David Corn interviews Bob Inglis, a Republican S. Carolina Rep. who was primaried out by teabaggers because he was deemed insufficiently crazy. How crazy is sufficiently crazy these days? Inglis related a story about meeting with "about a dozen tea party activists" at his home and found out that "crazy enough means" this crazy:I sat down, and they said on the back of your Social Security card, there's a number. That number indicates the bank that bought you when you were born based on a projection of your life's earnings, and you are collateral. We are all collateral for the banks. I have this look like, "What the heck are you talking about?" I'm trying to hide that look and look clueless. I figured clueless was better than argumentative. So they said, "You don't know this?! You are a member of Congress, and you don't know this?!" And I said, "Please forgive me. I'm just ignorant of these things." And then of course, it turned into something about the Federal Reserve and the Bilderbergers and all that stuff. And now you have the feeling of anti-Semitism here coming in, mixing in. Wow.
This particular paranoid conspiracy fantasy is a new one on me. Who makes these things up and why don't they think there are enough of them?
But what's really terrifying is the news that John Boehner knows how lunatic these people are (and, really, he'd have to), but that he doesn't care.
The week after [a meeting with past] funders -- whom he failed to bring back into the fold -- Inglis asked House Republican leader John Boehner what he would have told this group of Obama-bashers. Inglis recalls what happened:[Boehner] said, "I would have told them that it's not quite that bad. We disagree with him on the issues." I said, "Hold on Boehner, that doesn't work. Let me tell you, I tried that and it did not work." I said [to Boehner], "If you're going to lead these people and the fearful stampede to the cliff that they're heading to, you have to turn around and say over your shoulder, 'Hey, you don't know the half of it.'"
In other words, feed and fuel the anger and paranoia of the right.
Corn reports that Inglis worries this "a poisonous, tea party-driven 'demagoguery'" will "undermine the GOP's long-term credibility." Here's hoping it puts a dent in their short-term credibility as well.
