There seems no end of Republican legislators willing to cozy up to the violence-minded far right. And yet pundits still pretend they don't know how Donald Trump happened.
Republican Representative Scott Garrett of New Jersey, a seven-term incumbent locked in a close re-election race, headlined an Oct. 1 breakfast organized by an official for an antigovernment group that New Jersey’s Office of Homeland Security and Preparedness considers a “domestic terrorist threat.”
That "domestic terrorist threat" would be the New Jersey Oath Keepers, a radical militia group premised on the potentially imminent need to start murdering people if the government begins to do things members personally believe to be, in their own minds, un-Constitutional. To get a notion of what sorts of things might count as justification for such murders, recall that Oath Keepers were also a prominent contingent of both the Bundy Ranch standoff and the armed takeover of an Oregon wildlife refuge.
At the breakfast, Garrett hailed the official, Edward Durfee, as an “unsung hero.” Durfee is regional coordinator for New Jersey Oath Keepers, a group state officials list as “militia extremists [who] pose a moderate threat to New Jersey.” [...]
Garrett didn’t respond to interview requests.
So the good representative will lavish praise on the leader of a state militia group, but isn't nearly so eager to talk to the press when someone wants to know why the hell he would do such a thing. That sounds about right.
Oh—and it turns out he's a total creep, which also sounds about right.
[Garrett] ran into trouble last year, when Politico reported that he made disparaging remarks about gays in a meeting with Republican colleagues and refused to pay his party dues to protest Republicans’ recruitment and support of gay candidates.
No word on whether "supporting gay candidates" might be one of the things his Oath Keeper friends believe might be worth murdering government officials for. We'll have to ask him.
How did Donald Trump happen, the Republican pundits moan. However did the Republican Party get taken over suddenly-with-no-warning, in 2016, by a bunch of conspiracy-minded racist crackpots whose dominant opinion of the government is that maybe we just need to burn it all down. It remains, as always, a mystery.
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