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The 2012 GOP Clown Car occupants, who have been pandering to the max to Republican Base of the teabaggers, fundies, nativists, and general fringe bigots during this primary rush, may want to hear what usual nutjob fringe evangelical Pat said on The 700 Club. It’s hard to believe he’d make this observation on the air. (via HuffPo and People for the American Way’s Right Wing Watch 
Robertson quoted Lyndon Johnson: “Don’t these people realize that if they push me over to an extreme position, I’ll lose the election?”
The notoriously controversial Christian figure mentioned that if candidates venture into heavily radical territory, it could cost Republicans the general election.
“Those people in the Republican primary have got to lay off of this stuff,” he exclaimed. “If they want to lose, this is the game for losers.”
4 Comments
Well, if there’s anyone who knows how to run a losing campaign, it’s Pat.
Seriously, he doesn’t object to the extremism in and of itself. He’s only concerned that no extremist will cover his extremism well enough to get elected. Anyone with any political sense knows that being too extreme during primary season will hurt you in the general election. I guess we’re just lucky Pat didn’t figure it out when he was running, himself.
What Pat is really objecting to is that they’ll make their extremism known to the public. As Qscribe notes above, he doesn’t object to the extremism, only it’s dissemination.
When the far right wingnuts are telling you to rein in the crazy, you know you have jumped the rails.
While I wouldn’t have expected Pat Robertson to lead the charge, I’ve been wondering when the wingnut Right was going to start dealing explicitly with an Internet, cell-phone camera, and twitter world – there used to be a time when they could do the two-tier public face, being explicitly discriminatory and prejudiced and religionist in “private” with only the subtlest of dogwhistles in the more traditional media, but those days are gone, especially with LGBT issues, when since we are in everyone’s families, you never know who is going to publish your BS that you thought was safely among the fold.