LEWIS ON THE LOOSE

Because you may have been distracted by a political campaign where one candidate is selling the Department of Justice (and a certain "Foundation") to the highest bidders, and the other is urging his supporters to blow her brains out, you probably missed a modest little primary election last week.

If a person could look like more of
an idiot, I'd like to know how.
Actually, I take that back.

Meet Jason Lewis, the Republican nominee for Minnesota's 2nd District. In his former life, Lewis was a radio talk show host, which is apparently all the experience you need to create federal laws.

To his credit, he likes the idea of states seceding easily from the Union. I say "to his credit" because Minnesota should scram ASAP, because it just nominated a guy who not only trots out the risible "theory" that the Civil War was about states rights, he also believes the government lacks the authority to outlaw slavery. Now he tells us! 

Not that he's exactly yearning to re-open the slave markets of yore. As he's said:

In fact, if you really want to be quite frank about it, how does somebody else owning a slave affect me? It doesn’t. If I don’t think it is right, I won’t own one, and people always say, “Well,if you don’t want to marry somebody of the same sex, you don’t have to, but why tell somebody else they can’t?” Uh, you know if you don’t want to own a slave, don’t. But don’t tell other people they can’t.

He also appears to keep a paint-by-numbers
portrait of  himself in his office.

While we're on the subject, he also believes the Hurricane Katrina victims were "a bunch of whiners", and that the "white population" is committing "cultural suicide" by not popping out enough kids. Actually, the problem is that they're popping out kids who grow up to be like Jason Lewis.

Undoubtedly, Lewis would be appalled at being considered racist. See, he's one of those Ayn Rand fans who use her crackpot writings to justify thought and behavior similar to that of a spoiled five year-old. A spoiled racist five year-old. While the USA is a nation of laws, Lewis and his ilk take it a step further -- a nation of laws that should be ignored if you don't like them. Unless they decide you can't.

As you can guess, Lewis draws a red line with his absolute freedom mantra at sexuality:

I never thought in my lifetime where you'd have so many single, or I should say, yeah, single women who would vote on the issue of somebody else buying their diaphragm. This is a country in crisis. Those women are ignorant in, I mean, the most generic way. I don't mean that to be a pejorative. They are simply ignorant of the important issues in life. Somebody's got to educate them.

Don't get mad, ladies -- remember, he wasn't being pejorative. (I'm shocked he even knows what that means.)

As in the case of Robert Morrow in Texas, Lewis is such a nut that the local Republican Party actively helped his primary opponent. But now that he's gotten the nod from the voters, they're obliged to help him get elected come November, even though they think he's unelectable. 

When they call it the "Party of Lincoln," I think
they mean this Lincoln.

I think I've heard that song before. In fact, I'm hearing it every day about one presidential candidate in particular, and the chorus keeps growing.

You can be sure that someone from the GOP hierarchy will say that Jason Lewis "doesn't represent the views of the Republican Party." Question: how often do you have to say that about your candidates and their supporters until you realize... maybe they do?

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