If you're not from Texas, you probably don't care all that much about our downballot offices. Well, you're missing out on a lot of hilarity if you haven't been paying attention, because the Republican candidates for statewide office down here are jockeying to prove that Ted Cruz and Louie Gohmert are nowhere close to the craziest politicians down here.
Current Railroad Commissioner and Attorney General candidate Barry Smitherman threw down the hatchet when he suggested that the United States has a de facto one-child policy because our womminfolk aren't having enough babies.
But now, current Land Commissioner (yes, a statewide elected official) and Lieutenant Governor candidate Jerry Patterson has officially taken teh crazy to a new level.
Patterson says he's the only candidate who can protect traditional Texas values as more people move here to take advantage of a state economy flush with new jobs.
"We want to preserve, protect, defend, advance those things we are rightly proud of," he said.
Then he went a step further, suggesting booting California, New York, Massachusetts and Connecticut from the U.S.
"I get lots of questions all the time, 'Well, we should secede.' I say, 'No, I've got a better idea. Instead of secession, I'm a proponent of expulsion,'" he said. "I want to kick about four states out of this union."
I'm guessing that Jerry is not aware that even without the electoral votes of the four states he's selected, Barack Obama would still be the President of the United States. Clearly Jerry isn't crazy enough to be Lieutenant Governor, because he hasn't even suggested kicking out Illinois with its "Chicago-style politics," or Hawaii (which, to be fair, most Teabagging birthers apparently already don't think is in the United States), or Colorado and Washington with their legalized pot, or Vermont with its avowed Socialist Senator... I could go on, but you're starting to get the picture.
"I'm in favor of expulsion," he said. "New York, California, and there's some good people in New York and California, but their legislatures' aren't representing them."
(snip)
"But nonetheless,' he continued, "just think about how different our country would be if New York and California weren't the tail wagging the dog. And those other states? It's not America."
There is a certain amount of irony in any Texas Republican accusing other states' legislatures of not representing the people of other states, when the Texas Legislature basically represents the oil and gas industry, the private prison industry, the charter school scammers, the anti-choice agitators, and a variety of other moneyed interests that largely control the agenda in Austin. But I'll give Jerry the benefit of the doubt here and assume that he's just unaware that the people of California and New York actually want their legislatures to act the way they do, simply because Jerry clearly has never actually met anyone who lives in those states and who isn't a Republican donor.
But Jerry Patterson is symptomatic of the new frontier in Tea Party crazy. No longer is it enough to advocate that your state secede from the Union because you don't like that liberals in other states are allowed to elect a Kenyan Socialist Marxist Fascist Muslim as President. No, now you have to go so far as to advocate kicking other states out of the Union because they don't fit your definition of 'Murika and by God, why should we have to be the ones to leave the country when we can just kick out those places that we don't consider to be American?
I await to see how the other Republican candidates and officeholders in Texas try to one-up Jerry Patterson on his new level of crazy. Get your popcorn out.
Patterson eventually conceded: "This is a little tongue in cheek."
I'm sure it was, Jerry.