I have never made but one prayer to God, a very short one:
'O Lord, make my enemies ridiculous.'
And God granted it.
-- Voltaire
The Internet, the video camera and YouTube have forever altered the political landscape of this country, making possible a degree of accountability that never previously existed. Needless to say, holding elected officials accountable for their words is a concept not well favored among Republicans. It's not surprising that given their burning desire to drag America back into the Golden Dark Age of feudalism and ignorance, Republicans have come to loathe and fear these new technologies, and have almost universally failed to grasp their full significance (cf. Rand Paul, Sharron Angle) - and thus the possibility for this diary.
This is the first in a series of four diaries -
The Republicans, in their own words (Part 1): bats#!t crazy
The Republicans, in their own words (Part 2): bigotry, hate and violence
The Republicans, in their own words (Part 3): Big Fat Liars (and hypocrites)
The Republicans, in their own words (Part 4): 'Let 'em eat applesauce'
- in which, via the miracles of the above-cited technologies, we remind ourselves us just exactly what horrors await this nation in the unthinkable event that the people quoted here should take charge of the legislative branch of our government this January. In this series we will, to paraphrase Stephen Colbert,
smear the Republicans with their own words. While I realize that truing up Republicans' words with their actions (that is to say, showing the REALITY of their words) will have little or no impact on the True Believers of the right wing - it being common knowledge among that particular demographic that (once again as Colbert reports) reality has a well-known liberal bias - perhaps this admittedly incomplete inventory of Republicans' words can serve to get a few more Democrats off their collective asses.
Most of these quotes in these diaries are not from random Republicans; rather, they were uttered on the record by Republicans who have been elected to or nominated for office, or who are otherwise opinion leaders among the right wing. And as for those who would question whether the quotes cited here actually represent the true views of the Republican Party as a whole, I would challenge them to perform this simple test:
Ask any elected Republican or Republican nominee to repudiate refudiate any of the words cited here, and see what happens.
Please bear in mind that while well-intentioned and diligently researched, these diaries by no means will comprise exhaustive lists of their respective genres. We still have a week before the elections, and since every time the Republicans open their mouths a new bit of craziness or mendacity or hypocrisy or hatred or ignorance or bigotry or contempt for working Americans comes out, I fully expect that these lists could be added to, and soon. (Also, if the Republican running in your district doesn’t show up here it might be because (a) he/she is relatively sane, or (b) he/she is below the national radar, and there just hasn't been enough media scrutiny of his/her words.)
. . .
We begin our guided tour through Right Wingnuttia and Outer Glennbeckistan with a sampling of outlandish pronouncements. What we know from their own words is that Republicans and Teahadists think eliminating Social Security and Medicare are swell ideas – in fact, they believe that secession and armed revolution are patriotic and were advocated by the Founding Fathers. This makes sense when you realize that the current administration is part of a worldwide socialist plot intent on forcing us to ride bicycles and eat vegetables.
I wish I were making any of that up. You will find every one of those assertions – and more – in the diary below.
(One thing Republicans do on a regular basis is to remind us that some folks know a lot of stuff that ain't so; in that vein, some of the quotes in this installation of the "In Their Own Words" series might just as easily be categorized as "Ineffably Stupid" as "Bats#!t Crazy," but you get the idea . . . )
Enter, if you dare . . .
"The Taliban is training monkeys to shoot and kill American soldiers. This particular photo IS Photoshopped, to give you an idea of what a jihad monkey may actually look like. Yep, he's got a gun. As an incentive, the monkeys are being trained using bananas and peanuts, apparently, at a secret Taliban base."
-- FOX News's
Gretchen Carlson
"Terrorist cells overseas . . . had figured out how to game our system . . . [T]hey would have young women, who became pregnant, would get them into the United States to have a baby . . . And then they would return back where they could be raised and coddled as future terrorists. And then one day, 20, 30 years down the road, they could be sent in to help destroy our way of life."
-- Texas Republican Rep.
Louie Gohmert
"Well, at this point, I don't have the hard evidence right here in front of me . . . When your folks called me [t]hey did not tell me that you were going to grill me for this specific information that I was not ready to give to you tonight. They did not tell me that, sir."
-- Texas Republican state Rep.
Debbie Riddle, asked by CNN's
Anderson Cooper for her evidence that "terror babies"
were being incubated in the U.S.
"I was talking to a group of Republican activists telling them about a group of homosexual millionaires who, for years, have been working secretly to change the society of America, the political side of America, so that there will be freedom and equality for everyone."
-- Oklahoma Republican state Rep.
Sally Kern
MODERATOR: Give me a name, Christine, of someone in the U.S. Senate, across the aisle that you're comfortable working with.
O'DONNELL: [Pause] Well, she's not a senator any more, but I would definitely have to say Hillary Clinton. [...]
COONS: One of the real risks as we go forward, is that if we elect someone who literally cannot name a single currently serving senator in my party with whom she would work -
O'DONNELL: Senator Lieberman!
-- Delaware Republican senatorial nominee
Christine O'Donnell, at a debate with
Democratic nominee Chris Coons
"[Obama's] secular socialist machine represents as great a threat to America as Nazi Germany or the Soviet Union once did."
-- Former Republican House Speaker
Newt Gingrich
"Let me just say — this is going to sound radical, I don’t mean for it to be radical — but to me, the greatest threat to America is not necessarily a recession or even another terrorist attack. The greatest threat to America is a liberal media bias."
-- Texas Republican Rep.
Lamar Smith
"We needed to have the press be our friend . . . We wanted them to ask the questions we want to answer so that they report the news the way we want it to be reported."
-- Nevada Republican senatorial nominee
Sharron Angle
"Speak through FOX News."
-- Former Alaska Republican half-term governor
Sarah Palin, offering media handling advice to
Christine O'Donnell
"What I would say is that the news media should do a penetrating expose and take a look. I wish they would. I wish the American media would take a great look at the views of the people in Congress and find out, are they pro-America or anti-America? I think the American people would love to see an expose like that . . . I’m very concerned that [Barack Obama] may have anti-American views."
-- Minnesota Republican Rep.
Michele Bachmann
BILL MANDERS: We have domestic enemies. We have home-born homegrown enemies in our system. And I for one think we have some of those enemies in the walls of the Senate and the Congress.
ANGLE: Yes. I think you're right, Bill.
-- Nevada Republican senatorial nominee
Sharron Angle
"I want people in Minnesota armed and dangerous on this issue of the energy tax because we need to fight back. Thomas Jefferson told us having a revolution every now and then is a good thing, and the people — we the people — are going to have to fight back hard if we’re not going to lose our country."
-- Minnesota Republican Rep.
Michele Bachmann
NIES: You're going to stop the whole country from having sex?
O'DONNELL: Yeah. Yeah!
-- Delaware Republican senatorial nominee
Christine O'Donnell
"American scientific companies are cross-breeding humans and animals and coming up with mice with fully functioning human brains."
-- Delaware Republican senatorial nominee
Christine O'Donnell
"[China has a] carefully thought out and strategic plan to take over America . . . There’s much I want to say. I wish I wasn’t privy to some of the classified information that I am privy to."
-- Delaware Republican senatorial nominee
Christine O'Donnell
"I believe the proper response [to a U.S. district court judge ruling that California's anti-gay-marriage Proposition 8 is unconstitutional] is to do what the founders did in the Declaration of Independence . . . a revolution against a government who has abandoned the rule of law and its own people."
-- Republican National Committee member
Kim Lehman
RICK SANCHEZ: You said you want to respect that whole area anywhere in the dust cloud that carried the human remains of the victims who died there [in the Twin Towers] that day [9/11]. So, I -- I -- I believe what I hear you saying is, then, that you wouldn't want any mosque or Islamic center built anywhere in that area where the dust cloud was? Because that was a vast -- if you recall, I mean, it stretched all the way to Weehawken, to parts of Hoboken, to, you know, all -- block -- miles from where this thing happened, right? . . .
PALADINO: [W]herever it went, wherever that dust is caught in the crevices of buildings or in the crevices of sidewalks, that's human remains, and it should be treated that way . . . [W]e will declare it, under the law, to be a property -- a right for -- which is within the definition of public use, and as long as it is within the definition of public use, which -- which comes -- which includes the zoning restrictions, then we would have a right to use eminent domain to place such a restriction over all the properties in that area.
-- New York Republican gubernatorial nominee
Carl Paladino
"We have two competing world views here and there is no way that we can reach across the aisle -- one is going to have to win," Fleming said. " We are either going to go down the socialist road and become like western Europe and create, I guess really a godless society, an atheist society. Or we're going to continue down the other pathway where we believe in freedom of speech, individual liberties and that we remain a Christian nation."
-- Louisiana Republican Rep.
John Fleming
"This is bigger than it looks like on the surface, and it could threaten our personal freedoms . . . [T]hese aren't just warm, fuzzy ideas from the mayor. These are very specific strategies that are dictated to us by this United Nations program that mayors have signed on to . . . [I]f you do your homework and research, you realize ICLEI is part of a greater strategy to rein in American cities under a United Nations treaty . . . [Complacency is] exactly the attitude they want you to have."
-- Colorado Republican gubernatorial nominee
Dan Maes, on his Democratic
opponent's plan to make 400 red
bicycles available for rent
around the city
"I will always follow the wisdom of our forefathers as laid down in the [C]onstitution and that means I believe that all Americans must be free to practice their faith as long it does not threaten other Americans or our national security."
-- Tennessee Republican congressional nominee
Diane Black
"We've drawn a line in the sand. You can ask me about background, you can ask me about personal issues. I'm not going to answer."
-- Alaska Republican senatorial nominee
Joe Miller, vowing to remain silent
about his personal history for the remainder
of his campaign
"We’ve always been very clear that we didn’t want to debate . . . because we wanted an informed electorate."
-- Sharron Angle, Republican
senate candidate, on why she
declined to debate her opponent,
Democratic Senator Harry Reid
"We support the clear will of the people of Montana expressed by legislation to keep homosexual acts illegal."
-- Official plank of the
Montana Republican Party platform,
13 years after the U.S. Supreme Court
ruled such laws unconstitutional
[W]hat we have to do is wean everybody else off [Social Security]."
-- Minnesota Republican Rep.
Michele Bachmann
"I tell ya, we’ve got some new problems in Washington. Big problems. Just today, Centers for Disease Control in Atlanta said people in America are not eating enough fruits and vegetables. They want to give all the power to the federal government to force you to eat more fruits and vegetables. This is what the federal, CDC, they gonna be calling you to make sure you eat fruits and vegetables, every day. This is socialism of the highest order!"
-- Georgia Republican Rep.
Paul Broun, Jr.
" [nervous giggle] "
-- Arizona Republican Gov. Jan Brewer,
during a televised debate, reading
- or trying to read - from a
prepared opening statement
"There's absolutely no reason to dissolve [the Union]. But if Washington continues to thumb their nose at the American people, you know, who knows what might come out of that?"
-- Texas Republican Gov.
Rick Perry, on the possibility of Texas
seceding
"The real answer to Medicare would be a $2,000 deductible."
-- Kentucky Republican senatorial candidate
Rand Paul
"I think the public schools should be abolished."
"Public education (tax-financed socialism) has become the most widespread and devastating form of child abuse and racism in the United States."
"All we need do with nuclear waste is dilute it to a low radiation level and sprinkle it over the ocean – or even over America . . . "
"[The AIDS] 'epidemic'is not growing as predicted. Only government reclassification of more and more disease types as AIDS cases has kept the numbers of victims at politically necessary levels . . . AIDS is conveniently serving as an excuse for all sorts of social engineering, especially in the public schools, that could not be sustained without a 'crisis.'"
-- Oregon Republican nominee for Congress
Art Robinson
"Literally, if we took away the minimum wage—if conceivably it was gone—we could potentially virtually wipe out unemployment completely because we would be able to offer jobs at whatever level."
-- Minnesota Republican congresswoman
Michele Bachmann
"The state certainly does have the right to determine [whether federal law is binding] at the state level, I believe, under our existing constitution."
-- Minnesota Republican gubernatorial candidate
Tom Emmer
"In the freest and most prosperous country on Earth, in the midst of the information age, government ownership and operation of the schools is a counterproductive anachronism . . . [Kids require a] variety of approaches to learning -- variety only a free market can provide."
-- California Republican congressional nominee
David Harmer
"I don't know why [President Obama's citizenship] hasn't been resolved other than the fact that the president hasn't resolved it yet . . . The fact of the matter is the Executive has an awful lot of power to keep from showing certain things unless the courts will stand up to him. Or unless Congress, in majority, will stand up - up to and including impeachment."
-- Michigan Republican congressional nominee
Tim Walberg
"Let's not tax corporations . . . I think the solution is to eliminate corporate taxes altogether."
-- Pennsylvania Republican senatorial nominee
Pat Toomey
"Where in the Constitution is the separation of church and state? . . . Let me just clarify: You're telling me that the separation of church and state is found in the First Amendment?"
-- Delaware Republican senatorial nominee
Christine O'Donnell
"That’s right. YOU are the government! You are God’s minister to punish evil and reward good conduct. But, too many Christians have refused the figurative "sword" or the power that in this great country, this little experiment in democracy as a republic, is supposed to be held by YOU. You are the one God has ordained to run the country."
-- Texas Republican Rep.
Louie Gohmert
"I just wanted to reach across the airwaves and the years and ask you to consider something. I would love you to consider an apology sometime and some full explanation of why you did what you did with my husband. So give it some thought. And certainly pray about this and hope that one day you will help us understand why you did what you did. O.K., have a good day."
-- Republican Virginia Thomas,
wife of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas,
in a voicemail to Anita Hill, suggesting Hill
apologize to Justice Thomas for his sexual
harassment of Hill
"Christine O'Donnell was absolutely correct. The First Amendment says nothing about the separation of church and state . . . And the left has taken this to say that religious people cannot be in government."
-- Rush Limbaugh
"I don't believe this election is about details. I really don't . . . When I interview people [for a job], I don't expect them to come into that interview and say here are the problems and how to solve them . . . I don’t have access to all of the information. Certainly, I don’t have the time to dig into these issues and come up with, ‘Here’s the solution.’"
-- Wisconsin Republican senatorial nominee
Ron Johnson
"Some people say I’m extreme, but they said the John Birch Society was extreme, too."
-- Kelly Khuri, founder of the
Clark County (Ind.) Tea Party Patriots
"If there is a rogue missile aimed at our country, we have 33 minutes to figure out what we’re going to do. We are sitting with the only technology in the world that works and it’s laser technology. We need 1000 laser systems put in the sky and we need it right now. That is [of] paramount importance."
-- West Virginia Republican senatorial nominee
John Raese
"[The Obama administration] are doing end-of-life counseling in order to depopulate that particular group of people . . .
"Let me tell you, that is something that happened in Germany, when the Jews were walking into the furnaces - that's where America is now . . ."
"We have a constitutional remedy here, and the framer [sic] says if that don't work - revolution.
Our nation was founded on violence. The option is on the table. I don't think that we should ever remove anything from the table as it relates to our liberties and our freedoms . . . We have a right to get rid of that government and to get rid of it by any means necessary."
-- Texas Republican congressional nominee
Stephen Broden
"I don't think we came from monkeys. I think that's ridiculous. I haven't seen a half-monkey, half-person yet."
-- Glenn Beck
