Sunday, May 5, 2013

Why Do We Put Up with these Tea Partiers?



Meet a U.S. Congressman as loony as Michele Bachmann if you can believe that…
by Charlie Leck

Take Louie Gohmert if you will… Please! (a little line stolen from the extraordinary, late Henny Youngman)

New York Times writer Timothy Egan brought Louis Gohmert to my attention [read the Egan column]. This slightly off-kilter fellow is this U.S. Congressman from Texas (figures), and he is really strange, strange, strange! It never stops him from getting reelected because his constituency either admires him or thinks he’s comical enough to keep around. Indeed, Gohmert is one of the strangest ducks in the current Congress and one of the most outlandish and eccentric ever to hold such office. Currently serving his fifth term in the House, representing a geographically huge district on the eastern border of Texas, Congressman Gohmert seems remarkably unbeatable.

Gohmert is a graduate of Texas A&M University and has a law degree from Baylor University, eventually appointed by the state’s governor, Rick Perry, to serve as Chief Justice of the 12th Court of Appeals. He’s also a U.S. Army veteran who rose to the rank of captain. He’s a good, old Southern Baptist who has served as both a deacon and sunday school teacher in his church.

In Congress, Representative Gohmert serves on the House Judiciary Committee and the subcommittee on Crime, Terrorism and Homeland Security. He refers to himself as “a no nonsense” sort of guy.

I take a deep breath, shake my head, and wonder how Texas can keep producing such characters – guys with such spectacularly stupid ideas. It is because of guys like Gohmert that I am so nervous about ever visiting Texas. However, when you think about it, there are probably plenty of Texans who say the same thing about Congresswoman Michele Bachmann and Minnesota. And, I must admit, they have a point! For, you see, Gohmert and Bachmann make quite a pair

As a cute aside, Gohmert plays on the red-uniformed Republican congressional baseball team as – you got it – a right fielder. It takes this assignment very seriously. During one game he tore his ACL in a collision with the Democratic Party’s catcher as he tried to reach home and score.

Get this!
Gohmert actually wants to make the following a rule of Congress: No Republican can vote for a congressional bill that has not received the support of a majority of the Republican Congressional Caucus. I mean it! He said it! Now, how is that for not voting your own conscience? Don’t we have enough problems getting things passed in Congress already? It’s crazy! Not for Gohmert.

Yet, the very same man has been heard to say: “If you ever stand alone and make people mad like I have, you have tremendous respect for people who do that?”

Err! What? Put together, the last two paragraphs don’t make sense!

Obama influenced by Muslim Brotherhood!
On April 25 of this year, the Huffington Post published a quotation from Gohmert that knocked the socks off a lot of folks [you can see the video of the statement here]: “This administration has so many Muslim Brotherhood members, uhh, that have influence that they just are making wrong decisions for America.”

Oh, my! This guy was an appeals court judge in Texas! Wouldn’t you just love having him decide a case you’ve brought to the court? Honest to God! (I mean it!)

Gun Control and Bestiality
Representative Gohmert actually (I mean – actually) linked gun control to bestiality. Recently he was speaking on the limit of gun magazines and blurted out…

“And I point out, well, once you make it 10, then why would you draw the line at 10? What’s wrong with 9? Or 11? And the problem is once you draw that limit – it’s kind of like marriage when you say it’s not a man and a woman anymore, then why not have three men and one woman, or four women and one man, or why not somebody who has a love for an animal?... There is no clear place to draw the line once you eliminate the traditional marriage, and it’s the same once you start putting limits on what guns can be used, then it’s just really easy to have laws that make them all illegal.”

And I’ve been running around saying that Michele Bachmann is the craziest member of the U.S. Congress. Sorry, Ms. Bachmann! I really am! You’re now the second craziest.

The parking ticket flap!
A month or so ago, Representative Gohmert got a parking ticket for leaving his car in a spot reserved for National Park Service vehicles only! He became extremely upset about the ticket and went off on a rude rant. There’s actually a chance that Gohmert was improperly ticketed on that occasion (afterall, he’s a member of House Natural Resources Committee that oversees the parks), but displaying his temper and insulting park services employees just wasn’t the kind of thing a normal person does. It’s more like what Michele Bachmann would do!

With one more week of bombing, we could have won in Vietnam!
Really! He said it! A real student of history and war is this Gohmert character. With this one he wins the prize for being loonier than Michele Bachmann. OMG! With only one more week of bombing runs, Gohmert insisted, the Viet Cong would have been brought to its knees and would have surrendered. As one who stood four-square against that war and marched the streets in protest against it, I’m insulted and shocked!

I could go on and on… really! Gohmert thinks more guns, and not less, might really be the answer. He also thinks we may need our guns some day to fight off Sharia law from taking over America. He thinks the nation could be coming to the end of its existence because of its move away from biblical teachings. It’s one of the “main” reasons for the recent spate of public shootings, he says.

How do such fools get elected to the U.S. Congress?
I can’t blame it on Texans! We’ve done the same thing here in Minnesota! I can’t figure it out. Voters can’t be that crazy! It must be the comedy they love.


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