I have written previously about how the conservatives are either becoming more stupid or at least more crazy. Some of my colleagues in the blogging world think they all suffer from a personality disorder. I am not sure I would go that far, but clearly something is wrong with them. I have stated before I believe they have an irrational deep seeded fear of anything new and desire to force America back to a time that never existed. Maybe that is a paranoid personality disorder. Regardless, even after a post election call by some conservative leaders to tone down the craziness, there is still evidence that many in the GOP are not getting the message.
Here are some examples.
Representative of Jeff Duncan (R-SC) compared a gun registry to the genocide in Rwanda.
" Read about the Rwandan genocide, the Hutu and Tutsi tribes. Read that all Tutsi tribe members were required to register their address with the Hutu government and that this database was used to locate Tutsi for slaughter at the hands of the Hutu."
Of course this makes no sense. In Rwanda one group wanted to exterminate the other. What group in America wants to commit genocide against another no matter how strong their hate is. Also, if one group wanted to exterminate another it wouldn't be difficult to find out who members of that group were. A gun registry would actually be one of the most ineffective lists to use.
Then there's Republican Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell who made the following statement when he was taped looking like an ass making light of Ashley Judd's mental health.
“Last week they were attacking my wife’s ethnicity, and apparently also bugging my headquarters, much like Nixon and Watergate,” McConnell said. “That’s what the political left does in Kentucky.”
Attacking the left and ignoring his insensitive remarks moves the story away from Judd and towards a left wing conspiracy that rises to Nixonian proportions. Except it doesn't.
Unlike Watergate their was no bugging. Supposedly some members of a liberal Kentucky group were in a common area while McConell's group was talking about Judd. One of the liberals recorded their conversation on his phone. Hardly comparable to Watergate.
Still, more.
Dave Agema, A Republican Party official from Michigan, called the gay lifestyle filthy and likened it to alcoholism.
“If you saw your friend for example dying of alcoholism would you just stand quietly by and watch it happen?”
No, if your friend was dying of alcoholism, I would hope as a friend you would try to intervene. The American Psychiatric Association (APA) considers alcoholism a disease, and diseases should be treated. The APA does not consider homosexuality a disease. Alcoholism and Homosexuality are not the same and any comment suggesting they are is ludicrous. One is a disease, the other is a lifestyle.
Moreover, there's Texas representative Steve Stockman from Texas who has a particularly offensive new campaign slogan. He tweeted.
Our campaign bumper sticker: If babies had guns, they wouldn't be aborted. http://stockman2014.com #gosnell #tcot pic.twitter.com/CVaYrQAeK9
Either Stockman has a perverted sense of humor or he's just perverted. There's the obvious, abortion is not generally a funny topic. In addition, unless Stockman has figured out a way to put a gun into the hands of an unborn fetus, you would have to wait until the baby was born to give him/her the gun, thus they would not have been aborted. This is just wrong on so many levels.
Finally, there's Texas Republican Joe Barton who cites Noah's Ark and the great flood as evidence that climate change is not man made.
"I would point out that if you are a believer in the Bible, one would have to say the great flood was an example of climate change," Barton told a congressional hearing on Wednesday in a video first shown on the BuzzFeed website. "That certainly wasn't because mankind had overdeveloped hydrocarbon energy."
This is just another example of a long history of religion ignoring science. Remember Galileo and Copernicus. Barton first states "if you are a believer in the Bible," well many people are not and we certainly should not govern based on a religious text. Later, Barton says, "I think you can have an honest difference of opinion of what's causing that change without automatically being either all in, that's all because of mankind, or it's all just natural. I think there's a divergence of evidence."
No there isn't. Virtually all scientists agree that climate change is man made. The problem is that every climate change denier or television program that wants to appear balanced can always find one idiot that disputes the facts behind climate change.
So this is your more inclusive GOP. The Republican National Committee came out with it's 100 page autopsy report of the GOP and it appears to have some merit. But trying to move the belief system of a bunch of tight assed old white southerners is like playing Whack-a-Mole, you never know when the next crazy is going to pop up. If the GOP truly wants to change, they are going to have to do it the old fashioned way, at the ballot box.