CRAZY LIKE A FOXX…. I’ve been pondering this, and I’m still not sure what she’s talking about.
Rep. Virginia Foxx (R-NC) says political rhetoric doesn’t really incite violent behavior at all — but not before describing Arizona shooting suspect Jared Loughner as a “communist” and “the liberal of liberals.”
“This guy appears to be a communist,” Foxx told the Winston-Salem Journal. “His beliefs are the liberal of the liberals [sic]. There is no evidence whatsoever that this man was influenced by Sarah Palin or anybody in the Republican Party. This man is not a conservative; he’s a fan of communism — that’s the opposite of conservatism.”
As we’ve noted this week, trying to pin Loughner down on a traditional left-right ideological spectrum is a fool’s errand, and Foxx’s comments are ridiculous on their face. (The message apparently went out to the right to characterize the madman as a communist because of his list of favorite books. The list included Karl Marx — and Ayn Rand.)
But putting all of that aside, can someone translate “liberal of the liberals”?
Also, if you’re not familiar with Foxx, Alan Pyke noted yesterday that this is the same member of Congress who has “called health care reform legislation a greater threat than any terrorist in the world, and claimed that senior citizens would be ‘put to death’ under Democratic reforms,” among other things.
What’s she up to in the 112th Congress? The new House Republican majority has put her in charge of the committee that oversees higher education and lifelong learning in the United States.
The jokes write themselves.
