The Southern Poverty Law Center, a stalwart in the fight against discrimination and hate, has compiled a scary list of the extremists appearing on election ballots this fall.
Most, though not all, are Republicans. They include an anti-gay extremist who won a Democratic primary in Tennessee for U.S. Senate to face overwhelming favorite GOP Sen. Bob Corker.
The scary thing is that several of these candidates will win. For example, Tea Party Republican Ted Cruz of Texas, who "claims that the U.N.’s 1992 non-binding resolution and general guidelines for sustainability and ending poverty is a plot led by liberal billionaire George Soros to “abolish” unsustainable environments, including golf courses and grazing pastures."
And, of course, there's incumbent Republican Rep. Loy Mauch of Bismarck, who's long been in the sights of the SPLC. It noted, among others, that he's known for "a series of extreme pro-Confederate statements over the years, many published as letters to the editor of the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette. He has repeatedly excoriated Abraham Lincoln ('this Northern neurotic war criminal'), comparing him and Northern Civil War generals to 'Wehrmacht leaders.' He defends the Confederacy, saying that the Confederate battle flag is 'a symbol of Christian liberty.' In 2010, Mauch claimed that the 14th Amendment — which granted citizenship to all persons born or naturalized in the U.S., notably including the freed slaves — was never legally ratified and is 'essentially a Karl Marx concept.' In 2009, repeating a point he first made in 2003, Mauch asked in one letter to the editor of the Arkansas paper, 'If slavery were so God-awful, why didn’t Jesus or Paul condemn it, why was it in the Constitution and why wasn’t there a war before 1861?'"
The problem, of course, is that publicizing these views might help Mauch in a state where the enmity against the black president runs so deep. It is a feeling the Republican Party hopes to capitalize on, again, by re-electing Mauch and many fellow travelers. You haven't heard a Republican leader urging a vote against Mauch, have you?