"We're Electing Idiots," Part Deux

If "electing serious people can't be partisan," how do you explain Bat Boy...er, Sen. Rick Scott?

You can’t fix stupid.

• Ron White

In our previous edition of “We’re Electing Idiots,” former Congresswoman Liz Cheney (R-WY) opined that “electing serious people can’t be partisan.” And she’s right. What she didn’t account for is the fact that her party isn’t at all concerned about electing serious people. If they were, they wouldn’t be running intellectual and moral nonentities like Rick Scott and getting them elected to the Senate.

Not to be mean, but Rick Scott would lose a debate with a chipmunk. He possesses the ethics of a snake and the complete absence of a moral center…which makes him a perfect Republican Senator. I listened to the Senator’s video twice…and still couldn’t get over my “WTF?” shock. A U.S. Senator is warning those who believe in communism or socialism from traveling or moving to Floriduh. I first wondered what he thinks gives him the right to dictate to someone who thinks differently where they may or may not go.

This is the sort of thing straight out of the Red Scare from the 1950s. Here we are, seven decades later, and Sen. Scott is trying to engage in the same pathetic fear-mongering that people like Sen. Joe McCarthy did back in the day.

The sort of “full-frontal fascism laced with bigotry” that Sen. Scott is selling is typical of the ignorant and arrogant Republican batshittery that got him elected in the first place. Republicans know that the average Fox News-addicted American will swallow just about anything awful said about Democrats. They’re conditioned to believe that Democrats are the Spawn of Satan Incarnate, so Rick Scott bringing up socialists and communists seems like a natural progression.

How long before he’s recommending that Democrats avoid Floriduh because Floridians don’t cotton to American-hating pussified Democrats? Stay tuned.

"These people are clowns," wrote Brian Klaas, an Associate Professor in Global Politics at University College London. "Every aspect of modern Republican politics is geared toward performative pandering to the extremist base. The idea that a senior US politician would take the time to record a video telling 'communists' not to vacation in Florida…is just absurd."

David Simon, the creator of the acclaimed television series "The Wire," had a comical warning of his own for Scott to stay out of his hometown of Baltimore.

"I'm warning you not to set foot in Baltimore, where when we get the scent of a... submoronic demagogue, we cease all intramural violence and converge in socialist frenzy on the f---er, capture him, then sell him off in parts to pay for our crack vials and Utz crab chips," he wrote.

And while you’re at it, you might also want to avoid setting foot here in Portland, where when we get the scent of a Trumper, we’re likely to chop them up for one of our iconic smashburgers. What’s left over we put into our quadruple-hopped IPAs.

If there’s anything left over, we’ll sell it to Seattle for their clam chowder.

Seriously, though, this whole thing is rather silly and more than a wee bit offensive, though not particularly surprising. Sen. Scott is not the sharpest tool in the shed, so it’s not shocking that he issued the sort of warning he did, but invoking McCarthyism? That’s not even original, and he’s about seven decades late.

Besides, who worries about socialists and communists these days?

This sort of performative dickishness is the sort of thing that lead people like me to believe that Republicans aren’t serious people. How could they be when they're falling back on invoking some crazy red scare straight out of the 1950s?

I do think, though, that referring to Sen. Scott as a “submoronic demagogue” sounds about right. His pandering to the lowest common denominator leaves nothing to the imagination- he’s trying to gin up faux outrage over something that has nothing to do with anything. But Sen. Scott knows there are enough poorly educated knuckle-dragging Trumpbots willing to believe the worst about Democrats, so calling them socialists and communists is hardly beyond the pale for him.

Sure, the good, God-fearing White Conservative Christian heterosexual patriots in the Sunshine State may know that communism "isn't good for anyone.” They may even believe that “we like freedom, liberty, capitalism, things like that.” But that’s like saying that REAL Americans like baseball, hot dogs, and apple pie- it doesn’t mean much of anything. Who doesn’t like freedom, liberty, and capitalism?

I don’t expect much from Sen. Scott. After all, the man barely has two functional brain cells to rub together. That said, I don’t think expecting him to refrain from red-baiting and cheap insults is too much. No, he doesn’t have to like Democrats, but comparing them to communists and socialists seems childish. Especially when he probably couldn’t define either if you held a gun to his head.

The sort of rampant ignorance and Republican batshittery that Sen. Rick Scott is attempting to sell to the American public is pretty absurd. No rational person should take his rantings at face value. He does make great fodder for late-night comedians, though.

If he has ideas that he believes to be superior to Democratic plans or proposals, he should let us hear them. So far, though, I’ve not heard anything from Sen. Scott that comes close to meeting that standard. The best he’s done is to kibbitz and whine and refer to Democrats as “communists” and “socialists.”

I don’t know about you, but that’s a sad and pathetic attempt at sparking a political debate.

This is why we can’t have nice things.