On this date in 2015, 2016, as well as 2017, “Crazy/Stupid Republican of the Day” published profiles of John Bennett , a member of the Oklahoma House of Representatives first elected in 2010 who has spent three terms in office sponsoring some horrendous legislation from his first day in office, when he submitted both a 20 week abortion ban as well as a Birther bill. Bennett has since submitted nullification bills to try and negate the Affordable Care Act, Federal Firearm Laws, as well as the United Nations Agenda 21 Environmental Treaty (probably because like a lot of paranoid conservatives, he thinks it’s a plot to take over the planet). Now, what truly makes John Bennett a despicable individual is his anti-Islamic rhetoric, fear-mongering by falsely spreading the lie that the Quran calls for all non-Muslims to be killed, and insisting any Christian or Jew that refuses to convert will be decapitated on the spot. He has called Muslims “a cancer that needs to be cut” out of America, and that Islam is “not even a religion”, but a method to execute a plan of global domination. In February of 2015, Oklahoma’s chapter of the Council of American Islamic Affairs hosted the first Muslim Capitol Day in Oklahoma, where the small community of practitioners of Islam in the state opened themselves up to the rest of the state, in a gesture of kindness, acceptance, and understanding, only to see John Bennett turn it into a holy war and show up to with protesters carrying signs that said things like “Allah is a pedophile”, or “Mohammed is in Hell” to pass out Bibles and harass attendees with surveys asking them if they would “denounce the terrorist organization Hamas”. Adam Soltani, the head of Oklahoma’s chapter of CAIR was as chill as someone could be about being demonized to his face by a bigot, saying he had no problem with the bibles being passed out, and that they have repeatedly condemned terrorists of any faith. Fast forward a few months to November 2015, and Bennett began fearmongering, again, and citing that there were already Syrian refugees in Jenks, Oklahoma, and that there should be an immediate halt to more being accepted into Oklahoma, before giving way to a more homophobic display of anger, where he grew irrationally angry about the rumors that someone would place a non-secular, rainbow-colored “Festivus Pole” at the Oklahoma capitol around the holidays, viewing it as a “hostile attack on his Christian beliefs”. Bennett, during the build-up to the 2016 election, posted a story on his Facebook page about Hillary Clinton and Benghazi with only the comment, “2 words…firing squad”. The Oklahoman newspaper followed up for an explanation, and at first, in a text message saying the post was meant to be sarcastic, but then added that Clinton “has committed nothing less than treason by leaving fellow Americans to die in Benghazi. If anyone else had done that they would be charged with treason and thrown under the jail at a minimum, and a firing squad likely.”
Now, in August of 2017, after Neo-Nazis in Charlottesville, Virginia terrorized the town for most of a weekend, leading to the attempted mass murder of counter-protesters in a vehicle attack that did take the life of Heather Heyer… well, there were some terrible reactions from quite a few members of the GOP, and guess what? John Bennett was among their number. He posted a message indicating that he sympathized with the folks who claimed to be there to “support Confederate monuments”, and while he was at it, called for the removal of mosques from the United States:
“If we’re removing confederate monuments after the civil war, I think we should also be removing mosques after 9/11.”
Why, we dare say John Bennett is a bigoted ***hole. We’re sad to report that in November of 2017, Bennett went on record to compare state agencies in Oklahoma to “terrorists”, because they had the gall… the chutzpah, to expect the state budget to have funding so they continue operating. The nerve of ‘em, right?
You also may have heard the story last month about how teachers in Oklahoma were sick and tired of having some of the worst education funding in the nation, and how they went on strike and eventually their demands were met for a pay raise. Well, one of the worst reactions by Oklahoma Republicans to that strike might have been the one from John Bennett, who during debate on the education bill, argued that money wasn’t really what the teachers needed. What they needed was the right to return to corporal punishment, because apparently they’re just sadists at heart, or something:
“Money is not the number one issue. Maybe if we spanked our kids at home a little better with a paddle, made them mind and be good kids, the teachers wouldn’t have it so hard in the classroom.”
If this doesn’t seem like an overall pattern of extremist lunacy, we’ll also add that it wasn’t so long ago that Bennett voted to expand Oklahoma’s “Stand Your Ground” laws, so that a person is not only justified in shooting someone they THINK is a threat to them, but he wanted that law to expand so that a person could shoot anyone who they just perceive to be a threat of anyone who attends their church with them. (Presumably, this is some nonsense about how “victimized” Christians are that they’d like to gun down people who look at them funny, but thankfully it didn’t pass.)
John Bennett is still two elections away from term limits, so it seems likely that he’ll be running for re-election in 2018. We’ll remind everyone, however, that he did only pull down 54% of the vote in 2016, so in an expected Blue Wave election in November, Tom Stites, the man who nearly took him down two years ago, is going to really give him a run for his money in a rematch. Especially when you consider how many seats in the Oklahoma state legislature that Democrats have flipped in special elections since 2016, as well as the groundbreaking shift in support, with Democrats outperforming their previous showing by 20-40 points in those races and that Bennett was dumb enough to post his support online for the folks who marched in Charlottesville only days after Heather Heyer’s murder. If there’s a seat we could see being flipped in the Sooner state, this is it.