8 worst right-wing moments of the week -- Ted Cruz is as xenophobic as the Donald

The Texas senator agrees with Trump's assessment of Mexicans, while Pat Buchanan is ready to secede from the union

Published July 13, 2015 3:40PM (EDT)

  (AP/Nati Harnik)
(AP/Nati Harnik)

This article originally appeared on AlterNet.

AlterNet 1. Marco Rubio vows to oppress women worldwide

Marco Rubio will not rest until women all over the world no longer have the right to choose abortion.  As president, he would see to it that women in other countries were just as oppressed and pregnant as the ones right here at home.

He made this vow during a speech before the National Right to Life Committee’s annual convention in New Orleans on Friday. He even compared the fight against abortion rights to the fights to end slavery and for women’s suffrage.

This is some seriously messed up thinking, which Rubio nonetheless seems to fervently believe in.

During his speech, Rubio called the historic Roe v. Wade decision “historically and egregiously flawed.” He did not explain that one, but with this crowd, he did not have to.

He talked about how the current occupant of the White House has sought to expand women’s right to choose (and access to birth control), which is just awful. He hoped the crowd would help send him to the White House so he can reverse any progress that might have been made under said occcupant.

Finally he commended the crowd for fighting the most important battle in the whole wide world: to deprive women of this measure of control over their reproductive life.

2. Oklahoma Gov. Mary Fallin desperately needs a good civics review course

Oklahoma’s arch-conservative Gov. Mary Fallin has a peculiar point of view on court rulings. She only seems to think they should be followed when she personally agrees with them.

Fallin was very upset when the Oklahoma supreme court ordered that a Ten Commandments monument standing on the state’s capital grounds be removed, as it violated that pesky separation of church and state rule that pretty much is what America is based on.

Her response was to say she wasn’t going to remove it because she doesn’t want to.

So there, state Supreme Court.

She elaborated on some of her deep thought process on KFOR:

“You know, there are three branches of our government. You have the Supreme Court, the legislative branch and the people, the people and their ability to vote,” she said. “So I’m hoping that we can address this issue in the legislative session and let the people of Oklahoma decide.”

Sorry, we’re going to have to take some points off there. The third branch of government is actually the executive, which would be her. And much as she would like it to be so, she is not “the people.”

And the way laws get enacted goes like this:  the legislature writes them; she can pass them, and the court gets to rule on whether they are constitutional or not. Which is what they did.

Let this be a lesson to you. Stay in school, kids!

3. Dumbest man in Congress compares himself to Galileo.

Louie Gohmert has picked up on the absurd right-wing trope that people who oppose the science of climate change are somehow like Galileo. This has caught on in idiot circles especially now that the Pope has endorsed the notion that man-made climate change is something we have a moral imperative to address.

Republicans don’t mind when religious leaders suggest things like oppressing homosexuality, or not letting women choose when to have babies, but suggesting that it might be a good idea to listen to the actual scientists about science is somehow medieval in their confused little minds.

The loony tea partier from Texas thinks the Pope has been hoodwinked (again, by science):

“The trouble is that [the pope] has been persuaded that climate change is something that is dramatically affecting the planet right now, he’s bought in to all this,” Gohmert said on C-Span. “We have had popes that made enormous mistakes that were influenced by the world around them.”

Yeah, why can’t he just be a good Pope and be influenced by the lunatics in Congress?

But that was not the high point of the Gohmert absurdity:

“Since when does science not allow opposing viewpoints? Well, they didn’t allow Galileo to make an opposing viewpoint, there were a lot of accurate opposing viewpoints that were not allowed at the time that were later allowed to come in.”

Hoo boy. Should someone break it to Gohmert that Galileo was a scientist?

4. Jeb Bush is just as much of a clueless dolt as his older brother

The Florida frontrunner had a great idea for America this week. More work People should work longer hours, he innocently suggested. That will grow the economy, and when the economy grows, it's good for everyone, especially rich people like Bush.

Bush immediately claimed his comment was taken out of context and misunderstood. He didn’t mean it like it sounded. Here it is, in context, and what it sounded like:

“My aspiration for the country and I believe we can achieve it, is 4 percent growth as far as the eye can see. Which means we have to be a lot more productive, workforce participation has to rise from its all-time modern lows. It means that people need to work longer hours and, through their productivity, gain more income for their families. That's the only way we're going to get out of this rut that we're in.”

Okay Americans working a couple of jobs, being paid minimum wage and still not able to get by? Work more. Work will set you free.

5. Duck Dynasty star says atheists don’t exist because they use calendars.

The Duck Dynasty clan has more than one philosopher as it turns out. Si Robertson uttered this bit of head-scratching about atheists not existing, but hear him out. This is not just random, illogical nonsense. It’s deep tissue nonsense.

Everyone uses calendars, right? And so do atheists. But calendars, or at least year numbers, are based on Jesus Christ. Hence, atheists believe in Jesus Christ.  Case closed.

“There’s a lot of skeptics,” Robertson recently said to the Christian Post. “I don’t believe there’s such a thing as an atheist. Because there’s too much documentation. Our calendars are based on Jesus Christ . . . . Whether you believe in him or not, every time you write down the day’s date you’re saying he’s here.”

Now, who’s going to tell all the atheists that Robertson does not believe in them?

6. Pat Buchanan warns of Civil War, informs us that his heart has already “seceded” from the rest of the country

People on the right are very very confused about the meaning of civil rights. You could even say, they have it completely ass-backwards. And so it was that caveman-era conservative Pat Buchanan suggested that recent court decisions in favor of same-sex marriage and against letting a Ten Commandments monument stand on state capital grounds would inspire a “rebellion” similar to the Civil Rights Movement, but this time arising "from the right."

He then frothed his latest column at WorldNetDaily, that the rebellion would be comparable to the revolutionary war in throwing off the shackles of unjust laws.

The latter day Martin Luther King, Jr. said it is a moral obligation to "fight unjust laws."

This is a mighty confused, fevered mind at work. Then he backed away from the whole war, civil rights struggle metaphor and suggested he'd just like a divorce.

“A secession of the heart has already taken place in America," he handwringingly assessed. "A secession, not of states, but of people from one another, caused by divisions on social, moral, cultural and political views and values, is taking place.”

Stop, Uncle Pat. You're breaking our hearts.

7. Rush Limbaugh calls Pope Francis a “clown” for criticizing unfettered capitalism

Rush Limbaugh was driven nearly round the bend by the Pope's criticisms of capitalism this week. "Have you heard about the Pope?" he sputtered. "Pope Francis is in Bolivia, and he’s come out with another of his anti-capitalism remarks. The Pople, Il Papa, the vicar of Christ said that unfettered capitalism is the devil’s dung."

Oh man, that stings. Devil's dung is a phrase Limbaugh wish he had thought of.

"Now in the first place, would someone find for me somewhere where there is unfettered capitalism taking place," Limbaugh continued. "You can’t because there isn’t. The United States doesn’t even have half-baked capitalism going on. But unfettered! What is unfettered? Have you ever heard of unfettered socialism? Communism? It’s just more bastardization of language to criticize the greatest economic system ever invented."

Amen, bro.

"The closest we’ve come to having the capitalism that the Pope and these other clowns are talking about was with Reagan, and look what happened."

Saint Ronnie. Take that, you Pope!

8. Ted Cruz is proud to stand with Donald Trump on anti-Mexican immigrant remarks.

While some of the other GOP hopefuls sought to distance themselves from Donald Trump’s remarks calling Mexican immigrants “rapists” and other kinds of criminals, not our boy Ted Cruz. He knows where his anti-immigrant bread is buttered.

“I am proud to stand with Donald Trump,” Cruz said.

After all, Trumps poll numbers have soared since he said that. What the base seems to like even more than immigrant-bashing is that the billionaire adamantly refuses to apologize, and really just does not understand what all the fuss is about.


By Janet Allon

MORE FROM Janet Allon


Related Topics ------------------------------------------

Alternet Civil War Donald Trump Marco Rubio Pat Buchanan Ted Cruz