Where you live, are the local Republicans more or less batshit insane than the state and federal Republicans?
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BooMan
Martin Longman a contributing editor at the Washington Monthly. He is also the founder of Booman Tribune and Progress Pond. He has a degree in philosophy from Western Michigan University.
More. Basically, they are Palinites. And racists, but that goes without saying.
we have been dealing with Minutemen Republicans for many years.
Less, but this is NY State.
My Representative is Eric Cantor. Can you get more batshit insane? I mean, I know he’s probably relatively intelligent and he’s just pandering, but yeah…
Oh, I guess I lied. I forgot about this little tidbit:
http://rawstory.com/2010/02/virginia-passes-law-banning-chip-implants-mark-beast/
The legislation itself isn’t bad, people should be able to choose whether or not their medical records are stored on an implanted chip. However, this nonsense about the anti-Christ and shit? Ugh…get me out of here!!!
Not to mention Bob McDonnell is a fucking maniac, and he’s slashing every part of Virginia’s budget. He’s after urban areas, parks, sexual education, and education in general. School breakfast is officially eliminated, sports programs are destroyed, state parks are closing, more than likely Medicaid has been cut, food stamps and welfare–things that are allowing people to survive–are cut, teen-pregnancy programs are cut…
http://www.fredericksburg.com/News/Web/2010/022010/mcdonnell-budget-education
I hope VA somehow survives the next four years.
Sounds like Colorado Springs.
http://www.denverpost.com/newsheadlines/ci_14303473
More. Andy Martin, the guy who invented the “Obama is a secret Muslin” smear, is from Illinois and just ran for governor in the Republican primary. Then, we have Tony Peraica, the bigoted member of the Cook County Board that ran for Board president, got drunk on election night and then tried to bully his was into the County election offices where the votes were being tallied.
About the same–as in there’s a range from MOR “church-going yet truly accepting of others” who “only hate taxes a little bit” versions to, well…batshit insane.
Well, the only self-identified Republicans in this rural NY berg are from New Jersey.
Well, let’s see. We just had a wingnut takeover of the school board financed by Americans for Prosperity…they aim to do away with our diversity policy in the name of neighborhood schools i.e. no busing.
Elsewhere, there is a domino effect as local Republican lawmakers discover suburb by suburb that gov’t employees have abortion care covered in their policies. Bye bye abortion care.
They’re all nuts. It’s hard to figure out who is nutser.
Aren’t they all batshit insane?
I live in San Mateo County, just south of San Francisco, and there are very few Republicans. Every once in a while someone puts a sign on his lawn, but except for one guy who might as well be a Dem I can’t recall the last one elected. When Rep. Jackie Speier had her town hall meeting on health care a couple teabaggers showed up and were laughed at by the crowd.
My newest favorite Republican is that guy Buttars from Utah or Idaho who said something like, “I got nothin’ against gays. I just don’t want them stuffin’ it down my throat.”
The Republican state legislators in Olympia have always ranged from standard issue talking points to batshit, but in the face of the worst budget crisis in state history (yes, here too) they’ve gone so far over on the batshit side (to the exclusion even of the usual talking points) as to be totally irrelevant to the discussion. Lots of 10th Amendment type bills promoting, essentially, secession from the evil communistic federal government. My favorite reserves the right for any Washington state resident to refuse to pay federal taxes, and would declare to be a crime under state law any federal effort to collect. WTF?
Since the Dems have overwhelming majorities, there’s no prayer any of this will pass – they’re just trying to whip up the base – but it’s a completely alternate universe from the very real problems the state is facing and that these nutjobs are drawing taxpayer salaries to, supposedly, fix. And the amazing part is that aside from a few blogs it’s gotten zero media attention. I guess we’re supposed to think this is the new normal.
http://twitter.com/ZALESKI4CONGRES
I live in a district where Dems outnumber Republicans something like 4-to-1. (Which can be a problem when the election rules require you to have judges of different political parties do almost all their duties in opposite-party pairs. Fortunately, we have a number of Greens and Independents too).
Most of the SANE Republicans locally call themselves Independents now, at least in public (even though they may still be registered Republican). Even my parents switched their party registration to Dem in 2008, in time for the Maryland primary.
As for the not-so-sane Republicans.. well. I give you Michael Steele…. (And BOY are we glad Ben Cardin has the Senate seat instead!)
In liberal northern california there’s still 40% right wingers and they’re just as blind to the fact that the corporations are screwing them, just as global warming denying, and just as war-mongering. The only difference is that they’re not homophoebic – but it doesn’t seem to bother them that the people they vote for are.
Most of the Republicans I know are less batshit crazy than the state and federal elected officials, the local Art Pope thinktank (John Locke Foundation), and other professional Republican politicos.
Not even close to the folks like Virginia Foxx, Sue Myrick, and Patrick McHenry (to name three), who are representing them. And most of the dittoheads I know are doing it just to be irritating not out of any strongly held belief.
I put the batshit crazy quotient of the Republican base substantially less than 1%. And that less than 1% holds a wide variety of Tea Party types.
It’s manipulating the national media mostly. And it seems to be working when a few tens of thousands gathered in DC is a threatening movement and 600 people gathered to hear Sarah Palin at Opryland no less indicates some presidential groundswell.
So why is it that the Congressional Democrats are so chickenshit?
Well, they’d have to be more cuckoo than Ross-Lehtinen.
Basically, they’re against anyone not born here that may step in and interrupt the nepotism and organized corruption in local government.
Different kind of bat-shit crazy is all.
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Are you kidding? Of course they crazier than batshit. I live in Texas.
Yep. I live in Fort Worth. This state was taken over by Dominionist evangelicals about twenty years ago and it became obvious when Bush defeated Ann Richards for Governor in 1994.
They get their political beliefs from their preachers and their preachers are all trying to implement the teachings of R. J. Rushdoony. He was a truly strict Calvinist with the belief that America was originally and should remain a “christian” nation and that American law should conform to Old Testament law.
Crazy doesn’t describe those idiots. They’d have to improve massively to become merely crazy.
Saw a survey the other day. In Texas a significant group (around a third) think the world was created by God around ten thousand years ago and that dinosaurs and people coexisted. That is, these people think that The Flintstones was a documentary.
Well, this is Kentucky – they’re just generally dumber…
Where I live, the GOP candidate is a Ron Paulite who, as chairman of our board of education tried to have gideon bibles distributed in elementary schools and intelligent design taught as science.
Unfortunately our Democratic rep is Steny Hoyer, so a pox on everybody’s house in this part of MD.
I am so sorry for you. We have Ron Paul in Texas- thank God not in my area!!! It seems the fruit doesn’t fall from the tree with his son.
I’m in SW Ohio. Do the names John Boehner or Jean Schmidt mean anything?
As for the populace here, there are many Republicans and the women Republicans I talk to, those who think Rush Limbaugh and Glen Beck are next to God, think Palin is their next great white hope.
So yeah, it’s crazyland.
South Carolina has been rocking it with some truly insanely stupid politicians. Just a few days ago, a state rep introduced legislation to ban money and go back to gold and silver coins. Again- a local Republican introduced legislation to mandate going back to a barter economy.
I need a drink.
Our Republican town Mayor seems like a pretty decent person and politician, but her boyfriend, a state level Republican, has a crappy track record on votes, IMHO. And we have a local State Senate Republican that has a decent record on social and environmental votes, among other issues. I think he is the only GOP politician to get the Working Family Party’s line in our local (and probably state) elections? If he votes against something I like, there is probably a very real fiscal reason for it. Needless to say, Senator Roraback will probably get nowhere past where he is because the rest of the Republicans around these parts are pretty crappy and typical of the national party, with too many of them even embracing their inner teabagrrrr.
I had an odd experience at the polls on election day 2008. I realized that if I wanted to vote for a Republican, I couldn’t have (except for John McCain). There just weren’t any on the ballot. Not for state assembly, not for state senate, not for U.S. Congress (there were no statewide races that year). Apparently, Republicans just don’t exist in large enough numbers on the east side of Milwaukee to even put up any candidates.
That said, our county executive is Republican, and I imagine he is less crazy than the norm. But that doesn’t mean he’s not dangerous. He has already done a lot of damage to Milwaukee county by underfunding our transit system and parks (he even tried to privatize the zoo!). Now, he’s running for governor and is likely to win. It’s quite depressing. The public transit situation is so dire that it looks like in a couple years if I want to go anywhere in the evening or on a weekend, I’ll have to walk.
We don’t have enough GOP officeholders in Chicago to answer the question. Some of the perennial candidates pretty much qualify for the batshit award, however.
A good majority of the people I work with are Republicans. They are intelligent, kind, decent people. I just disagree with them.
And that said – I think you’d be hard pressed to find a Palin supporter among them.
One of them used to be a speechwriter for Bush. He’s a super bright guy, and again, as nice as can be. He has reasons for his beliefs, and we’ve had some interesting discussions. I disagree with him, but I very much respect his opinions. And I agree with some of the points he’s made, too.
But these are not rank and file Republicans. These are highly educated people.
I think it’s a mistake to overgeneralize about people on the right. While I disagree profoundly with their objectives, they are not batshit insane people, by any stretch, and while I am furious at what the right wing has done to this country, I still do not want to engage in broad labelism, treating all members of the Republican party as if they are the same. When we did that to a minority, it was called racism. How is this any different? People are people, not representatives of their groups.