Yesterday, I wrote about the “Race for The a Title of Stupidest,” which discussed the idiocy and ignorance of the Republican presidential candidates.  I had an anonymous commenter that wrote, “Too bad you can’t see the idiocy within your own Democrat Party. The country would be a saner place if you learned to dissent within your own ranks. Remember–dissent is patriotic.” To which I replied, “I never said I was a Democrat. Furthermore, I think both parties are deeply flawed, but it’s the Republicans who are rabidly anti-LGBT and can only come up with idiotic dribble to back up their claims. This is a gay blog and for the most part I stuck to the stupidity of their stances on LGBT issues.” But to be fair, I decided to give the Democrats their due and write a post on the stupidest things said by Democratic presidential candidates.  However, I could not limit it to LGBT issues because all of the Democrats seem to be for LGBT rights.

  
Several different websites have “The Five Worst Things Hillary Clinton Ever Said,” all of them pretty much have the same quotes, so here goes. Number five on the list is, “I have to confess that it’s crossed my mind that you could not be a Republican and a Christian.” This one is not so bad because I do not believe that Jesus would recognize many Republicans as Christians, at least not the Christianity that Christ laid out in the Sermon on the Mount or in his parables. He would more likely see them in the same way he say the Pharisees, all show but no substance. The fourth worst is “We have a lot of kids who don’t know what works means. They think work is a four-letter word.” Have these people ever met any kids? They get lazier and lazier by the year. In the five years I taught at my former school, I can count on one hand the number of those kids who had a job. I agree with Clinton 100 percent. The third worst is more dumb than anything, because Hillary said, “I’m not going to have some reporters pawing through our papers. We are the president.” Bill Clinton was president, Hillary was First Lady. She should have understood that one. The second worst was “The American people are tired of liars and people who pretend to be something they’re not.” That might be a little of the pot calling the kettle black, but um…it’s true, at least I am tired of it. And the number one worst thing was kind of bad. In response to who was responsible for Benghazi, Hillary said, “What difference does it make?” She was speaking of whether it was terrorists or protestors, but nearly everything about the Benghazi incident has been blown way out of proportion. Fox News uses the words “Benghazi” and “emails” to get conservatives foaming at the mouth and to boost ratings.

The next person to declare his candidacy was independent/socialist cum Democrat Bernie Sanders. The Libertarian Republic, a free market news magazine featuring the writing of prominent libertarians, conservatives, independents and sometimes democrats wrote about the top five dumbest quotes from Bernie Sanders, and here they are. Number five was “A nation will not survive morally or economically when so few have so much while so many have so little…We need a tax system which asks the billionaire class to pay its fair share of taxes and which reduces the obscene degree of wealth inequality in America”. By honestly do believe that the graduated tax system in America right now is ridiculous. It puts the greatest burden on those who are the poorest, and it needs to be more equitable, so not such a dumb quote in my book. Let’s look at number four, “Education should be a right, not a privilege. We need a revolution in the way that the United States funds higher education.” The current system in higher education with expenses going higher and higher will cause more students not to attend college or to be so heavily in debt when they leave that it will take years to pull out. The current system is designed for an educated elite, which many Republicans are all to happy to have because it keeps poor and middle class people dumb enough to vote Republican against their best interest. Number three quotes Sanders as saying, “Social Security is a promise that we cannot and must not break.” Why is this listed as a dumb quote, because they don’t believe Social Security should have ever been established, and thus with all the money we’ve paid into it over the years, Libertarians and Republicans think it should be scrapped completely. The second dumbest thing was “Meanwhile, as the rich become much richer, the level of income and wealth inequality has reached obscene and unimaginable levels. In the United States, we have the most unequal level of wealth and income distribution of any major country on Earth, and it’s worse now then at any other time since the 1920s…”. Anyone who looks at world history should see a pattern here. When there is a great disparity of wealth in a nation, that nation either falls or goes through a massive political change, mostly not for the better and there needs to be some reforms. And the number one dumbest thing The Libertarian Republic quotes as the dumbest thing uttered by Sanders is “We must transform our energy system away from fossil fuels and into energy efficiency and sustainable energies.” We really do need to begin looking harder at more sustainable energy, because fossil fuels will not last forever, and we will have a major energy crisis unlike anything seen before.

When you google “dumb quote by Lincoln Chafee” the main thing that comes up is this quote, “How dumb can the Republicans be to be beating up on the fastest-growing voting bloc in the country? That’s one we gotta grab! a path to citizenship is not only good policy, it’s good politics.” A lot of people are also criticizing his belief in the metric system, but both his stance on immigration and the metric system sound pretty reasonable to me. I guess the main thing about Chafee is that he’s not terribly well known, he was a reluctant politician, and he’s switched from being a liberal Republican to an Independent and is now a Democrat.

Not many quotes by Martin O’Malley can be found either which is odd considering he was Mayor of a large American city (Baltimore) and Governor of Maryland. He has stressed that 2016 should be an election focusing on new perspectives and new leadership and that the Presidency “should not be a crown that is passed between two families.” He’s kind of has a point there, with Clinton and Jeb Bush running. Really the only other quote I found by O’Malley was “Sometimes in campaigns you can drive yourself crazy with the micro-targeting and the pollsters and the tea leaves and the pixie dust trying to twist yourself into triple back-flips to appeal to the three percent that are the undecideds that live in suburbs and have lawns that are less than 20 feet long and all that bullshit. Just tell the base why you’re doing what you’re doing and why you’re better than the other guy.” I wouldn’t exactly call that quote dumb, but pretty common sense. 

The difference in the “stupid things” said by Democratic candidates and Republican candidates is that Democrats are not cruel, insensitive, and mean-spirited. All politicians will tell you what they hate instead of what they will do, but hate speech seems to be the Republican criteria for running. I’m sure people will say that I am being far too biased with this post, but I spent quite a while yesterday trying to find quotes by Democrats to post and I came up with very little. Clinton and Sanders have the most because they’ve been at the forefront the longest, and let’s face it, Sanders is in this race to push the debate to the left and enjoys being controversial. Hillary has always been controversial as First Lady, Senator, and as Secretary of State. It comes with being a powerful woman in politics, but neither seem to be mean-spirited in their speech. Chafed and O’Malley just haven’t been in the big race long enough nor have they been on the national stage. Most of the Republicans running are in the Senate and have a ready forum for their lunacy.

By the way, I did not include Joe Biden. There are two reasons: he hasn’t officially announced that he’s running and there would just be too many quotes. Biden is one of the most loquacious politicians in American history and he’s talked enough and put his foot in his mouth so many times that he should have the permanent taste of shoe leather in his mouth. I want to close by going back to one of Hillary’s quotes: “I have to confess that it’s crossed my mind that you could not be a Republican and a Christian.” The thing is, I find it hard to believe that any politician in America could or should be considered a Christian. They certainly don’t act like what Jesus has told us to behave, and in my book that’s just a Christian in name only.

As Just a Jeep Guy used to say, “Politics can leave a bad taste in your mouth,” so here’s a palate cleanser before we get started.

At the National Religious Broadcasters Convention in Nashville, Mike Huckabee, a 2016 Republican presidential candidate, said in a February speech, “Now I wish that someone told me that when I was in high school that I could have felt like a woman when it came time to take showers in PE. I’m pretty sure that I would have found my feminine side and said, ‘Coach, I think I’d rather shower with the girls today.’”

In a Friday interview with radio host Steve Deace, Huckabee said he would “take nothing back from that speech,” from the speech he gave. Huckabee told Deace he was “kind of glad” the video of his remarks made the rounds online.

“I’m kind of glad it’s posted because people, if they watch the whole clip, what they’re going to see is that I’m giving a commonsense answer to the insanity that’s going on out there,” Huckabee said. “Because I hear people, everybody wants to be politically correct, everybody wants to be loved by the media and loved by the left and loved by the elitists. But, you know, I know I’m not going to be, so let’s just get it over with. I’d rather be a commonsense candidate for people who did take their brains to work today.”

Huckabee tries to sound like a folksy good ol’ boy, but merely comes off as ignorant. He is just one of many Republicans on an anti-intellectual crusade pandering to the Tea Party’s dumbing down of America. Republicans, most of them anyway, do not want to court the intellectuals of America because they would see through their idiotic rhetoric. I blame the majority of this anti-intellectualism on Fox News, but the news media in general have lowered there standards because of 24-hour news channels. Some days are not newsworthy, and they invent stories to be blown out of proportion, and viewers watch with rapt attention.
 

 Republican, especially this crop of presidential candidates, seem to be trying to see who can reach the height of stupidity and offensiveness. Huckabee certainly doesn’t hold a monopoly on stupid and insensitive.

Speaking to a group of pastors in Washington on Thursday, another presidential candidate Rand Paul said that a moral crisis is leading people to believe that same-sex marriage is acceptable. There is a “moral crisis that allows people to think there would be some other sort of marriage,” aside from traditional marriage, Paul said. I personally think that the high rate of divorce in America is a much greater moral crisis than same-sex marriage. Furthermore, for decades, homophobes have preached about the for cation and promiscuity of gay men, yet marriage would allow for same-sex couples to be in loving legally binding relationships. And gay men are not the most promiscuous. All one needs to do is to listen to a group of teenagers or college students and you would see young people having sex with little attachment or morality. The moral crisis of America has nothing to do with same-sex marriage. In fact, same-sex marriage would solve what many critics of American sexuality have long considered a moral crisis: premarital sex.

Republican Gov. Chris Christie said that if one of his four children came out as gay, he would “grab them and hug them and tell them I love them.” He would also tell them “that Dad believes that marriage is between one man and one woman,” he said. […] “My children understand that there are going to be differences of opinion in our house and in houses all across this state and across this country,” Christie said. What an awesome guy (see my eyes roll). 

 Moving on, there is Ted Cruz, good for a laugh if nothing else. He seems to believe that same-sex marriage is a threat to our very freedom: “If the citizens of the state of Iowa or the citizens of the state of Texas want to define marriage as the union of one man and one woman … the states have the constitutional authority to do so and the federal government and unelected judges cannot set aside the democratically elected legislature’s reasonable decisions to enact and protect traditional marriage,” Cruz told radio host Jan Mickelson. The 2016 presidential candidate added, “If the courts were following the Constitution, we shouldn’t need a new amendment, but they are, as you put it quite rightly, making it up right now and it’s a real danger to our liberty.” I’m guessing that Cruz doesn’t believe the Fourteenth Amendment is an actual part of the Constitution. Cruz also believes, “There is no place for gays or atheists in my America. None. Our Constitution makes that clear.” Cruz just continues to spout ignorance that God approves of child molestation, but not homosexuality when he said, “While there may have been an age difference, Josh Duggar’s transgressions are far less an affront to God than what gays do to each other.”

And then there’s Jeb Bush. Of late, he’s made some attempts to paint himself as supportive of LGBT rights. When running for governor of Florida, in 1994, he was sounding a rather different note. During his first and unsuccessful bid for governor in 1994, Bush argued in an editorial that LGBT people do not deserve special legal protection. “We have enough special categories, enough victims, without creating even more,” he wrote. In the editorial, published in the Miami Herald that summer, Bush drew a parallel between legal protection for gays and the question, “[Should] sodomy be elevated to the same constitutional status as race and religion? My answer is No.” “The statement that the governor must stand up for all people on all matters is just silly,” Bush wrote, arguing that government does not defend every Floridian “with equal verve and enthusiasm.” He listed a string of examples: “Polluters, pedophiles, pornographers, drunk drivers, and developers without proper permits.”

We can’t leave out the Republicans “intellectual” darling, Dr. Ben Carson, who thinks being gay is a choice, “Because a lot of people who go into prison go into prison straight — and when they come out, they’re gay. So, did something happen while they were in there? Ask yourself that question,” Carson said. He mentioned LGBTQ people, pedophiles, and bestiality in the same sentence, as if they are all part of the same group and should be treated the same way. “No group, be they gays, be they NAMBLA [the North American Man/Boy Love Association], be they people who believe in bestiality, it doesn’t matter what they are, they don’t get to change the definition. So it’s not something that’s against gays, it’s against anybody who wants to come along and change the fundamental definitions of pillars of society. It has significant ramifications,” he said. And when he tried to explain his comments, he made zero sense. “There is no group. I wasn’t equating those things, I don’t think they’re equal. Just, you know, if you ask me for apple and I give you an orange you would say, well that’s not an orange. And then I say, that’s a banana, that’s not an apple either. And there’s a peach, that’s not an apple, either,” he said. “But it doesn’t mean that I’m equating the banana and the orange and the peach. And in the same way I’m not equating those things. My point was that once we start changing the definitions, then where do we stop?” And in one of the statements I find most offensive, Carson thinks that people who support same-sex marriage are trying to get rid of the Bible. “Think about the implications,” he said. “When people come along and try to change the definition of marriage, they are directly attacking the relationship between God and his people,” Carson said. “And that’s the reason it’s so important for them to change the definition, because if you can get rid of that, you can get rid of everything else in the Bible too.”. I think that Carson would benefit from reading my Sunday posts, but from the idiocy of the statements he’s made, I doubt he could understand it.

Last, but not the least idiotic, we come back to good old Mike Huckabee. To his credit, he’s never tried terribly hard to conceal how wretched he is when it comes to LGBT matters. Huckabee says that expecting Christians to accept same-sex marriage is “like asking someone who’s Jewish to start serving bacon-wrapped shrimp in their deli.” He also called homosexuality part of a lifestyle, like drinking and swearing. . . .”I don’t drink alcohol, but gosh — a lot of my friends, maybe most of them, do. You know, I don’t use profanity, but believe me, I’ve got a lot of friends who do. Some people really like classical music and ballet and opera — it’s not my cup of tea,” Huckabee said. Oh, and just let me say, I’ve always believed what my granny taught when she said that if you use a word to replace another, it’s just as bad. So Mr. Huckabee, saying gosh, by granny’s interpretation, is taking the Lord’s name in vain. That’s pretty pitiful for a Baptist preacher.

Six potential candidates, and not a single intelligent nor accepting statement among them. When it comes to LGBT issues, as with most issues, the Republican candidates are happy to take the retrograde position. That doing so tramples the rights of the LGBT community seems of little importance. Once again, they have combined political expedience and cheap moralizing to arrive at a stance of cruelty and divisiveness. Nice job guys, and it’s only going to get worse as the campaign heats up over the next year.