As if it weren’t enough that members of the Republican Party spent much of President Obama’s first term accusing him of being a crypto-Manchurian Candidate who was born in Kenya, one GOP congressman is floating a new conspiracy theory: Obama only helped oust former Libyan leader Muammar Qaddafi so al-Qaeda could take over.
Appearing on Frank Gaffney’s anti-Muslim radio show, Rep. Louie Gohmert (R-TX) launched into a lengthy tirade criticizing the Obama administration’s decision to provide air support in the international campaign against Qaddafi last year. Rather than acknowledging that Obama launched the mission to stave off a looming massacre in Misrata, the Texas Republican saw a hidden, pernicious reason for the intervention. “This administration sent planes and bombs and support to oust Qaddafi so that al-Qaeda and the Muslim Brotherhood could take over Libya,” said Gohmert.
I’d award the always clownish Gohmert the title of “Congress’s Dumbest Man” if the competition were slightly less fierce. He’s not a shoe-in for the title, but he’s definitely the frontrunner.
And Louie’s value is mostly instructive; he’s got the brain of a talk radio host. He thinks he doesn’t have to prove anything and that whatever crazy-assed conspiracy happens to meander into his otherwise vacant skull was arrived at through unassailable logic. He’s delusional not only in his beliefs, but in that value of those beliefs as arguments. Like a talk radio host, he looks at every issue and asks himself, “How can this confirm my most basic fears and biases?” and confuses that process with reasoning. Actual logic is a foreign concept to him and evidence is what the foolishly incautious wait for before leaping to action (see Bush, George W.).
This is the right. This is how they think. If you doubt that, then explain how this obviously low-wattage bulb continues to be reelected.
