an amazing response from professional gaffeur Sarah Palin, who said, “I think it’s kind of dangerous territory . . . to want to debate this over one race’s fertility rate over another... And I say this as someone who’s kind of fertile herself.”
Thanks for the reminder. Couldn't you have just told us how fertile you were back in 2008? Instead of schlepping around your poor baby at all hours of the night, way past his bedtime?
6. Louie Gohmert Says, "Let Them NOT Eat King Crab Legs"
Representative Louie Gohmert (R-Texas) is one hard working bigot! He never stops and his work is never done. Check out the following exchange between Gohmert and ThinkProgress, which occurred after his speech at an anti-IRS rally on Wednesday:
"THINKPROGRESS: Where do you stand on the Employment Non-Discrimination Act?
GOHMERT: I’m not aware of exactly which one you’re talking about.
THINKPROGRESS: It would protect LGBT workers from being fired due to their sexual orientation.
GOHMERT: Who wants to go talking about sexual orientation when they’re working? Good grief."
Good grief is right! Then, on Thursday, just one day after offending LGBT people, the tireless congressman took on another enemy: the poor. He defended cutting food stamps by arguing that his “broken-hearted” constituents complained they had seen people use food stamps to buy king crab legs:
“Because he does pay income tax, he doesn’t get more back than he pays in, he is actually helping pay for king crab legs when he can’t pay for them for himself..."
In other words, why should we bother giving the poor anyway, when it's empirically verifiable that they turn around and spend them on king crab legs? Also, Gohmert pointed out, they're a bunch of fatties, who have no business eating anything in the first place:
"We don’t want anyone to go hungry, and from the amount of obesity in this country by people who we’re told do not have enough to eat, it does seem like we could have a debate about this issue without allegations about wanting to slap down or starve children.”
Gohmert totally isn't proposing starving children. Just poor and fat children (and adults).
7. An Idaho GOP Official Has Tutuphobia
Cornel Rasor, the chair of the Idaho GOP’s Resolutions Committee, introduced a measure to repeal local LGBT workplace protections. And he has good reason. Tutus! Rasor explains the threat: “I’d hire a gay guy if I thought he was a good worker....But if he comes into work in a tutu … he’s not producing what I want in my office.” My question is, what about the productive and good workers who come into work wearing a tutu, regardless of their sexual orientation? Because they're out there. Oh yes, they are.
8. James Taranto Says Military Rape Is Just He Said/She Said
Conservative and major feminist-phobe James Taranto, of the Wall Street Journal, is well-versed in misogyny and ignorance. In his latest hit, he dismissed allegations of sexual assault in the military as being a “he-said/she-said dispute” and proof of “a political campaign against sexual assault in the military that shows signs of becoming an effort to criminalize male sexuality,” and the “war on men.” He also said, "The presumption that reckless men are criminals while reckless women are victims makes a mockery of any notion that the sexes are equal." And he finished up with this great rhetorical Q-and-A: “What does female sexual freedom mean? It means, for this woman, that she had the freedom to get drunk and get in the back seat of a car with this guy.”
That's certainly how I see sexual freedom for myself.
