CONGRESSIONAL CRAZIES…. Sen. Jim Inhofe (R) of Oklahoma sure is nutty. Last month, he raised the specter of a “revolution.” This month, he’s just making stuff up.
[Inhofe is] alarmed, he said, by the proposed closing of the detention camp at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. The Obama administration wants to shutter the camp because of its association with torture.
Inhofe said: “There has never been a case of torture there. The people there are treated better than in the federal prisons.”
He continued, “I don’t know why President Obama is obsessed with turning terrorists loose in America.”
The administration says it wants to bring 60 to 80 prisoners to the U.S. for trial. Some Republicans have said those acquitted could be released in the U.S., but authorities say they would be deported as foreign nationals.
Inhofe’s third concern, he said, is that “Barack Obama is disarming America.” He conceded that Obama requested more military spending, but he criticized the elimination of several weapons systems, including the F-22 fighter.
Just to briefly offer a little fact-checking of America’s worst senator, Inhofe is wrong about torture at Gitmo, wrong about turning terrorists loose, and wrong about the F-22.
Matt Finkelstein added, “This kind of fear-mongering, of course, is nothing new for the right wing, but that doesn’t make it any less despicable.”
Or any less common. One of Inhofe’s House counterparts, Rep. Paul Broun, an unhinged Republican from Georgia, continues to talk about the likelihood of an Obama dictatorship.
U.S. Rep. Paul Broun is again raising the specter of Democrats turning the United States into a totalitarian state. […]
He told a meeting of the Morgan County Republicans on Wednesday night that Obama already has or will have the three things he needs to make himself a dictator: a national police force, gun control and control over the press.
“He has the three things that are necessary to establish an authoritarian government,” Broun said. “And so we need to be ever-vigilant, because freedom is precious.”
So is sanity.
I continue to think crazed remarks like these from Broun and Inhofe sound a lot like the kind of things one might say if he were trying to drive already-angry conservatives over the edge. These two see a simmering right-wing fire, and they’re reaching for the kerosene.
“I have given up hope for a loyal opposition. I’d settle for a sane one.”
