All Purpose News and Politics Thread Part IV: The Center Cannot Hold

[worstblogever]

On this date in 2014, "Crazy/Stupid Republican of the Day" published our profile of former 2014 Illinois gubernatorial candidate Susan Atanus, the former candidate for U.S. Congress to represent Illinois’ 9th District who believes that God created things like tornadoes and autism to punish us for abortions and tolerance of gays. Oh, and if we don’t stop same-sex marriage, there’s going to be an AIDS epidemic that will weaken our military. She was insane enough that the Illinois GOP scrambled to get her off the ballot for a Congressional run even though she won the 2014 primary, and she fought tooth and nail to stay on and lose by over 30 points against Jan Schakowsky.


In 2015, 2016, 2017, as well as 2018, “Crazy/Stupid Republican of the Day" profiled Andy Holt, a member of the Tennessee House of Representatives who popped up in the 2010 Tea Party Wave, and back in July of 2015, bent over backwards to try to do a rewrite of history to defend the honor of Confederate General Nathan Bedford Forrest, aka the first Grand Wizard of the Ku Klux Klan (who even prior to leading the KKK, was accused of war crimes after the war for massacring African Americans as they attempted to surrender). Taking a look at Holt’s voting record, his affection for the Confederacy still carries over into at least his support of nullification measures, stricter Voter ID laws, and his support to keep Confederate landmarks intact with their original names. Holt also supported the Tennessee GOP’s attempt to pass the obviously unconstitutional law to declare the Bible the state book, and has voted for measures to try and get Bible studies taught in schools. Our discussion still went farther, though, in our research, we also noted that Holt also referred to the footage recorded by undercover police officers trying to bust a sex trafficking ring as “tape and rape”, which is decidedly large lack of tact. Holt, as we have noticed that he is becoming more and more of a fan of guns, if that were at all possible. While there’s nothing stopping any candidate for office from having one of those controversial giveaways of an AR-15 at one of their political rallies, as he now has done, but he’s also looking to offer free gun permits to attendees whenever possible. Man, next thing you know, Andy Holt’s going to have his own loyal army of supporters in Tennessee armed to the teeth. Is there any cause to be concerned as to why a guy who has praised the founder of the KKK and likes voting for the kinds of nullification bills that started the Civil War would do something like that?

Well, not for nothing, but while Ammon Bundy and his militia cronies decided to occupy the Malheur Wildlife Refuge in Oregon, Andy Holt’s name popped up in the media, as he posted on Twitter an offer to send them support on January 4th, 2016. So we’re seeing that he now might be building his own militia, after previously allying himself with a group of domestic terrorists with vacuous plans to have an insurrection against the federal government. This is exactly the sort of behavior you don’t want to see from an elected official… right? It’s not like he’s calling on people to ignore the government or anything… oh. Oh wait. He did that too. Yes, Andy Holt recorded a video of himself burning up traffic citations he had received, and encouraged others to do the same.

Holt also has accrued a number of speeding tickets in double digits, that he doesn’t want to pay the fines on. Ten of those traffic-cam tickets are in one town alone. And it wouldn’t be a conflict of interests if he got the law overturned so he didn’t have to pay the fines, right?

And, Andy Holt has taken up the standard, level-headed crusade of trying to better censor Tennessee lottery commercials, apparently unhappy with the theme that people might get lucky if they play, and there’s no hope so quit giving that to the poor. And, when one of those lottos was Christmas-themed, Holt literally invoked the, “quit ruining Jesus’ birthday” argument. (We’re not joking.)

So it should also come as no surprise that as much of the country responded to events in Charlottesville by making the decision to push ahead and remove Confederate monuments. And Holt, unable to just accept that the city of Memphis decided to remove statues to men he holds in such regard for having fought for their right to keep slaves, needed himself a scalp to even out the imaginary racist scoreboard. He settled for voting to pull $250,000 from the budget for Memphis’ bicentennial celebration, and was one of the most vocal proponents of the bill.

You might think that Andy Holt is out on the fringe, but through most of 2018, he was considering a run for U.S. Senate to challenge Bob Corker. Once Corker retired, though, all the sharks in the GOP smelled the blood in the water, and a bigger fish named Marsha Blackburn came in and scared Holt off. He won re-election to another term in the state legislature with 72% of the vote in 2018.

He has returned to the realm of controversy almost immediately, attacking fellow Republican Jay Bush for, quite effectively, “not liking Donald Trump enough”, and harassing his colleague on Twitter by posting bizarre photos of him surrounded by hot dogs and cats, with a set of horns made of hot dogs. Because that’s normal to do that to anyone, especially people in your own party. Which, of course, means he’s infinitely s***tier to his Democratic colleagues, as exhibited back in April of 2019 when during a debate about legalizing online gambling (he seriously hates gambling with the passion of a thousand suns), Holt began comparing gambling addiction to… what else… SLAVERY. And the person he was lecturing across the aisle was, of course, African American.

We’ll continue monitoring Andy Holt, because not a year goes by where he doesn’t say something offensive.