{"id":16744,"date":"2015-10-18T02:41:48","date_gmt":"2015-10-18T09:41:48","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/?p=16744"},"modified":"2015-10-18T02:48:22","modified_gmt":"2015-10-18T09:48:22","slug":"5-right-wing-absurdities-this-week","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/2015\/10\/18\/5-right-wing-absurdities-this-week\/","title":{"rendered":"5 Right-wing Absurdities this Week"},"content":{"rendered":"

Almost every week, Republicans join a competition to see who can say the most outlandish things, and in the process, they push the envelope on just how nutty InsaniTEA can become.  I trust that you will believe it, when I tell you that last week was no exception.<\/span><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

1. There’s a reason Rand Paul has become completely irrelevant.<\/strong><\/p>\n

The fact that Rand Paul was once touted as the savior of the Republican Party does not speak well of either of them. But just to drive the point home that Paul is definitely not suited to play the role of level-headed grown up in the room, the Kentucky libertarian got a little hysterical this week about Bernie Sanders.<\/p>\n

Just a tad.<\/p>\n

The word “socialist” can do that to right-wing libertarian types—sending them into paroxysms of wild-eyed terror. On a conservative South Carolina radio show, Paul suggested that a Bernie Sanders presidency might set off “mass genocide.” In his view, that’s what happens when you try socialism. Apparently, he has never heard of Scandinavia, where genocide really hasn’t been a thing.<\/p>\n

“It amazes me and it actually kind of scares me,” Paul told radio host Vince Coakley. “I think it’s not an accident of history that most of the times when socialism has been tried that attendant with that has been mass genocide of people or any of those who object to it. Stalin killed tens of millions of people. Mao killed tens of millions of people. Pol Pot killed tens of millions of people.”<\/p>\n

Granted, Paul is not the only Republican who is confused about Sanders’ use of the word socialism, and certainly not the only one using ridiculous rhetoric to scare people to death. Texas state Rep. Jason Villalba<\/strong><\/a>,<\/p>\n

Villalba compared him to Hitler on Tuesday, later backing off, and going the other way to Stalin.a<\/p>\n

So clearly, we can expect a lot more of this nonsense.<\/p>\n

This past week, the former staffers of Rand Paul, who are also former staffers of his father, were on trial and Ron Paul was testifying.  But in addition to waxing stupid over Bernie Sanders, Paul tried to, in his own inane way, divert attention from the trial.  In the process, he managed to make himself <\/span>even more irrelevant<\/span><\/a><\/strong>.<\/span> <\/p>\n

This is just one of the absurdities of right wing America.  To be sure, there are more than five, but publishing space is limited.  Read about the other four enumerated in <\/span>Alternet<\/span><\/a><\/strong>.  <\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Almost every week, Republicans join a competition to see who can say the most outlandish things, and in the process, they push the envelope on just how nutty InsaniTEA can become.  I trust that you will believe it, when I tell you that last week was no exception. 1. There’s a reason Rand Paul has […]<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-16744","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-politics","category-5-id","post-seq-1","post-parity-odd","meta-position-corners","fix"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16744","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=16744"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16744\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=16744"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=16744"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.politicsplus.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=16744"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}