Romney is 2 for 2 with loonies

Although Mitt Romney has been down a quart or two since the conventions, my unofficial poll  shows him to be strong among dogfight promoters and anti-Communist theorists. He assured himself of their unyielding support by offering his endorsements  to two widely suspected Republican loonies like Steve King and Allen West, a couple of congressmen who operate in another universe.

King, whose Iowa district may have more cows than people,  has long favored dogfighting and  has gone so far as to compare imimigrants to dogs.   He even latched on to the "legitimate rape" issue,   saying he was unaware that pregnancy from rape was that widespread. But that's old news on the right by now.

Never mind.  When  Mitt showed up to endorse King for another congressional term, he declared:  "I'm looking here at Steve King.  He needs to be your congressman again.  I want him as my partner in Washington."  King returned the favor by assuring his constitutents that Mitt was a true patriot with "love for Jesus Christ our savior".

Let us turn now to Florida Tea Party  congressman Allen West, who has declared that there are 80 or so Communists in Congress and recently asserted that "forward" - a word that appears in Obama's campaign slogan -  is an "old Soviet Union, Marxist-Socialist theme" (Aside to Allen: It also appears in Paul Ryan's home state of Wisconsin motto.) It didn't take  long for Lou Dobbs, of Fox News, to remind us that "forward has a a very long history with Marxists and  and socialists" .  Dobbs never has been that original  with his rightwing talking points.

Back to Romney, where today's post began: He happily appointed West as  the co-chairman of his campaign's new Black Leadership Council.

But you can't fault Mitt for trying to win at least one African-American vote, can you?  

Priebus heading for Comedy Central?

When Reince Priebus, the nutsy Republican National chairman referred to Democratic Senate Majority leader Harry Reid as a "dirty liar",  it sent us back to the days of the silver screen when a lot of  of folks  were being scripted to use a negative adjective to describe  a negative noun.

For instance, there were tough guy Jimmy Cagney  hissing that somebody was a "dirty rat" and hoodlums  referring to other unpleasant people as "dirty doublecrossers".  Like that.  It simply wasn't enough to be a rat or a doubecrosser. Nor a liar.  You had to be dirty, too.

But because Priebus is unforgivably  stupid, he tried to explain to George Stephanopoulos that he "wouldn't go down that road" of talking about Reid because he didn't want to "respond to a dirty liar".  How good of this man , who has said  before that he doesn't want to engage in name-calling. A puzzled
Stephanopoulos failed to get Priebus to clarify this contradiction.

This is hardly the first time that the RNC boss has demonstrated exuberant nonsense.  A few days ago, he accused President Obama of purposely reviving Rev. Wright as a campaign piece  to distract voters from Obama's other failures.  Or he likened a "war on caterpillars'' to critics accusing  Republicans of a "war on women".

And he defended Rep. Allen West, the noisy right-winger  from Florida who accused Obama of wanting folks to be slaves so they could be dependent on government.  Oh, and West's turn   to McCarthyism to declare there were 80  communists in Congress.

"Allen West," Priebus asserted, "is an important member of Congress from South Florida.  I'm not going to throw Allen West in a ditch".

He won't have to.  West is already there. But we don't know where Reince is these days.  Republicans, you have a problem.

Fringe discourse: Bring on the Armpit Committee!

We are bulling ahead in of our crusade to  create a '"House UnAmerican Armpit Committee" - HUAC for our older readers. It will be an overdue inquiry into the lunacy whose unpleasant odor is affecting everything we hold dear to civilized behavior.  In recent days alone there have been numerous occasions to subpoena the most toxic voices among us with the plaintive question once raised by  Atty. Joseph Welch, to Sen. Joe McCarthy:  "Have you no sense of decency?"


Could we not begin by summoning Rep. Allen West, Florida Republican, to explain his math that there are 80 communists in Congress?

And Rep. Michele Bachmann, Minnesota  Republican who was reprimanded by Sen. John McCain, Arizona Republican, for accusing Huma Abedin, a deputy chief of staff in the State Department, of being a secret operative of the Muslim Brotherhood sneakily influencing Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. It was a towering moment for McCain, and could demand that Bachmann  appear before HUAC to inquire about her declining mental state  these days.

And Arizona Sheriff Joe Arpaio, who assembled a few "investigators"  to review President Obama's birth certificate and now declares with forensic neglect that it is a "forgery".  Arpaio must  be asked by HUAC when did his nuttiness began emitting such foul odors that he is now the leader in the toxic armpit  birther gang.

Romney campaign soldier John Sununu accused the President  of being unlearned in the art of being an American.  (He later Etch-A-Sketched his comment but HUAC could ask him to say why  he is such a boorish dumbbell.)

The Committee could summon Rush Limbaugh, but it would be a still greater diversion if we waited until the circus comes to town.

Reince Priebus: GOP's wannabe Jon Stewart

Readers,  what would we do without Republican National Chairman Reince Priebus offering us comic relief from the otherwise dreary narrative of  the party's election year playbook?  I mean, he's the megaphone of the national party and there he was telling Wolf Blitzer (who isn't that exciting himself) that  Rep. Allen West was "one of the most  dynamic new Republican stars in our Party...He's got a bright future."

That was  the chaiman's side-splitting response to  Blitzer's question about West describing Obama as a slave boss. Or as West put it earlier about Obama: "He'd rather you be his slave and be economically dependent on him."

Pressed by Blitzer to take the thought further, Priebus declared, "Allen West is an important member of Congress from South Florida.  I'm not going to throw Allen West in a ditch."

Funny that he should refer to West as a dynamic  Republican  star when the same rising star said recently that there were at least 80 or so Communists in Congress!.  On to the ditch, I say!

Where there's Perkins' smoke, there's fire

BUSINESS MUST be slow these days for Tony Perkins and the American Family Association.  Perkins, the Christian conservative  group's president,  has been increasing the volume  of his attacks  on President Obama, particularly now that red-baiting has become fashionable  among some of Obama's more temperamental opponents.

You wouldn't think that Perkins could be so nasty in his own venues if you saw him on TV as the sort-of grown-up kid from the Andy Griffith Show.  But now that the American Family Association was among the losers who seriously endorsed Rick Santorum, he's had to fully turn his aggrieved attention to Obama. Aside from spreading doubts about the president's birth certificate, Perskins urged  his constituents  to read a  column suggesting there is  an alarming Communist strain in  the President's behavior.   The right-wing writer, Sandy Rios, hisses  that the president has so weakened America  that it will encourage a Communist takeover.

Perkins says  he isn't exactly naming names but "We're looking at facts." To add more trash to the fire, Rios praised Rep. Allen West (R-Fla.) for declaring there are 81 communists in Congress.

And Perkins' group defends its wholesome mission as defending family values, lunacy obviously not being one of them.  

Allen West: Regressing to the days of red-baiting

AS THE REPUBLICAN militiamen push back into the Middle Ages, one of the party's s most outrageous members seems to have paused for a briefing in the 1950s. Rep. Allen West, of Florida, a Tea Party icon known for insufferable rants, told a Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) gathering that there are 80 Communists in Congress. Even the late red-baiter, Joe McCarthy, didn't muster that many back in the 50s . When West's words hit the fan, he blamed the media reports for misquoting him even though videofilm revealed that he wasn't misquoted at all. It gets worse. He said the communists were really the liberal Congressional Progressive Caucus (Democrats) , as if that explained everything.

West, a retired colonel who drew the brass's wrath when he fired a shot just over a prisoner's head to persuade him to answer questions, enjoys attention. And he usually gets it. In fact, two right-wing pols - Sarah Palin and Herman Cain - have already recommended that Mitt Romney choose West as his running mate. That would be worth the price of admission!

I haven't heard anything so stupid since conservative Sen. Frank Lausche, an alleged Democrat, was hurling unnamed communists at us during his unsuccessful primary election campaign in 1968 against Jack Gilligan. There was Lausche in a speech to a Democratic club in Delaware, Oh, warning that communists were on the loose in the Federal government. When I asked him afterward to name one, he brusquely waved me off and declared he would say no more about it and bolted toward the door. Unfortunately it was a Saturday night and there wasn't much else for me to report from Central Ohio. Never did find out who, if anybody, Lausche had in mind.