AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite, File
After the 1928 Republican National Convention opened with a prayer, Will Rogers said, “If the Lord can see His way clear to bless the Republican Party the way it’s been carrying on, then the rest of us ought to get it without even asking.”
And since 1928, the GOP has only gotten worse.
The Party of Hoover, Nixon and George W. Bush had been hurtling itself toward absurdity for decades, and then came the 2008 election — when all you had to do to mock the party’s vice-presdential nominee was quote her verbatim. We were sure that the GOP had reached Peak Derp with Sarah Palin, but the 2012 GOP primary was a Lollapalooza of self-parody that ended with the party nominating the guy who created Obamacare.
I’ve decided that I have to do something to help my friends on the right, so they can stop parodying themselves and leave it to the 99 percent.
I’m going to steal a tactic from the NRA, a group that has kept an iron grip on the testes of new gun safety legislation by handing out grades to members of Congress based on their votes. From time to time, I will be grading Republicans based on how unintentionally hilarious they are.
Key factors that will influence my grading include a willingness to accept email forwards as fact, an ability to compare anything or anyone with Hitler, and a complete disregard for science.
Here are my first three grades.
1. Paul Broun (R-GA): A+
The congressman from Georgia’s 10th district wants to be the next senator from Georgia, but he’s currently afraid that Obamacare may turn him into a woman. He’s called evolution “a lie from the pit of hell” and seems to live his life trying to prove that he has not evolved in any way whatsoever.
2. Dana Rohrabacher (R-CA): A+
This House member from California is a surfing conservative who is backing the legalization of marijuana. But he won his A+ by using his time in a hearing on climate change to suggest that global warming is the result of dinosaur farts. He’s also the only member of the House Foreign Affairs Committee who has been barred from entering Afghanistan.
3. Steve Stockman (R-TX)
Stockman has stepped up his hilarity recently, especially via his Twitter account. I suspect that he was jealous of the attention his fellow member of the Texas congressional delegation, Louie Gohmert (an A-), has gotten for comparing nearly everything President Obama wants to do with bestiality. Stockman recently tweeted a bumper sticker that said, “If babies had guns they wouldn’t be aborted.” (In Stockman’s Texas, a baby is more likely to have a gun than health care, thanks to Republicans.) It’s judgment like this that has led Stockman to make some choices that might show up if he had to get a firearms background check.
Photo: Gage Skidmore via Flickr.com
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You’ll notice that Michele Bachmann (R-MN) — who is representing House Republicans at Margaret Thatcher’s funeral — didn’t make the list. She’s been downgraded to a B+ after viewing this video and news of possible corruption charges based on her failed 2012 campaign for president. It’s getting a little sad.
So who else deserves an A+? Tell us in the comments section.
