Am Mittwoch hatte sich unser USA-Korrespondent Thomas Adcock mit den selbstmörderischen Aspekten von Dummheit unter den Republikanern beschäftigt. Heute liefert er ein paar Beispiele – wanted! – die dümmsten Kongressabgeordneten:
The 10 Dumbest Members
of the U.S. Congress
… and a (very) few of the hundreds of stupid things they’ve said
by Thomas Adcock
VIRGINIA FOXX — North Carolina
Rep. Foxx was unmoved by the 1998 murder of University of Wyoming student Matthew Shepard, who was tortured, pistol-whipped, and nailed to a fence post to die—because he was gay, according to his convicted killers. Remarkably, Ms. Foxx’s callous ignorance carried forward to February of this year when, as chairwoman of the House Subcommittee on Higher Education, she said of pending legislation to expand criminal penalties in assaults and homicides motivated by racial, gender, or sexual bias: “This hate crimes bill, this Matthew Shepard Bill named for him, it’s really a hoax that continues to be used as an excuse for passing these bills.”
LOUIE GOHMERT — Texas
In June 2011, Rep. Gohmert questioned the foreign policy outlook of President Obama by declaring, “Our oath we took is in this body, in this House, it’s to the people of America. And it’s not to the Muslim Brotherhood, who [sic] may very well take over Egypt and once they do, they are bent upon setting up a caliphate around the world, including the United States. And this administration will been [sic] complicit in helping people who want to destroy our way of life.” In the wake of a shooting spree at a Colorado cinema last July, which killed twelve and wounded fifty-eight, Mr. Gohmert blamed the crime on America’s “disrespect” for God during a televised interview. He said further, “In that crowded theatre, wasn’t there one person that [sic] could have had a gun and ended this thing quickly?”
PAUL BROUN — Georgia
Chairman of Congressional oversight for the House Committee on Science, Space and Technology, Rep. Broun told a hometown political gathering last October, “That stuff I was taught about evolution, embryology, Big Bang theory—all that is lies straight from the pit of hell.” Mr. Broun is a medical doctor by profession. When President Obama called for the creation of a national service corps to create jobs for unemployed young people, Mr. Broun said, “That’s exactly what Hitler did in Nazi Germany and it’s exactly what the Soviet Union did.”
MICHELE BACHMANN — Minnesota
During her failed bid for the Republican presidential nomination, Representative Bachmann said in 2011, “That big thing we are working on now is the global warming hoax. It’s all voodoo, nonsense, hokum—a hoax.” In 2010, she suggested that the population survey conducted by the U.S. Census Bureau, in accordance with constitutional requirement, might be used by the Obama administration to incarcerate American citizens in prison camps.
JAMES INHOFE — Oklahoma
Sen. Inhofe is the proud author of The Greatest Hoax: How the Global Warming Conspiracy Threatens Your Future. In his book, released in March 2012 by the conspiracy-obsessed WorldNetDaily, a right-wing publishing company, Mr. Inhofe refutes universal scientific consensus on climate change causation with a recitation of Bible verses.
STEVE KING — Iowa
Entrenched in a rural district that has reëlected him to the House six times since 2003, Rep. King is an especially nasty critic of the black man in the White House. In 2008, Mr. King said terrorists around the world would “dance in the streets” if Barack Obama was elected president; subsequently, he has had nothing to say about presidential actions resulting in the killing of Usama bin Laden and scores of his al-Qaeda comrades. In an interview with talk radio host and Watergate-era criminal G. Gordon Liddy in June 2010, Mr. King declared, “The president has demonstrated that he has a default mechanism in him that breaks down on the side of race—on the side that favors the black person.”
MO BROOKS — Alabama
Rep. Brooks habitually disparages undocumented Mexican field workers. In a July 2011 interview with Huntsville television station WHNT, he complained that Mexicans “steal” farm jobs from “decent” Americans when they are not “clogging up our emergency rooms” or “overstuffing” the jails. Of “illegals,” he said further, “Anything that is lawful, it needs to be done. I will do anything short of shooting them.”
JIM SENSENBRENNER — Wisconsin
At a small-town church dinner in his district in 2010, Rep. Sensenbrenner opined to several women at his table that Michelle Obama was not qualified to speak on improving the nation’s dining habits because, he said, the First Lady has a “big butt.” The morbidly obese Mr. Sensenbrenner offered no view regarding the dimensions of his own derrière.
DANA ROHRABACHER — California
In June 2011, Rep. Rohrabacher held a press conference at the American Embassy in Baghdad and asked that the Iraqi government reimburse America for the cost of its 2003 invasion and occupation, which resulted in 120,000 civilian deaths. “Once Iraq becomes a very rich and prosperous country,” he said, “we would hope that some consideration be given to repaying the United States some of the mega-dollars that we have spent here in the last eight years.” Fond of ranting via Twitter, Mr. Rohrabacher analyzed President Obama reëlection victory in 2012 thusly: “1 reason [Republicans] lost was Obama giveaways to cronies who then donated & to [sic] low income citizens & illegals who then voted.”
TIM HUELSKAMP — Kansas
Speaking to an assembly of right-wing religious fanatics at the September 2012 “Family Voter Summit” in Washington, Representative Huelskamp said Planned Parenthood, the leading provider of reproductive health care in the U.S., including abortions for low-income women, is a “racist organization created for the sole purpose of killing children that [sic] look like mine.” The father of four adopted youngsters of African American, Hispanic, and Native American descent, Mr. Huelskamp added, “Like the pro-slavery forces who [sic] invaded Kansas, the pro-abortion forces want us to believe that abortion is not murder, that being born is worse than death.” In November 2012, he voted against a bill to provide federal disaster aid to northeastern states devastated by Hurricane Sandy because he was not “convinced” that emergency relief was needed for victims of a natural disaster more widespread than Hurricane Katrina in the Gulf Coast region in 2005, or the numerous tornadoes in his own state (for which he sought and received federal money).
Copyright © 2013 Thomas Adcock
Thomas Adcock is CulturMag’s American correspondent. Zum Essay: Suicide by Stupidity: How the Republican Party is Killing Itself.
