STOP GATHERING YOUR ARMIES…. GOP primary runoffs in Alabama don’t usually generate national attention, but we don’t often see unhinged, borderline delusional, congressional candidates like Rick Barber.
Would his extremism, oblique references to violence, and enthusiastic support from the Tea Party “movement” propel him to Washington? Not so much.
A mainstream Republican rolled past a tea party activist Tuesday in the GOP runoff for a southeast Alabama congressional seat that Republicans hope to reclaim.
Montgomery City Councilwoman Martha Roby was drawing 60 percent in the unofficial count in the 2nd Congressional District GOP runoff Tuesday against Rick Barber, a former Marine who operates a Montgomery pool hall that hosts tea party meetings.
Barber first came to national prominence with the release of a bizarre video in which the agitated conservative had an imaginary “conversation” with some Founding Fathers, suggested that the president should be impeached, and came pretty close to calling for a violent uprising against the United States government. The ad included an actor playing George Washington concluding, “Gather your armies.
Two weeks ago, he released a sequel — a “conversation” with Abraham Lincoln that equated American tax policies with “slavery” and showed viewers images of Nazi concentration camps.
As his notoriety grew, Barber wrote a Washington Post op-ed, insisting that the Obama administration supports “totalitarianism,” suggesting that Americans may yet become “slaves” to their government, and warning that we may well be on “the road to serfdom.”
Tea Partiers loved it. Republican primary voters in Alabama’s 2nd didn’t.
