Theyre worse!
Rand Paul, the teabagging Republican candidate to replace Kentucky Senator and Major League doofus, Jim Bunning, has famously stated that he wouldnt have voted for the 1964 Civil Rights Bill in its current form. He believes that individuals and privately-owned businesses should be free to discriminate in whatever way they want against whomever they want.
Sharron Angle, the Nevada teabagger who hopes to unseat Senator Harry Reid, is running on a platform to abolish Social Security, Federal income taxes and the Department of Education. And her former primary opponent, Sue Lowden, suggested that health care access could be solved by returning to a barter system in which patients paid their doctors with chickens.
In Arizona, ex-Maverick, noted mud-slinger and teabagger wannabe, John McCain, is searching for ways to seem even crazier than his primary challenger, J.D. Hayworth. Despite the fact that illegal immigration and crime have dropped dramatically in Arizona, he now proposes that the border be turned into a heavily fortified militarized zone. Indeed, McCain almost makes his former running mate, Sarah Palin, look like a liberal.
Locally, a teabagger candidate for the AZ lege told me, Those damn Mexicans who come across the border are only here to steal our jobs and live off our taxpayers. They dont pay taxes or contribute in any way. They arent interested in our culture, our language or in becoming citizens. They only want to take advantage of us. When I replied that his statement was one of the most racist things Id ever heard, he came completely unglued and began screaming “I am not a racist!” as I left the room.
Wherever you look across the political landscape youll see candidates crawling out from under the woodwork with hopes of rewinding the way-back clock a century or more. You know, back to the good ol days when rich people could own their workers and when poor people had no rights and no security net in addition to having no money.
But the teabaggers do offer one positive. They actually make the incumbents (even mainstream Republicans) seem more attractive.