COMMENTARY | Barney Frank announced a few weeks ago that he would not be seeking reelection in his home district in Massachusetts in 2012, ending a 32-year congressional career. But it hasn't stopped him from being as outspoken as ever. In an appearance on MSNBC Monday evening, Frank told Lawrence O'Donnell that the Republican candidates were making statements as if they were "kings" and that the GOP had moved further to the right. He also jokingly implied that voters in 2012 should vote for Democrats because Republicans were "nuts."
After telling O'Donnell that the Republican race thus far had been "entertaining," he suggested that the Democratic slogan for 2012 should be: "We're not perfect, but they're nuts."
Given Frank's moderate to liberal views, there is reason to believe that he was only partially joking. The GOP candidates have been only too willing to build a foundation for the argument that they're slightly eccentric, deranged, or mentally imbalanced.
Take, for instance, presidential hopeful and former Pennsylvania senator Rick Santorum's insistence that abortions were responsible for less money being taken in by the Social Security Administration and causing the prognosticated upcoming crisis of a broke system.
Then there are the multiple statements from Rep. Michele Bachmann about gays, including that homosexuals were "part of Satan" (as reported in the Daily Mail). CNN reported that she told an audience member at one of her rallies in Iowa that the landmark Kinsey Report was unfounded, agreeing with her husband's remark that the findings were a "myth." She also once stated before Congress (captured on C-SPAN) that there was no scientific evidence that carbon dioxide was a harmful gas.
Texas governor Rick Perry made headlines -- a spawned a viral video, like that posted by the Associated Press -- with his reply to a child's question about evolution that it was a theory that was "out there." The fact is, it is a proven theory (as opposed to the creationism he said was taught in Texas public schools -- but is not).
Former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich also has sounded off on odd beliefs, such as the time when he told a group of evangelicals in San Antonio, according to Politico, that he feared his grandchildren would one day live in "a secular atheist country, potentially one dominated by radical Islamists and with no understanding of what it once meant to be an American." Secular atheist and Muslim? As strange as that sounds, what about the grandchildren so easily reconditioned to forget that the "American way of life?"
Although these statements and positions are not indicative of Republicans as a collective and do not reflect upon candidates in the 2012 Republican nomination race as a whole, they should give voters pause -- especially with regard to future elections where these presidential contenders might compete. That is, unless voters choose to believe that it is outgoing Rep. Barney Frank who is "nuts" and that statements such as those made by several of the presidential candidates are reasonable.
Because, as is so much in the realm of politics, labeling persons, positions, and issues as "nuts" is most assuredly relative...
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