The most consequential primary on Tuesday night came not in House Speaker Paul Ryan's home district but rather in the Minneapolis suburbs, where acid-tongued radio host Jason Lewis easily swept aside two more conventional candidates. Lewis took 49 percent of the vote in Minnesota’s 2nd Congressional District, while businesswoman Darlene Miller, who had the endorsement of retiring Rep. John Kline, finished with 31; former state Sen. John Howe, who appeared to give up in the stretch run, wound up with just 14 percent.
The outcome is a true debacle for Republicans, because not only does Lewis have a long history of racist and misogynist rhetoric: It's all captured on tape, thanks to his radio program. We've cited many of his outbursts in the past, but just to give you a sense of what kind of an a-hole Lewis is, here's one of his very worst:
"I never thought in my lifetime where'd you have so many single, or I should say, yeah single women who would vote on the issue of somebody else buying their diaphragm. This is a country in crisis. Those women are ignorant in, I mean, the most generic way. I don't mean that to be a pejorative. They are simply ignorant of the important issues in life. Somebody's got to educate them.
"There's something about young, single women where they're behaving like Stepford wives. They walk in lock-step—is that really the most important thing to a 25-year old unmarried woman—uh, getting me to pay for her pills? Seriously? Is that what we've been reduced to? You can be bought off for that?
"You've got a vast majority of young single women who couldn't explain to you what GDP means. You know what they care about? They care about abortion. They care about abortion and gay marriage. They care about 'The View.' They are non-thinking."
You can—and should—listen to the audio here. And there's much more like it. What makes this even more devastating for the GOP is that Lewis is not only going up against a well-funded Democratic opponent—but that Democrat is also a woman, health care executive Angie Craig. That kind of matchup will only throw Lewis' hateful beliefs into even starker relief.
And the NRCC seems to know it. The committee declined to congratulate Lewis on his victory, even as it send out routine attaboys to other candidates who prevailed on Tuesday night. It also hasn't added Lewis to its Young Guns program for top races, a notable omission. In fact, this is now the fourth vulnerable open GOP-held seat where Republicans wound up with the precise candidate they did not want; previous debacles include Michigan’s 1st, Nevada’s 3rd, and New York’s 22nd Districts. None of these are layups for Democrats, including Minnesota's 2nd, but the lunatics' ongoing hostile takeover of the GOP is definitely making life easier for Team Blue.
