That's Rad Dude

Regardless whether you submerge yourself in every detail of the political arena (like most of us try to avoid) or just occasionally pass by a television with a random news channel blaring; you’ve probably heard a pundit or two talk about radical (fill in the blank). The radical left. The radical right. Free radicals. Those waves were so radical. You’ve heard it and you know it.

Nobody wants to be deemed a radical anything, especially radicals themselves. Yet for some reason (in hope to appeal to the more far out niches of the ideology chart during campaign season) candidates love to associate themselves with radical figures. Take into account the FRC Values Voter Summit which goes on yearly for some reason in Washington.

Now politically speaking when it comes to most issues I’m pretty conservative because I believe that government tends to screw up everything it touches. Working in the health industry I can definitely speak with confidence that government regulation tends to harm the patient more than it helps them. Case in point this passage of the disaster a la Obamacare. However it truly infuriates me that our political system loves to give credence to people that I like to affectionately call the “Pat Robertson Mafia”.

Now I’m not talking about evangelists or born-again’s or whatever the religious voters are calling themselves these days. I’m talking about the people that sit and quote actual word for word scripture (completely out of context) as justification for their opposition or support of a candidate. I’m talking the people that are so bat shit crazy that I’m positive they sleep hanging upside down. The Westboro’s and their distant incest-spawned cousins that aren’t already members fall into these hanging people.

I’m not a man of statistics because I really don’t care that much about these people to bother to look up how much of the actual voting population they make up-but I’d say that roughly they’re like 5%. I say 5% because I know for a fact that 14%-18% of the electorate considers itself the “Christian Right”. So let’s say 5% sleeps upside down.

Considering that these idiots are a strong 5% I have to ask myself the following question: WHY IN THE HELL ARE THE REPUBLICAN CANDIDATES GOING OUT OF THEIR WAY TO APPEAL TO THESE WACKOS?

Obama right now is barely holding onto the 66% of the Democratic electorate that still supports him. He’s not going to get any Republicans to throw a balloon party for him come November 2012 so why is it that the Republicans even took the time to hang around a voter summit that’s only going to bring them negative publicity? It’s not like the news media is going to sugarcoat any coverage of events involving the GOP anyways. So why attend an event that is a magnet for radicals? I mean seriously face palm to the n’th.

One of the event’s sponsors is Bryan Fischer who is a director at the American Family Association. Now why should you know this name? Because this is the same dude that said that the gays were responsible for the Holocaust and that Hitler was himself a “homosexual prostitute” while also spewing other nutty conspiracy theories about how every criminal and terrorist action on the planet is somehow brought on by “sexual deviance”. He’s also the same dude that said that Mitt Romney being a Mormon meant that he was not “protected under the first amendment.” Yes the guy is that nucking futs.

Yet all the Republican candidates made a bee line to be at this event . Some of them handled it well as an opportunity I guess to get their face in front of a camera as a “strong moral conservative” (which did nothing for their poll numbers) and others kind of just made asses of themselves (to the majority of the populace that isn’t a GOP loyalist) . Then the news media got involved and dug up the dirt which at an event like this wasn’t hard to find. A statement was made about how Mitt Romney’s church was a cult and there was plenty of anti-gay rhetoric to shoot down a rainbow. I especially loved the part of how “gay marriage was the single biggest threat to national security” made by none other than Bryan Fischer. Anybody seeing a pattern here? I am.

We may now raise the terror level to “glitter.” In fact while we're at it I want what drugs this guy is on because if gay people we're truly the most threatening force to our national security these days; I could get some damn sleep for once. In fact maybe I'd even sleep upside down too and be able to find an interior decorator that actually knows what the hell they're doing.

Fast forward to the most recent debate where Michelle Bachmann criticizes Herman Cain’s economic plan and says that his 9-9-9 plan should be flipped as the 6-6-6 plan. Now being the rational thinking American that I am who has a perpetually increasing disgust for bullshit the second she said that my eyes rolled back in their socket and I start seizing on the couch. At that point it didn’t matter what analogy Bachmann was trying to make or elude to because I was already annoyed and disgusted and if I was already turned off I’m sure plenty of less political Americans than I were as well.

So there I was looking at the screen and thinking to myself again, “Are you crazy?!” Then it hit me. Bachmann, Fischer, the AFA, the FRC; they’re no different then the Van Jones, Reverend Wrights, the Pivens of the world. It’s just radicals on both sides. So maybe the Values Summit was actually a good thing for the country because it exposed to the American people exactly what was going on and who some of these people are. Hopefully this time around the American voters will take a different path than what they did in 2008. Hopefully voters will not ignore the radical ties that candidates have and question with boldness the direction these candidates plan on taking when in office. We ignored the warning signs that came with Obama and now look where we are. Just because we’ve drifted this far to the left does not mean that taking a rocket to the far right will help this country.

Radicals are radicals. They will go to radical means to reach radical goals and radical goals will not bode well for this country as a whole.