Welcome to “This Week In Crazy,” The National Memo’s weekly update on the wildest attacks, conspiracy theories, and other loony behavior from the increasingly unhinged right wing. Starting with number five:
5. Louie Gohmert
Representative Louie Gohmert (R-TX) claims his regular spot on the list this week for offering one of the most deluded cases against immigration reform in memory. In an interview with right-wing conspiracy repository WorldNetDaily, Loony Louie predicted that — contrary to popular belief and common sense — killing immigration reform would actually help Republicans win Hispanic voters.
“Yeah, we could possibly pay in the polls in the short term,” Gohmert acknowledges. “But just as you’ve had more and more African-Americans realizing ‘Wow! We have one party that’s pandered to us, doled out government benefits, kept us from reaching our God-given potential,'” so too will Hispanics realize that Republicans “want you not to be a ditchdigger because you can’t communicate. We know you are smart enough to be president of this company and to be president of this country if you’re born here.”
So if Republicans successfully kill immigration reform, Gohmert insists “I think you will see people start waking up and go ‘Wow, I’m Hispanic, and these Republicans really like me!'”
Putting aside the notion that African-Americans who aren’t employed by Cain TV are suddenly turning against the Democratic Party in droves, Gohmert’s theory seems deeply unlikely to work out for the Republican Party. But hey, it’s good to know that Gohmert is theoretically open to expanding the GOP tent to include Hispanics — just watch out for undercover radical Islamists!
4. Michele Bachmann
Gohmert’s puzzling claim seems downright genius compared to Congresswoman Michele Bachmann (R-MN). In an interview of her own with WorldNetDaily, the outgoing chair of the GOP’s Crazy Caucus warned that President Obama can “wave his magic wand before 2014” to give immediate voting rights to all of the immigrants who would be put on a path to citizenship by the Senate’s reform bill.
How is Bachmann so sure that Obama can use his New Black Panther Party wizardry to steal the midterm elections? “He did it in 2012!” Bachmann claimed. “Anyone who was here as a Latina under age 30, he said, ‘You get to vote.'”
Thankfully, Rep. Bachmann has an uncomfortably kinky solution to the problem: “He has a perpetual magic wand, and nobody’s given him a spanking yet and taken it out of his hand,” Bachmann said. “That’s what Congress needs to do…and the way we spank the president is through the checkbook. We’re the ones who say, ‘No, you can’t have the money.'”
MSNBC’s Steve Benen has a full breakdown of the factual inaccuracies in Bachmann’s argument –spoiler alert: there are lots of them — but suffice it to say that at times like this, Bachmann could really use an aide who is monitoring her media appearances instead of pilfering petty cash.
3. Bryan Fischer
Late last week, Bryan Fischer — a leader of the hate group the American Family Association who last appeared on this list in February for continuing to refuse to give up on Todd Akin — checks in at number three for a history lesson that makes Glenn Beck look like Herodotus.
On his radio show, Fischer warned that “Christians are being moved out of the United States military so hypermasculine homosexuals can move in, similar to the kind of homosexuals that formed Hitler’s stormtroopers.”
Yes, you read all of that correctly.
As evidence, Fischer pointed to the movie 300, which — according to Professor Fischer — was actually based on 150 same-sex couples. Fischer declined to offer evidence that Hitler’s brownshirts were actually a fabulous gay terror squad, but it will hopefully be explained in the sequel to God Made Dad & Mom.
H/t: The New Civil Rights Movement.
2. Larry Pratt
Gun Owners of America director Larry Pratt appeared on conspiracy king Alex Jones’ radio show this week, and the results were just as crazy as you would’ve hoped and feared.
After Jones argued that the gun lobby needs to “get on the offense culturally, because [gun safety advocates have] kids in their clutches right now,” Pratt emphatically agreed.
“I think we have to push back in whatever smart way we can do to make sure that kids see, yeah, having a gun is just as much fun as you thought it was when you were shooting your buddy with a water pistol yesterday,” Pratt said. He later added that having a gun “beats living in Detroit or Chicago.”
Note to Pratt: if there is a smart way to teach kids that real guns are just as fun as water guns, appearing on Infowars and encouraging them to shoot their friends isn’t it.
1. Rush Limbaugh
This week’s “winner” is Rush Limbaugh, who outdid several other pundits for the title of “worst reaction to the George Zimmerman trial.”
For Limbaugh, the main takeaway from the tragic killing and divisive trial is that he’s allowed to use the N-word now.
“So, ‘nigga,’ with an ‘a’ on the end, well, I think I can now,” Limbaugh brayed, in response to witness Rachel Jeantel’s interview with CNN. “Isn’t that the point? ‘Cause it’s not racist. That’s the point. I could be talking about a male, a Chinese male, a guy at the laundromat. I could be talking about a man.”
You don’t have to be black, or a media professional, to come to the conclusion that Rush Limbaugh cannot in fact drop N-bombs on Chinese people he meets at the laundromat (although plenty of respected black media figures did come to that obvious conclusion).
Ultimately, as Media Matters points out, racist behavior from Limbaugh is no surprise. What’s really crazy is that Limbaugh remains an influential and well-respected figure within the Republican Party.
