One of America's top TEA Party imbeciles has called for President Obama to prove that he is eligible to be on the Montana ballot, or else have his name removed from it.
Bob Wagner, the Montana state representative who once told CNN's Anderson Cooper that a person is ineligible to run for president unless both parents were born in America, is back at it again. Reviving Birtherism, Wagner has sent a letter to the Montana Secretary of State (she oversees elections), commanding her to
"prove that Obama is eligible to hold the office he usurped in 2008, or take him off the ballot."
Wagner believes that Obama's birth certificate is a fraud; and that even if the certificate were authentic, Obama would still not be a true American citizen because his father impregnated his mother while visiting America.
Alas, Wagner's letter is the last thing Montana Republicans need right now. They swept the legislature in 2010 in a whirlwind of Tea Party hysteria, only to be utterly humiliated by Wagner and his crowd of Tea Party loons as they coopted the legislature and began passing
crazy legislation, calling for an end to the United Nations and a reversion to the gold standard. It eventually proved such disaster for the GOP that the moderate Republicans fled the scene, and voted with Governor Schweitzer and the Democrats.
Schweitzer, meanwhile, had a field day kicking Wagner and his right-wing pals in the ribs. He even staged an event on the lawn of the Capitol building, where he pulled out a red hot cattle iron that said "VETO" and used it to "brand" a few crazy bills, Wagner's among them. Rachel Maddow did a funny segment on it, highly recommended.
And there's an even larger problem for the Montana GOP, a dark cloud on the horizon. If Jon Tester wins his race for the US Senate, there is a good chance that for the first time in history, Montana will not have a single state-wide Republican officeholder. Right now, the state's at-large congressman, Dennis Rehberg, is the last GOP statewide politician, and he's chosen to give up his house seat to challenge Tester for the Senate. All of the other nine state-wide politicians in Montana are Democrats, even though just over half of the state remains solidly and strongly conservative (Gore and Kerry got 33 and 36 percent in Montana respectively; Obama got 46, but its unlikely he'll get much over 43 this time around.)
And with the continued antics of nutcases like Bob Wagner, Democrats have a bright future in Big Sky Country.
This diary is cross posted at the Montana Cowgirl Blog.