Dumbing Down The Congress
The alt-right news site Breitbart.com has denounced Speaker Paul Ryan (R-IL) as a secret Hillary Clinton agent for not doing enough to support Donald Trump's presidential campaign and wants to see him dumped.
This column suggested that if the far right Freedom Caucus in the House GOP caucus get their way, Trump might consider going after Ryan's job if he loses the White House and the alt-right succeeds in dumping the Speaker. But if Trump turns down the speakership, Breitbart, whose former chief is CEO of the Trump campaign has a candidate to replace Ryan: Rep. Louis Gohmert (R-TX)
Gohmert has been called America's Dumbest Congressman, and with good reason.
That may have had something to do with his accusing U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder of having "cast aspersions on my asparagus" and Gohmert's opposition to a 2009 hate crimes bill because, in his warped view, it would legalize pedophilia, necrophilia and bestiality while ushering in Nazism.
He has said President Barack Obama can't "stand Israel" and "gets along fine" only with "self-loathing" Jews, something likely to add to Jewish discomfort with an increasingly radical GOP.
That was in the spring when he six-term Texas congressman was supporting Ted Cruz for president against Trump. He told Breitbart that Trump's proposal to broker a peace deal between Israel and the Palestinians is tantamount to saying “okay, you get to kill half of the Jews. You go ahead and wipe half of Israel off the map”
"If Donald Trump really understood both sides he would understand what the Palestinians are saying. They’ve never backed off. There’s no negotiating people want to kill all Jews," Gohmert said.
Gohmert charged the Obama administration "will not protect Christians [but] puts a real prize on protecting Muslims." He said Obamacare has “been used as a government tool to go after Christians and those whose religious beliefs are different from the president’s.”
Gohmert in February phoned into Glenn Beck's radio program to beg listeners to send him campaign donations to help fight accusations that he's a "clown" and embarrassment to Texas.
He is a successor to Sen. William Scott (R-VA), who was called the dumbest member of Congress in a 1974 survey of Congressional staffers published in New Times magazine. He held a press conference to deny the charge and threatened to sue for libel, but he quickly dropped that idea, explaining, "I don't want to bring a suit and not win."
Guilty as charged.
The same survey voted Sen. Jacob Javits (R-NY) the brightest. Successor to that title should be Sen. Paul Sarbanes (D-MD), who retired in 2007.
Gohmert said he opponent "is a self-funder and his motto is, 'Congress is a circus and Gohmert's the biggest clown and he's an embarrassment.'" Gohmert protested that "if people say that enough, then it's possible some seeds could stick and start growing."
So why does he keep spreading so much fertilizer on those seeds?