NC07: GOP-T Candidate Who Shot Two Unarmed Iraqis Likely to Be Elected to Congress

art-nymag-pantanoThe atmosphere around the 2010 midterm elections has been as charged with the potential for violence as any since the Vietnam era, at least. The poisoning of the political environment began last summer when cable news ran video of tea baggers throwing tantrums over the president’s birth certificate and similar issues at congressional town hall meetings. A little later, gun nuts made a show of loitering around presidential event venues carrying loaded rifles and handguns.

During the primaries, Nevada tea bagger U.S. Senate candidate Sharron Angle treasonously threatened “Second Amendment remedies” — in other words, armed insurrection against the United States — if the elections don’t go her way. Just last week, Rev. Stephen Broden, a tea bagger candidate for Congress in Texas’ 30th District proclaimed that armed revolution against the U.S. government was “not off the table,” if tea baggers fail to win control of Congress next Tuesday.

In just the past two weeks, there have been two incidents of tea bagger thugs threatening and even assaulting liberals at rallies and one instance of hired private security goons “arresting” a reporter for demanding answers from a Senate candidate about his record.

Now it appears that voters in two House districts are prepared to elect tea bagger candidates who are war criminals — literally.

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FL22: Tea Party’s Allen West Once Said GOP Was Corrupt, Now Schmoozes with Boehner, Takes Bucks from Bailed-Out Corporations, Lobbyists

West
West
One of the oddest aspects of the 2010 midterms is how swing and right-leaning independent voters seem to be so willing to overlook troubling character flaws in fringe candidates, as long as the candidates repeat the tea party’s false narratives about bailouts, the Stimulus and the size of government.

There is no better example of this in the House races than in Florida’s 22nd District where voters appear set to replace Democratic Rep. Ron Klein with Allen West, a former U.S. Army Lieutenant Colonel who was relieved of command in Iraq and forced to retire after he pleaded guilty to assaulting a policeman in his custody.

“Frustration and anger overcame his professional ethics and personal values, and he performed what he knew to be illegal and immoral acts,” according to a statement issued by the Army’s Fourth Infantry Division. In other words, he popped off under pressure and tortured a prisoner — just the personality type we need in Congress.

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FL22: Civil Rights Icon John Lewis Calls African-American Tea Bagger Allen West ‘Scary, Frightening’

This man [Allen West]. Scary. Frightening. We wouldn’t have a Civil Rights Act. I saw those signs that said, “White Man,” “Colored Man,” “White Woman,” “Colored Woman.” Now we have someone who happens to be African American saying that black people, people of color, African Americans, were better off before the Civil Rights Act. You have a man who represents our dark past. He wants to take us back but we’re not going back. Run, crawl, make it to that ballot box and vote for Ron.

Civil rights icon Rep. John Lewis, D-Ga, campaigning for Ron Klein.

FL22: Allen West Says He Wants to Desegregate the GOP – But Has He Okayed That with the Republican Racist Base?

The first black members of the House and the Senate after during the Reconstruction period were Republicans and we’ve got to reconnect the Republican party back to the black community. Because on Sunday the most conservative people in the United States of America sit in black churches.

Allen West, an African-American tea bagger running against Democratic Rep. Ron Klein in Florida’s 22nd House District. who is apparently oblivious to the fact that the Republican base is seething with hatred toward African Americans.

I don’t care to belong to a club that accepts people like me as members.

– Groucho Marx