Sen. Pat Roberts is doubling down on his Sep. 22 claim that under President Obama,
'our country is headed towards national socialism'
It's abundantly clear that Virginia resident Pat Roberts—who represents Kansas in the United States Senate—has either spent too much time watching Glenn Beck or hasn't spent enough time figuring out how to talk in code to Beck's audience
because:
When a reporter asked whether he truly thinks the president is a socialist, Roberts replied, “I believe that the direction he is heading the country is more like a European socialistic state, yes. You can’t tell me anything that he has not tried to nationalize.”
The question wasn't some random gotcha—earlier this week, Roberts
had proclaimed that under President Obama, "our country is headed towards national socialism." Apparently Roberts is so clueless about his words that he didn't realize he was accusing Obama of being a Nazi, but even his clarification—the challenge to name an industry that Obama hadn't tried to nationalize—was so loopy it probably made Ron Paul cringe.
As Greg Sargent notes, Roberts' opponent, independent businessman Greg Orman, said the attack shows that Roberts would rather call people names than actually do the job he was sent to D.C. to do. Assuming that Orman is in better touch with Kansans than Roberts—and every bit of available evidence suggests that he is—then by the time this campaign is over, the question won't be "What's the matter with Kansas?" It will be "What's the matter with Pat Roberts?"