Dave Agema, one of three Michigan reps who helps shape the national GOP agenda, was caught using KKK talking points on Facebook, the Royal Oak Daily Tribune reports. Agema linked to an article supposedly written by an obscure doctor that was described in the article as follows:
The article, supposedly written by an obscure OB-GYN medical doctor,
depicts gays as sexually promiscuous, pedophiles, and deviants living a
“filthy” lifestyle. Incredibly, it claims that they are to blame for
“half the murders in large cities.”
It turns out that the person quoted approvingly by Agema was a member of the Ku Klux Klan and a white supremacist. Among other assertions by the article quoted by Agema:
Overall, here are some of the claims in the Facebook post: 37 percent of
homosexuals engage in sadomasochism, 60 percent say they have had sex
with strangers in “bathhouses,” about 80 percent of homosexuals are
infected with sexually transmitted diseases, and the average gay person
has between 20 and 106 sexual partners per year.
The Tribune article identified the man quoted approvingly by Agema as Dr. Edward Fields, a known racist, anti-semite, white supremacist, and holocaust denier. Fields has been a regular guest on David Duke's show.
Agema refuses to apologize for his behavior. This is the sort of thing that will present a quandary for the national GOP, which has talked about trying to change its image in the light of consecutive defeats in Presidential elections fueled by high minority support for Barack Obama. But the behavior of Agema and others like him will undermine these attempts.
This will play into President Obama's hands as he seeks to portray himself as a statesman willing to compromise for the good of the country and the Republican opposition as out of touch obstructionists. The fact that many Republicans support Agema according to the Tribune article will play into Obama's efforts to portray the GOP as a party that is outside the mainstream of American political thought. This is not to agree with President Obama, though. The proper objective for policymaking is for there to avoid the slightest chance of creating human suffering; in this case, if approved, Obama's cuts to Social Security could create more hardships on the elderly.
The moral of the story is that no matter where you are on the Internet, if you decide to open a Facebook or Twitter account, you are in public view and anything you post can and will be used against you.