On this day in both 2014, and in 2015, “Crazy/Stupid Republican of the Day” posted its first two profiles of Ira Hansen of the Nevada House of Representatives, who was quickly forced out of being Speaker of the Nevada House after people actually realized he had a staggering history of making outrageously ugly comments… including his time as a radio talk-show host where he made anti-Semitic remarks, made sexist arguments against women in the military, advocated for a “masturbation tax”, and that he once said the Oklahoma City Bombing was a “false flag” attack that the Clinton administration was actually responsible for. He also writes columns from an office with a Confederate flag hanging on the wall, slanders Martin Luther King Dr.’s legacy, refers to President Obama as a “negro”, a term he’s fond of, makes arguments as to Hispanics and African Americans of being of lower intelligence than whites, and blames illegal immigrants for tuberculosis cases without any evidence to support that racist claim. Hansen’s bigotry also expands to gays, as he likes to conflate homosexuality with child abuse, including him blaming the abuse of children by Catholic priests on gays. Of course, when Hansen’s past as an author and talk-radio figure came back to force him to pass and not accept his role has Nevada House Speaker, he gave a non-apology apology where he said his remarks were only being “taken out of context”. What can’t be taken out of context is Hansen’s staunch pro-gun attitude, his support for transphobic bathroom laws, or the fact that he mentioned President Eisenhower’s “Project Wetback” as a model for what the United States should implement to handle undocumented immigrants (without remembering how deadly that campaign proved for those Mexicans, with up to 88 deaths resulting in a single day.
And, wouldn’t you know it, even though Ira Hansen is a pretty clear racist and a bit of a paranoid conspiracy theorist, he managed to be re-elected to a fourth term in the 2016 elections by having the benefit of running unopposed.