House Republicans are spending the day working on the most restrictive anti-abortion bill considered in Congress in a decade — for no apparent reason. Is there anything else GOP lawmakers can do to derail their flailing “rebranding” campaign? How about some birther nonsense?
As my friend Kyle Mantyla at Right Wing Watch reported yesterday, Rep. Jeff Duncan (R-S.C.) was a guest on Rick Wiles’ unhinged radio show the other day to discuss some of the major issues of the day, including the host’s fears that immigration reform may lead the government to implant biometric scanners in U.S. citizens. Wiles specifically asked Duncan whether lawmakers might “pursue Barack Obama’s phony identification papers.”
Duncan initially tied to laugh it off, saying that people should have voted against Obama during the last election but Wiles refused to let it go, saying “if we know they are lying about all these other things, why not go back and say ‘well, maybe the first scandal was a lie too?’”
And with that point, Duncan wholeheartedly agreed, saying “there you go; I’m all with you, so let’s go back and revisit some of these things because Americans have questions about not only the IRS scandal but also about the president’s validity.”
I’d really hoped we were past this.
What’s more, Duncan is on quite a roll lately, isn’t he? The right-wing South Carolinian is feeding conspiracy theories about the IRS and firearms; he believes conspiracy theories involving the Census Bureau; and he pushed Glenn Beck’s conspiracy theories surrounding the Boston Marathon Bombing in April. As Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-Minn.) gets ready to leave Congress at the end of this term, can there be any doubt that Jeff Duncan is prepared to replace her as Capitol Hill’s nuttiest conspiracy theorist? Also note, the House Republican leadership made this guy the chairman of the House Homeland Security oversight panel, so he’s not just some random crank shouting ridiculous things into the ether. Duncan has important responsibilities, which makes his bizarre rants all the more alarming.
Steve Benen is a producer for "The Rachel Maddow Show," the editor of MaddowBlog and an MS NOW political contributor. He's also the bestselling author of "Ministry of Truth: Democracy, Reality, and the Republicans' War on the Recent Past." Recommended
