Last fall, David Barton flirted with primarying John Cornyn for his Senate seat before announcing he wouldn't run. Well, we may have one possible explanation. America's favorite pseudo-historian has thrown his weight behind a candidate for Texas attorney general who wants to take Texas out of the United States and has risen up to defend groups that most sane people would consider to be extremist and terrorist.
Warren Throckmorton, the Christian college professor whose criticism of Barton played a role in Thomas Nelson yanking Barton's latest book, The Jefferson Lies, from the shelves, discovered that over the weekend, Barton endorsed Texas Railroad Commission chairman Barry Smitherman in the Republican primary to replace Greg Abbott as state attorney general. Smitherman's even set up a fundraising page touting Barton's endorsement.
Even by Texas Republican standards, Smitherman is a loonytoon. Back in September, he told WorldNutDaily that Texas has made "great progress in becoming an independent nation" in the event the rest of the country becomes too far gone. For those who don't know, the Railroad Commission is the primary regulator of Texas' oil and gas industry; its name is a vestige of the days when it regulated railroads until the federal government took that responsibility in 1984.
Smitherman has also attacked the Southern Poverty Law Center for calling out "patriot, Mormon and Judeo-Christian groups" as hate groups in study material for To Kill a Mockingbird. So who are some of the groups that Smitherman objected to being called out?
- The Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, a Mormon polygamist sect which has frequently peddled racist propaganda. Its leaders have also been proven to have abused children. Its leader, Warren Jeffs, is currently serving life in prison for molesting two girls in his sect.
- Christians for Yahweh, a Christian identity group and neo-Nazi outfit.
- The Jewish Defense League, an ultra-Zionist group with a long history of terrorist activity.
- Oath Keepers, a group of current and former soldiers and cops who refuse to obey "unconstitutional" orders, and whose members aren't above engaging in criminal and violent behavior.
It says a lot about the Texas GOP that a guy like this is a serious candidate to be that state's chief law enforcement officer. It also says a lot about Barton that he's willing to lend his name to this guy.
(h/t to People for the American Way)