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. David Dewhurst
Texas lieutenant governor David Dewhurst is experiencing some serious deja vu. For the second time in two years, the third-term Republican finds himself stuck in a runoff against a Tea Party-backed Republican who makes the conservative Dewhurst look like Bernie Sanders by comparison. And while Dewhurst was unable to stop Ted Cruz from steamrolling him in 2012, he’s pulling out all the stops to defeat state Senator Dan Patrick in the 2014 election for lieutenant governor — and it’s getting weird.
On Wednesday, Dewhurst unveiled his latest attack: An ad in which a crude animation of Patrick sings a parody of the song “Let It Go” from the Disney movie Frozen.
As Ben Jacobs helpfully explains in The Daily Beast, the ad’s central conceit is that Patrick changed his name from “Danny Goeb” to hide his bankruptcy (a claim which PolitiFact has rated “Pants on Fire”).
For This Week In Crazy, Texas’ 2014 primary season is the gift that keeps on giving. Texans, however, probably aren’t as amused.
4. Erik Rush
Given that WorldNetDaily columnist and Fox News contributor Erik Rush believes that President Obama personally orchestrated the 2012 Benghazi attacks with his Muslim Brotherhood buddies, it’s not surprising that he’s a big fan of John Boehner’s decision to form a select committee to put the Obama administration on trial.
In his latest column, Rush urges committee leader Rep. Trey Gowdy (R-SC) to ignore the “primal revulsion felt when one pulls back a wall or floorboard to discover an unimaginable accumulation of vermin bristling beneath,” and keep his eyes on the prize: Convicting Obama and Hillary Clinton of treason.
After 12 paragraphs of discredited conspiracy theories — ranging from a secret Obama/al Qaeda gun-running program, to the Muslim Brotherhood directing White House policy — Rush finally gets to his point:
The extent of these machinations, both in terms of time and scope, is positively dizzying. Whether this serial treason was taken on for reasons of narcissism, power and a false sense of invulnerability (as I suspect it was for the Clintons), or due to an abiding hatred of America and the desire to see her brought low (as was most certainly the case for Obama and his mixed bag of Marxist and Islamist ideologues), it still spells serial treason.
Whether the Select Committee on Benghazi will settle for the impeachable offenses (which will be essentially worthless in the practical sense), or the treasonable ones, again, remains to be seen.
As Rush calls for Congress to charge Obama and Clinton with crimes punishable by death, it may be worth remembering his personal burden of proof: nothing, because evidence is for liberals.
3. Glenn Beck
Glenn Beck didn’t attend last weekend’s White House Correspondents’ Dinner, but rest assured: He has a crazy, offensive excuse.
On the Monday edition of his show, Beck explained, “I’ve gone one time before, went once, and that’s enough for anyone. My wife and I left, and said ‘should we go and take a shower? Because I feel like I’ve just been raped.'”
This may be the one time in which it’s entirely appropriate to blame the “victim”:
Although Beck didn’t attend the dinner, he did catch some of its entertainment. It may not shock you to learn that he was not amused.
Discussing the satirical video in which Vice President Joe Biden and Julia Louis-Dreyfus (as her Veep character, Vice President Selina Meyer) get matching tattoos, Beck expressed confusion.
“Why are they getting tattoos?” he asked. “Don’t they know that they’re the ones that are going to be running the camps? They don’t get the tattoos, they give the tattoos!”
No word on whether Beck has begun collecting Julia Louis-Dreyfus memorabilia.
2. Stacey Campfield
While plenty of right-wingers have proven that Godwin’s law is all too real (see: Glenn Beck), and plenty have crossed all acceptable boundaries in attacking the Affordable Care Act (see Beck again), few have combined the two as neatly as Tennessee state Senator Stacey Campfield.
Writing on his personal blog on Monday, Senator Campfield offered the following “Thought of the day:”
Democrats bragging about the number of mandatory sign ups for Obamacare is like Germans bragging about the number of manditory [sic] sign ups for “train rides” for Jews in the 40s.
If this was Campfield’s top thought on Monday, I hate to imagine which musings didn’t make the cut.
After his remarks understandably sparked outrage, Campfield offered a grudging pseudo-apology:
“It was not meant to offend, but rather to warn. My intention was to draw attention to Obamacare and the slippery slope that I see occurring in the lives of myself, my constituents and the rest of the country with the continued taking of freedom by the federal government,” he said in a statement. “In no way was my post meant to diminish or detract from the pain, suffering and loss of life that occurred during this dark time in human history.”
You’d think that someone with so much experience offending people would be better at backtracking by now.
1. Operation American Spring
Image via SaveAmericaFoundation.com
These are tense days for this week’s “winner,” Operation American Spring.
As the date of the latest poorly planned coup against the federal government draws closer, the group’s chief of staff Terry Trussell and right-wing radio host Mark Hoffman are growing concerned about what President Obama might do to trample their freedom.
“You know, people are going to be down there for days. I said you might want to bring a bug out bag of sorts because you never know what’s going to happen down there, you may have to run for your life,” Hoffman said on his Patriot Nation show.
“Get together and stay together and be safe, always keep your eyes open,” he added, “because I’m sure there’s going to be people from the liberal-left-progressive side, the Marxists, the anti-freedom and liberty people, in the crowd starting trouble, that’s almost a guarantee.”
Trussell agreed, and suggested that Obama might go ahead and rain hellfire missiles on Washington D.C. just to disperse the crowd.
“Now if something bigger happens, you know they can pull in drones, but when the government destroys the capital just to get rid of us, I think it’s going to work to their discredit,” he explained.
Actually, given Congress’ approval ratings, blowing up D.C. could give the president’s approval ratings a boost.
Audio of their conversation is below, via Right Wing Watch:
In other coup news, it seems that Operation American Spring may be having trouble hitting their target number of 10 million recruits. But they have found the perfect solution: A charming, ’50s-style radio jingle!
If that doesn’t make you want to take up arms against the White House, we don’t know what will.
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