Unless you slept through the 1990s or were born afterwards, you know that no one but no one drives wingnuts more insane than Hillary Clinton (with the possible exception of Barack Obama). Clinton launched her presidential candidacy this week. Almost immediately, an epidemic of Clinton Derangement Syndrome broke out on the right.
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No one exhibited a worse case of it than Bill O’Reilly.
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But the rest was the usual anti-Clinton madness.
- GOP strategist Ann Navaro complained that Clinton “lacks subtlety” on the subject of possibly being the first woman president. “I don’t need her to drown me in estrogen every time she opens her mouth.”
- Conservative pundit S.E. Cupp complained that there were too few men in Clinton’s roll-out video; and when the men finally showed up one of them was a guy speaking Spanish, and the other was “not your traditional man,” because he was gay.
- Male conservatives from Rush Limbaugh to Herman Cain claimed that Clinton “has only ever gotten anywhere in politics because of who she’s married to.”
- Family Research Council President Tony Perkins attacked Clinton for counting same-sex couples as families when she said “when families are strong, America is strong.” “Her definition of family is a bit different,” Perkins said on his “Washington Watch” program. “She actually had same-sex couples there in her video.”
- The American Family Association’s Sandy Rios again implied that Clinton is secretly a lesbian, citing Clinton’s roll-out video as evidence.
- On “Morning Joe,” Bloomberg editor Mark Halperin offered this political analysis of Clinton’s lunchtime visit to Chipotle: “The two words she needs are fun and new. And part of why yesterday was so successful is, she looks like she’s having fun and she’s doing, for her, new stuff. We’ve never seen her get a burrito before.”
- Fox News host Andrea Tantaros suggested Clinton’s Chipotle run was “Hispanic outreach.”
- On ABC’s “This Week,” Bill Kristol suggested, “If they get to nominate Hillary Clinton, why don’t we get to nominate Dick Cheney/ I mean, he has a much—he has a much better record…”
- Pat Robertson warned “700 Club” viewers that we were “going back to the ’50s,” because “it looks like one of the candidates wants to take us back to the future.” The irony is that any other time conservatives would love to take us back to the ’50s.
- Robertson also claimed that the gay community seeks to impose “totalitarian” socialism on America, and that Clinton is in cahoots with gays because she “wants to do away with the First Amendment, or at least part of it.”
- At the NRA annual meeting, executive vice president Wayne LaPierre declared, “eight years of a demographically symbolic president is enough,” and warned that Clinton will bring “will bring a permanent darkness of deceit and despair.” LaPierre also dredged up Bill Clinton’s alleged infidelities, as if to suggest that being cheated on is a character flaw.
- Rafael Cruz, father of presidential candidate Sen. Ted Cruz (R, Texas) told tea partiers in Rome, Georgia, that if Hillary Clinton is elected president “you might as well kiss this country goodbye.”
- In Scranton, Pennsylvania, Clinton’s grandfather’s tombstone was upturned in what police say may have been an act of political vandalism.
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However, conservatives have said some nice things about Clinton.
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Looney-Tunes Legislators
- The Tennessee Senate finally dropped a GOP-backed bill that would make the Bible the state book, when the state attorney general said it would be unconstitutional. The Tennessee House approved the bill 55 to 38.
- Texas Republican State Rep. Jason Villabla introduce a bill to essentially outlaw filming the police, by requiring people to stand at least 25 feet away from police activity.
- Texas Republican State Rep. Molly White, who introduced a “religious freedom” bill that would allow businesses to refuse to serve customers on religious grounds, refused to meet with LGBT constituents who would be impacted by her bill. White’s staff said it would be a “waste of time” because Carlson “is against anything LGBT.”
- Oklahoma Republican State Senator Jason Smalley rewrote a bill setting up a regulatory framework for ridesharing programs like Uber and Lyft, to remove language protecting LGBT passengers from discrimination.
- North Dakota Republicans stripped funding from the budget for a state rail safety program, despite a series of train derailments in the past several years. “Accidents are gonna happen,” said Republican Rep. Jeff Delzer.
Here’s the best of the worse in wingnuttery this week:
- During his remarks at the NRA annual meeting, right-wing rocker Ted Nugent used an analogy about shooting Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid (D, Nevada) to explain the NRA’s 2013 endorsement of Reid. “If your child is dying and there is only one way to get to the doctor, would you get on Harry Reid’s boat to get there?” Nugent said. “I’d get on the boat, get there, and then I’d shoot him.”
- [In a fundraising email to supporters, Sen. Ted Cruz (R, Texas) wrote that the Second Amendment is intended to “serve as the ultimate check against governmental tyranny — for the protection of liberty.”
- Sen. Lindsey Graham (R, South Carolina) remembered that insurrection didn’t go so well the last time. “Well, we tried that once in South Carolina,” Graham said, in an apparent reference to the Civil War. “I wouldn’t go down that road again.”
- Sen. Mark Kirk (R, Illinois) stepped up the GOP’s minority outreach. In an interview with the Peoria Journal-Star, Kirk said he wanted to “make sure we have elected people constantly looking at helping the African-American community … so that the black community is not the one we drive faster through.”
- Bill O’Reilly’s victim posturing finally became too much even for his Fox News colleagues. Fellow Fox Newser John Stossel called O’Reilly “a 10-foot-tall crybaby,” after becoming exasperated with O’Reilly’s claims of a “war on Christianity.”
- Fox News Host Brian Kilmeade asked if it was time to bring back literacy tests for voting. Conservative columnist Ann Coulter suggested it should be “a little more difficult to vote.” Coulter added, “There’s nothing unconstitutional about literacy tests.”
- Indiana governor Mike Pence’s approval ratings have plummeted after his defense of Indiana’s anti-LGBT “religious freedom” law. Since February, Pence’s approval rating dropped from 62 percent to 38 percent, while his disapproval rating rose to 53 percent.
- Right-wing activist Bob Vander Plaats warned of divine retribution for a Wiccan priestess delivering a prayer at the opening of the state legislature.
- At an event hosted by Vander Platts’ group, The Family Leader, Mike Huckabee said that President Obama calling to congratulate gay football player Michael Sam was a sign of America’s “utter collapse.”
- Pat Robertson advised parents to “smack” their children around to protect them from the “evil” music in their iPods.
- Former congresswoman Michele Bachmann is totally psyched for the apocalypse.
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