When talking about the American Taliban, it's easy to shrug it off and think, "that's all hyperbole!" But look only to Nevada to realize that with this crowd, there is simply no limit to the craziness.
There's this:
As GOP Senate nominee Sharron Angle attempts to parry charges from Harry Reid's campaign that she is "just too extreme," she is the headliner at an event Saturday promoted by a physician's group that is far out of the mainstream. The Association of American Physicians and Surgeons, which is a major promoter of the Doctors Tea Party in San Diego on Saturday, has given voice to some bizarre theories, believes the advent of Medicare in 1965 was "evil" and "immoral" and once published a piece arguing HIV may not cause AIDS. There's more, too, with the group promoting one of Angle's previously expressed theories that abortion may cause breast cancer and it also once argued the FDA is unconstitutional.
Just too extreme? You be the judge:
The group has a piece arguing Barack Obama may have used "covert hypnosis" to sway crowds and below that is a link to a Q and A with a prominent birther: POTUSthehypnotist
And this:
When Republican Senate candidate Sharron Angle told a Christian news interviewer this year that “entitlement programs (are) built to make government our God,” she voiced a central tenet of Christian Reconstructionism, according to academics who study the movement.
Christian Reconstructionism is a political-religious movement formed in the 1960s and ’70s that seeks to return American society to the rule of biblical law. Any attempt to expand government beyond the dictates in the Old Testament — for example, by establishing Social Security benefits, education policy or property taxes — turns government into a false idol, reconstructionists believe.
“The problem is that government becomes an idol when it overspills its biblically proscribed boundaries, and people start looking to government for salvation,” said Julie Ingersoll, a religious studies professor at the University of North Florida, in explaining a tenet of Christian Reconstructionism.
And this:
Republican Sharron Angle believes the clergy should be allowed to endorse candidates from the pulpit and opposes laws allowing gays to adopt children. [...]
Among her positions, outlined in answers to 36 yes-or-no questions, Angle would oppose making sexual orientation a protected minority in civil rights laws. In a section on school prayer, she affirms that students and teachers should be able to talk openly about religion in schools, including the right to “publicly acknowledge the Creator.”
The federal government bans churches from participating in political campaigns on behalf of candidates, but Angle said clergy should be able to express views on candidates from the pulpit.
And this:
Sharron Angle has taken some extreme positions, but this one is remarkable even by her standards: She said on a candidate questionnaire that she would refuse political contributions from a private company that backs equal rights for gays and extends benefits to partners of gay employees.
Note, all those stories are just from today. And Sharrrrron Angle isn't just some fringe nutter Republican. She is their nominee in perhaps the highest profile race this cycle -- the Republican attempt to oust the Democratic Senate leader.
And it's not as if the GOP establishment is running away from Angle. NRSC Chair John Cornyn has lent staff, cash, and energy backing her bid. American Crossroads, Karl Rove's new smear vehicle, inaugurated its election-season blitz by spending $360,000 on her behalf. Republicans remain firmly committed to getting Angle and her fringe politics into the United States Senate.
This is the modern GOP. A collection of theocratic conspiracy theorists with utter disdain for the role of government in making people's lives better. That was true eight months ago when I turned in my manuscript to American Taliban, and it's even more true today.