Crazy Stuff Republicans Do Volume 3: FL through IN

This is the third part in a series that can go on until the November midterm elections on the ridiculous, flawed, unethical, foolish or flat-out insane things that Republican Senate candidates have said, done or proposed doing.  Obviously a few have gotten top attention this cycle (we all know that Rand Paul is not too keen on civil rights and that Sharron Angle thinks rape is a questionable at best reason for having an abortion) but I want to go alphabetically through the list of states that have a Senate race this Fall and find at least one reason to not allow the Republican anywhere near the upper house.  Today I’m going from Florida to Indiana

Florida: After driving the popular Republican governor and anointed candidate from the race with a primary from the far right, Marco Rubio now finds himself in a three way race with that same governor (now an independent) and a rising Democratic candidate, Kendrick Meek.  His policies read like a half hour of Fox “News,” but that’s something you can easily find for yourself.  What is far more interesting is the persuasive argument that he provides in support of his plans.  In this ad Rubio argues that his policies are right, because Rachel Maddow thinks they’re wrong.  Oh, I get it, an idea must be good if someone with whom I disagree thinks it’s bad.  Let’s try this out: I think we should institute a mandatory ban on wearing sweater vests with a penalty of being strung up by the ankles and hit repeatedly in the face with rotten tomatoes.  Does Rachel Maddow agree?  Probably not.  I hope Congress can take time out of passing pointless legislation like Wall Street regulation and Healthcare Reform to pass the American Sweater Vest Tomatoing Act.  Let’s take this a bit further; if we can support or condemn a policy based on who supports it, let’s take a look at who supports Marco Rubio, as expressed by his own website.  The Club for Growth, Jeb Bush, Rick Santorum, Dick Cheney, Mitt Romeny, Steve Forbes, Mike Pence, Paul Ryan, James Inhofe and Eric Cantor all have endorsements on his site.  It’s like a list of comic-book super villains; Marco Rubio, brought to you by the Legion of Doom.

Illinois: Mark Kirk says he’s running for Senate.  I don’t know about that, but he definitely is running for something… or from something I’m not really sure.  After giving a speech at an election event, Kirk realized he had somewhere really important to be, an appointment or something, and he left.  He left without answering questions, literally running from the reporters who were shouting questions after him, getting into a car and speeding off.  Maybe I’m being too harsh, after all it’s very possible that unbeknownst to us, while he was apparently running from reporters, he was actually trying to get to an airport to stop a plane, carrying his life-long friend that he has always secretly loved, from flying one-way to Paris.  Or maybe one of the reporters was actually a robot assassin sent back in time to stop Mark Kirk from being elected so he couldn’t lead the resistance against the inevitable robot uprising.  Or maybe he just doesn’t care if the people know who he is, he just wants to be elected.  I suppose we’ll never know.

Indiana: Dan Coats says on his website ”In the face of an economic crisis rivaling the worst our country has ever seen, they [Democrats] thought it was best to use their majorities in the Senate and House to peddle their failed deficit-inflating, budget-busting, tax-raising policies.”  In other words, “That other party had the audacity to take the majorities given to them by the American people through a regularly scheduled, democratic election and enact the legislative priorities they ran on.  Not only that, but they tried to rescue the economy using basic aggregate demand economic principles taught to every college freshman who takes ECON 101.”  (I know that last part, as I was only recently a college freshman taking introductory economics courses.)  Write this down, when GDP and employment are falling due to a decline in aggregate demand, the common and widely accepted method of stimulating growth is through government spending and tax cuts.  In other words the government must run a budget deficit to make up for what consumers aren’t buying.  This isn’t a revolutionary notion, so any time you hear someone talking about austerity in recessions, know that they are trying very hard to do exactly what any ECON major’s notebook will say not to do right next to that doodle of all those interlocking triangles and below the coffee stain.  This is obviously oversimplified, but people much smarter than me agree.  On the topic of those darn tax raising Democrats, taxes have gone down under Obama.  Let me say that again in simpler terms: TAXES DOWN!  Whether you like it or not, they have declined and that is a matter of fact, not of political opinion.  I realize that this piece on Indiana has been less witty and humorous than my usual super awesome sarcasm so here’s a video of a dancing banana to make up for it.  Hurray for teh youtubez.

These are fun, so you probably won’t have to wait long for the next post.