Midterm Madness – Meet the Latest Republican Crazies to Hold Office

X Facebook Email Flipboard Pinterest Print Reddit

Readers sometimes don’t understand why I talk about the Bryan Fischers and David Bartons of the world. It is because people like that promote, and make possible, people like this:

Gordon “Dr. Chaps” Klingenschmitt was once just another Bryan Fischer wannabe. Now he is Colorado’s newest state senator, having defeated Democrat Lois A. Fornander, or, as Wonkette calls her, the “sane Democrat lady,” in District 15, 69.87% to 30.13%.

Michael Peroutka of Maryland, thinks “Dixie” is the national anthem. And he not only wants to secede, but he is concerned, he says, that the “biblical view” of government should “survive the secession.” On November 4, he was elected to the Anne Arundel County Council in Maryland.

You might remember Klingenschmitt for being the demon-obsessed guy who,

Says animals exhibit gay behavior because they are possessed by “gay animal demons”;
once issued a Fatwah against MRFF’s Mikey Weinstein and Americans United’s Barry Lynn;
Says if you can’t go to church, you can’t use the public restroom;
Says forget 1967, give us Israel’s borders of 1500 BCE;
Says he wants to use his Second Amendment rights to kill liberals;
Says, reported Right Wing Watch, that “gay Democratic congressman Jared Polis would soon be aligning himself with ISIS and begin beheading Christians here in America.”

And that’s just the start of the list. But fortunately for you the folks at Right Wing Watch have made an in-depth examination of Klingenschmitt’s absolutely insane views.

Klingenschmitt was so outrageous during the primaries that even the GOP, where crazy has become normative, tried to distance itself from him. The guy he replaced, Mark Waller, said, “Obviously, he does not speak for me or the Republican Party.” And in the September 3 issue of the Colorado Springs Independent we find that,

Although El Paso County GOP Chairman Jeff Hays told KOAA that Klingenschmitt is “part of our team,” party executive Daniel Cole says via email that “In parts of the KOAA interview that did not air, Chairman Hays indicated, and now wants to emphasize, that he does not condone Gordon Klingenschmitt’s comments. Klingenschmitt does not speak for the party or for other candidates, and the party does not speak for him.”

Like it or not, Klingenschmitt does now represent the Colorado GOP. He was elected by a rather wide margin, after all. He is clearly not speaking only for himself, but for the majority of constituents (at least among those who bothered to vote) in his district.

And he is going to be making laws.

And that is frightening. Needless to say, without people like Bryan Fischer and David Barton, people like Gordon Klingenschmitt would not be able to mainstream batsh*t crazy, and not only that, but get elected to public office while doing it.

In the case of Michael Peroutka, we have a Confederate secessionist holding office in the state of Maryland, albeit at only a county level. You might remember Maryland remained loyal during the Civil War. Clearly, that loyalty has now been called into question by the treasonous Peroutka.

Peroutka, as Right Wing Watch reminds us,

is a radical Christian Reconstructionist and southern secessionist;
He says “so-called civil rights laws” are not valid because “there is no such thing as a civil right”;
He says promoting evolution “is an act of disloyalty to America” (but being a secessionist isn’t? -HH);
He says of Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy, “The reason he hates God is because he thinks he is God”;
He thinks gay people are out to “recruit your children” into their “deathstyle.”

So here is a guy who is every bit Klingenschmitt’s match where crazy is concerned, yet he was elected to county council in an affluent Maryland county (not only one of the wealthiest in the state, but in the entire country) comprised of a presumably well-educated citizenry.

These examples are not two exceptions to the norm. Gordon Klingenschmitt and Michael Peroutka are now the norm. This is a point which, with the victories of fellow-extremist Joni Ernst, and in North Carolina, Thom Tillis, can no longer be contested.

Please realize that Joni Ernst – along with a lot of other lunatic stuff – believes in the neo-Confederate process of nullification of federal laws she doesn’t like. And just a quick reminder: Iowa, like Maryland, remained loyal to the Union in 1861.

Thom Tillis is considered a mainstream, establishment Republican, and for that reason, he also is living proof of how extremism has become mainstreamed in the GOP.

The Religious Right, left for dead by critics on an almost yearly basis, is a clear and present danger to American democracy and to the United States Constitution. And a whole bunch of their people just got elected to office in states across the country.

This is not 1861. There is no Mason-Dixon line to protect the sane and loyal among us.

I was asked on Twitter yesterday if I wasn’t being just a little too melodramatic in my morning post. I will say here, categorically, that on the contrary, I was rather too reserved in my expression of dismay over the results of the 2014 midterms.

Welcome to the next two years, America. I wish I could say that I’m joking when I say, break out the tinfoil hats. They’re going to be all the rage for a while.

Author
Recent Posts

Hrafnkell Haraldsson

Hrafnkell Haraldsson, a social liberal with leanings toward centrist politics has degrees in history and philosophy. His interests include, besides history and philosophy, human rights issues, freedom of choice, religion, and the precarious dichotomy of freedom of speech and intolerance. He brings a slightly different perspective to his writing, being that he is neither a follower of an Abrahamic faith nor an atheist but a polytheist, a modern-day Heathen who follows the customs and traditions of his Norse ancestors. He maintains his own blog, A Heathen's Day, which deals with Heathen and Pagan matters, and Mos Maiorum Foundation www.mosmaiorum.org, dedicated to ethnic religion. He has also contributed to NewsJunkiePost, GodsOwnParty and Pagan+Politics.

Latest posts by Hrafnkell Haraldsson (see all)