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: Anna Pierre
North Miami mayoral candidate Anna Pierre turned some heads earlier this week by claiming that she had Jesus Christ’s official endorsement in Tuesday’s primary. While a candidate claiming divine inspiration is not especially unusual, usually they don’t claim that Jesus is actually making political endorsements, like some kind of holy Kennedy relative.
On Election Day, Pierre took things a step further by printing campaign fliers featuring the endorsement, complete with a picture:
Image: NBC Miami
Somewhere in Washington, Michele Bachmann is presumably wondering why she didn’t think of that first.
Ultimately, like most other “chosen” candidates, Pierre suffered a resounding defeat, finishing in last place in the primary with just 0.83 percent of the vote. To Pierre, the explanation is simple: “North Miami chose ‘Luciefer’ [sic] over Jesus,” she wrote on her campaign’s Facebook page.
Again, Michele Bachmann must be wondering why she didn’t use that excuse after the Iowa Caucus.
4: Alan Keyes
Professional crazy person Alan Keyes unleashed one of the most unhinged in a long series of paranoid rants Tuesday, when he told right-wing commentator Stan Solomon that President Barack Obama’s proposed gun reforms are “intended to make sure that people will be slaughtered by the thousands and the hundreds of thousands,” and that the president is particularly interested in purging the African-American community.
According to Keyes, Obama — whom Keyes says African-Americans have “come close to worshiping instead of God” — encourages the “targeted slaughter” of African-Americans, and “represents the open maw of a charnel house into which the future hopes of the Black-American community are to be fed.”
Apparently, Keyes has still not gotten over that 2004 Senate election.
3: Larry Pratt
Although most of the right is fixated on impeaching President Obama over the Benghazi “cover-up” or the IRS profiling Tea Party groups, Gun Owners of America director Larry Pratt is still feeling hopeful that an older pseudo-scandal will bring Obama down: Fast and Furious.
During an appearance on Stan Solomon’s This Week In Crazy-repository of a show, Pratt said “I don’t know who that might be to take his place yet” — apparently Joe Biden is not vice president in his fantasy world — but he is certain that Obama will be removed from office. And, just like Richard Nixon, he will be whisked away on a helicopter (from which Solomon helpfully suggests Obama will be dangling). For some reason, Pratt insists that the chopper will be called “Gangrene One.”
The truly bizzare exchange is below, via Right Wing Watch.
2: Glenn Beck
Glenn Beck makes his weekly appearance on this list for yet another outrageously incorrect history lesson, this time on the civil rights movement.
In the midst of a fairly typical rant about how the NAACP is “an affront” to the memories of Dr. Martin Luther King, Frederick Douglass, and other civil rights heroes, Beck for some reason pivoted to an assertion that “20 percent of the lynchings in the South, by the KKK, were of white people.”
“You know what?” Beck continued. “I contend that the white people that were lynched were exactly the kind of people that would be in the Tea Party today.”
Of course, back on planet Earth, it’s rather difficult to imagine people who gave their lives fighting for civil rights rallying to support a candidate who opposes the Civil Rights Act. It’s safe to add the civil rights movement to national security, public education, and the rest of the long list of topics on which Beck should not be trusted.
1: Michele Bachmann
Photo: Gage Skidmore via Flickr.com
Michele Bachmann registers another first-place finish this week, for the impressive feat of linking Benghazi, the IRS, and Obamacare into one huge conspiracy about the government killing Republicans.
Bachmann shared her ridiculous theory during an interview with the ever-loony WorldNetDaily. According to Bachmann, the GOP’s latest round of Benghazi hearings caused the Obama administration to publicly confront the IRS story, as a way of distracting Americans from the horrible cover-up. But Bachmann won’t be fooled. She asserts that since “the president was willing to use the most feared agency in the U.S. for his own political purposes,” clearly it’s now “a reasonable question to ask” whether or not the IRS — which has a major role in Obamacare’s implementation — “will deny or delay access to health care” for conservatives.
Here’s what’s truly impressive about Bachmann’s latest rant: it may not even be the craziest thing she said this week. At this pace, we may need a This Week In Bachmann feature to keep up with the Tea Party’s favorite congresswoman.
