Paul Broun is the perfect embodiment of the right-wing backlash that has greeted Barack Obama's presidency
Except that the gala was held to celebrate the notorious, conspiracy-minded right-wing political group the John Birch Society, the band of Commie hunters made famous in the early 1960s, who’d seemingly vanished, only to burst back onto into the newly mainstreamed paranoid fringe within months after the election of Barack Obama as president. Rather than back away from its divisive views -- most notably that popular U.S. president and World War II hero Dwight Eisenhower was somehow an agent of international Communism -- the Birchers were doubling down in the age of Obama, still maintaining that a planet-wide conspiracy hatched some 200 years ago by the ultra-secret Illuminati in search of a so-called "New World Order" continues to flourish today.
The rise of cable TV-friendly-but-governing-averse pols like Broun and Bachmann has become a hallmark of the backlash against the Obama presidency. After the GOP lost control of the government over the second half of the 2000s, the party’s direction and indeed its very life force has been seized by a new breed of political huckster -- who saw that the paranoia and anger of the extreme political right is the only thing passing for a pulse in the modern conservative movement these days (my em). This cynical ambition of high-ranking elected officials not to tamp down the paranoid style but to adopt its latest fashions was a successful strategy ... for the politicians who might have been unknown back-benchers if they had acted more responsibly. Their mainstreaming of the political fringes made them into darlings of cable television and helped ensure reelection within their deep-red conservative districts.
A family doctor who treated Jimmy Carter’s relatives in South Georgia for a number of years, Broun declared bankruptcy in the early 1980s. A federal judge ruled -- according to news accounts in Athens -- that Broun "falsified financial documents in an effort to obtain a loan and misrepresented his assets and debts during bankruptcy proceedings" and ordered him to pay nearly $70,000 to an Americus bank. According to a bankruptcy complaint, the young family doctor "has a reputation of having an extravagant lifestyle evidenced by the acquisition of a number of expensive rare hunting books, expensive rare ceramic items related to hunting, safari to Africa, expensive gun collection and the acquisition of the very best in everything purchased." He had to pay more than $61,000 in back taxes to the IRS, and one of his ex-wives even took him to court for alimony and child support. There was a time when that kind of résumé would have sunk a would-be politician, but the 21st century has proven to be remarkably kind to past sinners who adopt the language of 12-step recovery -- just ask Glenn Beck how that works -- and even awards bonus points when Christianity is involved.
Another dry drunk like Bush, and a Tali-born again phony christian who can't handle his money or his life and is against taxes because the IRS caught him and made him pay. Another miserably failed human being who turned to right-wing politics.
There are more of these on the way this November unless WE sober up.
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