Another day, another RWNJ lets it slip as to what the Republican party really is. This is a dangerous political party that threatens our democracy, our planet, our economy, and the lives of thousands of people who have been denied health insurance because of the mean spirited insanity of the Republicans.
Every once in awhile, one of these nut jobs slips and their true nature comes out. According to the Alaska Dispatch News Rep. Young's challenger, Forrest Dunbar said there was a bit of a verbal confrontation backstage before a debate. Dunbar apparently touched Young on the elbow and said "He Freaked out"! Here's how the paper describes it:
Dunbar, reached Friday and pressed about the encounter, said the two were walking near each other backstage when Young said angrily, “You're not from Cordova any more than I’m from Fort Yukon. I had you looked into.”
Dunbar, raised in that Southcentral Alaska town after his family moved there from Eagle in the Interior when he was a child, said he tried politely responding to Young. Young grew up in California and moved to Alaska as a young man, not long after serving in the U.S. Army in the mid-1950s.
Dunbar, who now lives in Anchorage, said he was puzzled and in a friendly gesture touched Young on his arm lightly and asked: “What are you talking about?” Then:
“He freaked out,” said Dunbar. “There is no other way to describe it.
“He kind of snarled at me and said, ‘Don’t you ever touch me. Don’t ever touch me. The last guy who touched me ended up on the ground dead,’” said Dunbar.
But this isn't the first time Rep. Young has gone off the deep end:
Other infamous Don Young moments have been recorded and generated headlines, giving him a folk hero status in a state that recoils at Outside intervention, but angering some Alaskans who disagree with his abrasive approach. Those moments include the time Young laid into Interior Secretary Sally Jewell, made funny faces during a serious tribute on the House floor, called California farm workers "wetbacks," and attacked a professor from Rice University.
Oh, this isn't everything about this RWNJ. glassbeadgame covers how important this
congressional race is and how it might influence the very important Alaska Senate race.
But maybe Dunbar is just making all this up to get a political advantage?
Pam Foreman, a development director for Kodiak radio station KMXT, which broadcast the debate, said on Friday she was accompanying the candidates offstage. Her mind was on other things and she did not hear the first part about Cordova and Fort Yukon.
But she confirmed that she saw and heard the rest, including Dunbar’s friendly touch near the elbow and Young’s final statements about a “sweet swing.”
Foreman said she couldn’t remember Young’s exact quote after he pulled his arm away from Dunbar. But it was not a nice response. “It was something about the last guy who touched me, blah, blah,” she said.
So for all those people who buy into the false equivalency of, they're all the same, and plan on not voting or helping with GOTV, this is the type of guy you are empowering. When these RWNJ get power they give cover to the rest of the Republicans to do things like change the rules of elections to prevent them from ever losing power. The damage they do in one election cycle can't be reversed in a year or two or three, or as we saw in 2010, not even in a decade.
Anyone who thinks this election isn't critical, or that they all aren't critical, simply doesn't understand who the Koch brothers are and how they are systematically undoing all the gains progressives have made in the last century.
Get your butt out to vote early and drag your sister, your brother, your cousin... and when you're done, get on down to your favorite candidate's office and help with GOTV GOTV GOTV!