We are gathered here today not to mourn the death but to puzzle over the life of the Grand Old Party, laid to rest this week when a tangerine-toupeed interloper from the Big City stole the nomination from a host of social conservatives. Welcome to “This Week In Crazy,” The National Memo’s weekly update on the loony, bigoted, and hateful behavior of the increasingly unhinged right wing. Starting with number five:
5. Tila Hubrecht
A conservative Missouri state lawmaker would like to remind women who have been raped to always look on the bright side of life.
According to the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, while arguing in favor of a bill that would grant personhood rights to unborn fetuses — in effect, making any abortion illegal — Tila Hubrecht, a Republican in the Missouri House of Representatives said: “It is not up to us to say, ‘No, just because there was a rape, they [unborn fetuses] cannot exist.”
She continued: “Sometimes bad things happen. Horrible things. But sometimes God can give us a silver lining through the birth of a child.”
The remarks echo those of Indiana Republican Richard Mourdock, who during his (failed) 2012 run for U.S. Senate, said that if pregnancy occurs following a rape, it should be viewed as a “gift from God.”
Ultimately, the House voted 112-36 to advance the measure. According to the Dispatch, its text states it would “protect pregnant women and unborn children by recognizing that an unborn child is a person with a right to life which cannot be deprived by state or private action without due process and equal protection of law.”
Hat tip LawNewz
4. Bobby Knight
Retired basketball coach Bobby Knight bumbled back in the public eye with a series of appearances touting his support of Donald Trump in the days leading up to the decisive primary in his native Indiana.
For instance, the addled septuagenarian with a history of explosive and violent temper tantrums bragged that Trump was the “most prepared man in history” to be President of the United States. He also boasted that Trump was the only candidate who had “the guts” to drop an A-bomb on another country. (That’s what a man does, dammit.)
Speaking to CNN’s John Berman Wednesday morning, Knight was asked to address some of his candidate’s more controversial remarks — to wit, his insistence that we need to ban 1.6 billion Muslims from entering the country.
“I don’t even know what controversial means!” Knight protested. When Berman had to explain that pesky banning-all-practioners-of-a-religion thing to Knight, the coach responded, “Well that’s okay. That doesn’t really mean anything to me right now.”
He added, “We’re talking about a guy that I think can handle things far better than anything that we’ve had recently.”
And clearly Knight knows best — because he’s done his homework.
3. Jehovah’s Witness
The Church of Jehovah’s Witness has upped the creep factor this week with the release of a nasty bit of propaganda: an animated short film that explains, with a silken, Disneyfied touch, just why it is all those nice gays and lesbians need to rot in hell, and what your children can do to save them.
The plot is fairly straightforward: When a little girl explains that her schoolmate Carrie drew a picture of her two happily married mothers, her mother decides to have a Teaching Moment.
“People have their own ideas about what is right and wrong,” the mom helpfully explains, “but what matters is how Jehovah feels. He wants us to be happy. And he knows what makes us happiest. That’s why he invented marriage the way he did.”
“You mean one man and one woman?” asks the credulous little cretin.
“Exactly!” says mom, who proceeds to explain that Jehovah “wants us to be his friend — and live in Paradise forever, but we have to follow his standards to get there,” explicitly likening the path to Paradise to a pre-flight security screening. You can’t bring contraband on an jetliner — and you can’t bring your dreaded, affliction of homosexuality into the Promised Land. Jehovah is nothing less than the Big Blue-Shirted TSA Man in the Sky, apparently.
This is when the little vid delivers its truly insidious punchline: Mommy leans in close to her daughter and explains that she had better go tell Carrie that “people can change,” and that she should tell her friend about “Paradise,” “the animals,” and the “Resurrection.”
And which point the #blessed heterosexual family unit proceeds to practice their talking points to save little Carrie’s soul.
2. Pat McCrory
North Carolina Gov. Pat McCrory is not having a good week.
The anti-LGBT bill he signed into law has cost his state considerable business opportunities and at least one Bruce Springsteen concert. Even one porn site got in on the fun by blocking Tar Heel viewers from their site. Challenged to justify the law (HB2) on Megyn Kelly’s show last week, the governor blustered and was treated to a lesson from the Fox News anchor in how ladies bathrooms actually work.
And then on Wednesday the Justice Department served the state with a letter informing them that their little piece of legislation is in violation of civil rights statutes. Oh, do the indignities never end?
In a radio interview Tuesday, McCrory blew his top, raging against the gay rights agenda that has wrought such a headache for him and brought such shame upon his state.
The Human Rights Campaign, he said, was “machiavellian, man.” The incredulous governor could not understand why his anti-LGBT law was offending LGBT people. “This had nothing to do with gay and lesbian,” he said. “This had to do with privacy.”
Nonetheless, he insists that a bigot is “the farthest thing” from what he is.
Check out the audio above courtesy of The Greensboro News & Record.
Next: The Tears of the Religious Right
1. The Tears of the Religious Right
Glenn Beck repeatedly claimed to have seen the will of God manifest itself in the candidacy of Ted Cruz. He even said that Antonin Scalia died at God’s hand, simply to show America how important it was to elect Ted Cruz. Beck was just one of a cabal of social conservatives on the #NeverTrump train which derailed in spectacular fashion this week when the Texas Senator and that guy from Ohio suspended their campaigns, clearing the field for Donald Trump to clinch the GOP nomination.
What an ignominious end to God’s chosen campaign. Social conservatives and Religious Right luminaries took to Twitter in the hours following Cruz’s implosion and the ascendance of Trump to express their frustration and bafflement and to beg for God’s aid and forgiveness in this, their moment of darkness.
A tip of the hat to Right Wing Watch’s Brian Tashman for unearthing many of these.
From TWIC favorite and American Family Association spokesman Bryan Fischer:
Tonight is a bad night for Ted Cruz. But it is a terrible night for the United States, our children, and our grandchildren.
— Bryan Fischer (@BryanJFischer) May 3, 2016
From Weekly Standard editor Bill Kristol:
The battle for the 2016 GOP nomination is over. The battle for the soul of the Republican Party (or its successor) has just begun.
— Bill Kristol (@BillKristol) May 4, 2016
From Steve Deace, the Cruz supporter who once vowed to eunuch himself if Cruz showed weakness on the campaign trail:
Apparently @secupp has a #NeverTrump list to see who keeps their word to the end. You can sign my name in blood.
— Steve Deace (@SteveDeaceShow) May 3, 2016
Deace also posted photo evidence of himself switching party affiliation.
All we have to see, is that I don’t belong to you. And you don’t belong to me.
Freedom pic.twitter.com/JBUtF8fsdZ
— Steve Deace (@SteveDeaceShow) May 4, 2016
Todd Starnes, writing on Facebook:
But for brevity nobody can match Robert P. George, a luminary of the “religious freedom” movement:
God help us.
— Robert P. George (@McCormickProf) May 4, 2016
On that, at least, George and I are whistling the same tune.
—
Illustration: DonkeyHotey via Flickr
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