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Seems to be catching on: after Todd Akin’s defiance of official GOP disapproval of his “politically incorrect” utterances about rape and abortion, a candidate for a highly visible position in another battleground state has wandered off the reservation, too:
In the face of criticism from both New Hampshire Democrats and high-ranking members of his own party, Republican candidate for Hillsborough County Sheriff Frank Szabo is not backing off his comments that deadly force is an appropriate means to prevent abortion.
“Just because a law is on the books does not mean that it’s lawful,” said Szabo. “I talk about the difference of ‘legal’ and ‘lawful.’ It used to be legal to own slaves, but that didn’t make it lawful. It used to be legal to restrict someone of color to the back of bus … Just because a piece of legislation says it’s legal to murder the unborn doesn’t make it lawful.”
Szabo contends it’s the responsibility of the sheriff to protect the lives, property and citizens of the country and the state.
“The big issue here is the sheriff is supposed to protect all of its citizens,” he said. “Just because a person is not born yet doesn’t mean he or she shouldn’t have same level of protection. Someone needs to stand up and tell federal and state officials they’re wrong if it’s in the best interest of citizens … but my main point is deadly force is always a last resort.”
Szabo’s entirely logical position is that if you believe, as is national GOP doctrine, that a zygote is metaphysically equivalent to a full-grown human being, then they ought to be protected by law, just as Todd Akin is entirely logical in saying “rape” exceptions make no sense if you believe what most Republicans (including the national party platform and the two people on the national ticket) say they believe. To conclude otherwise is to embrace the “moral relativism” that has all but destroyed the world by most conservative reckonings.
This pattern of horrifically impolitic but logical conclusions from widely shared conservative premises extends beyond the abortion issue. Along with Szabo in the news yesterday was Lubbock, Texas state judge (actually more of an executive than a judicial position; he’s equivalent to a county commission chairman) Tom Head, who is calling for a property tax increase to provide for the defense of his county given the strong possibility of a post-election invasion of Texas by United Nation troops mustered by a vengeful Barack Obama aiming to snuff out the Lone Star State’s “sovereignty.”
You can laugh, or object that I’m picking out random crazy people and blaming the GOP for them. But in Head’s case as with the abortion “extremists,” he’s following to a logical conclusion a premise widely considered respectable in mainstream GOP circles. The “Agenda 21” conspiracy theory that “liberals” are preparing a U.N. takeover of the United States in order to crush property rights may have begun with the John Birch Society, but it’s spread like wildfire through state and local GOP platforms. Conservative movement hero and GOP Senate nominee Ted Cruz of Head’s own state is one of many prominent enthusiasts for the idea that Agenda 21 is a threat to our liberties.
My aim here isn’t to identify the national Republican Party or the conservative movement with the exact utterances of its zaniest members, but simply to say that they can’t encourage or embrace extremist premises and then reject as alien entirely plausible applications of these premises just because they sound crazy to swing voters. If you want to marginalize pols like Todd Akin, don’t keep saying you are absolutely certain that as a matter of divine, natural and constitutional law, human life begins at conception. If you don’t want to get blamed for Tom Head, stop acting as though private property rights came down from Mount Sinai, and cool your jets a bit about American Exceptionalism.
The GOP and the conservative movement have gotten a lot of benefits from encouraging extremism in their ranks in recent years. People are more willing to make donations, prepare campaign literature, and harangue their neighbors if they think liberals are deliberate baby-killers and traitors. Leaders of the “respectable” Right have fed and turned loose a tiger, and they’re going to have to ride it for a while unless they are willing to cage it once and for all. Washington Examiner columnist Phillip Klein may think the effort to suppress Todd Akin is a “watershed” moment in which conservatives have finally learned not to reflexively defend everyone criticized by their partisan enemies. But it would be a vastly more important moment if conservatives began to accept responsibility for the extremism they have worked so hard to encourage.
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Josef K on August 23, 2012 9:21 AM:
You can laugh, or object that I’m picking out random crazy people and blaming the GOP for them.
I'm doing neither. These three are just the ones who happen to be in the news today. I don't doubt there are thousands more like them saying the same thing daily.
This is not going to end well, for them or the rest of us.
schtick on August 23, 2012 9:22 AM:
That's the tealiban for you. Making government smaller so they can crawl up your uterus for an ultrasound.
Bo on August 23, 2012 9:23 AM:
Shorter version -- The GOP isn't shit . . . but it is the "lightning rod" for shit.
Peter C on August 23, 2012 9:35 AM:
"the “moral relativism” that has all but destroyed the world by most conservative reckonings"
In my opinion, what has come closer to 'all but destroying the world' looks much more like 'conservative reckonings' - just sayin'. "drill baby, drill!"
Ron Byers on August 23, 2012 9:40 AM:
I think we really need to take a hard look at the religious aspect of modern conservatism. Much of what conservatives believe seems to be based on religious absolutism that fundamentalist political religious leaders like Todd Akin are taught from a very early age. The kind of world view that they teach the faithful every Sunday.
Often when well intentioned fundamentalists (most pro-livers for example) bump up against reality true evil is the result.
Peter C on August 23, 2012 9:43 AM:
A bit more about Head in Lubbock: He wants a tax increase (of about $830,000) so he can pay his 'sherrifs' more (at least the ones who are as gung-ho about fighting the incoming UN hoarde as he) so he'll be prepared for that 'worst case' (Obama winning the Presidency and the democrats keeping control of the Senate). He's making decisions about how to spend PUBLIC FUNDS based upon his delusions, and he want to increase taxes so he can give these funds to the cronies in his posse.
He is also in charge of mental competency hearings in Lubbock, by the way.
Jeffrey Mitchell on August 23, 2012 9:45 AM:
The most glaring refusal of right-to-lifers to confront the implications of their beliefs seems to be almost completely ignored. If an unborn child is a human being, then abortion is murder, at least in most cases. Shouldn’t murderers be harshly punished? And shouldn’t women who participate in abortions be considered murderers? After all, they have initiated and abetted terrible crimes. Are these women not, as human beings, fully responsible for their acts?
Many, many millions of women have had abortions in the past—and many millions more will in the future, whether or not abortion is legal. Shouldn’t these wicked women—baby-killers that they are—be put away for life?
The opponents of abortion never answer such questions—not least because the questions are too seldom asked. They should be asked again and again.
Josef K on August 23, 2012 9:48 AM:
But it would be a vastly more important moment if conservatives began to accept responsibility for the extremism they have worked so hard to encourage.
Its important for the country and society that this happen, I agree.
But it won't because it wouldn't be in the interests of movement Conservatives to disengage themselves from the activists. Unsurprisingly, the Movement's interests and the country's diverge rather sharply there.
Mad_nVt on August 23, 2012 9:48 AM:
In 2011 Ryan co-sponsored the Sanctity of Human Life Act, which includes "life of each human being begins with fertilization, cloning, or its functional equivalent"
Okay, since that little speckly zygote would then be a full-fledged under-dresssed Constitutional human being then one sure can't kill that human being. In Ryan-world that means no abortions, no way, no exceptions. Simple.
So Romney/Ryan/Republicans are more than riding the tiger. They are riding the wind, and it's gonna be a long hard fall. Well-deserved fall from grace.
"Zygotes rule !!" Maybe not.
DRF on August 23, 2012 10:02 AM:
Szabo sounds as though he's part of the posse comitatus movement, which believes that the Federal Government is illegitimate and that authority rests with county sheriffs. Let's hope that the attention being given to this nutcase will result in his resounding defeat at the polls.
Anonymous on August 23, 2012 10:07 AM:
"Respectable right"?
The mistake here is in thinking there's some hierarchy that's rational and not really as looney and dangerous as these supposedly isolated crazies.
These guys are being called out by the "leadership" not because they've left the reservation, but because the "leadership" hasn't given the official start signal yet.
Given the legislative efforts going on in numerous states regarding "personhood" for fetuses, Szabo's just (accurately I think) stating what's going to happen once those efforts succeed.
Seriously, the real danger here is in thinking that the "leadership" isn't already locked in to the ideas expressed by Akin, Szabo, Head, et. al.
It's not some grand scheme of extremism manipulation being perpetrated by leadership for fundraising and voting benefits - it's what they believe.
DisgustedWithItAll on August 23, 2012 10:07 AM:
Well, is this anything new?
For some, the definition of "lawful" concerns only what is right and just, not what is on the books as legislation, which is what the word "legal" refers to.
So the ridiculous sheriff thinks his job is to uphold what is right and just and not what are the laws he is sworn to uphold. There's a problem here: what he thinks is right and just are subjective. And his job is to uphold the laws as written, not to uphold his sense of right and wrong.
For me, this is just another complete FAIL, and MUCH, MUCH worse that their utterly ridiculous assumption of the personhood of a zygote. In fact, we are supposed to be a nation of laws, not of men. The ridiculous sheriff wants to be a nations of men.
c u n d gulag on August 23, 2012 10:09 AM:
“Moral relativism” isn't the problem.
The problem is the "Manichean Religious Absolutist" response to it.
Relativism is incremental change forward.
Religious absolutism wants drastic moves backwards.
As long as Republicans are the "Party of Faith," they will act crazy because they will have to continue to cower to this base that Goldwater rejected, but Reagan invited.
And now, they run the Republican Party.
I think it's a very perilous time for the Republican powers-that-be.
They'll start to lose more and more elections.
The Republcans have no choice right not, because their base has decided that the door to the 'ladies' is worth closing, because they've chosen to keep open the one with the 'tiger.'
Snarki,child of Loki on August 23, 2012 10:09 AM:
Jeffrey Mitchell: "Shouldn’t murderers be harshly punished? And shouldn’t women who participate in abortions be considered murderers?"
Someone who hires a hit-man is at least as culpable as the hit-man.
Taken to it's horrible, logical, conclusion, it means the death penalty for women that have abortions.
But if the Talibangelicals say that out loud, their masses of followers will be horrified and desert them.
For most of those followers, the basic motivation is "abortion is icky. Icky things should be illegal." They don't think through the consequences.
jjm on August 23, 2012 10:16 AM:
Who would want to invade Lubbock? It was the home of Buddy Holley and Terry Allen (album: "Lubbock on Everything"), and it houses the Charles Sanders Peirce archive, but ... what else?
David Martin on August 23, 2012 10:23 AM:
We're seeing Republican notions that pregnancies shouldn't be terminated for, say, down syndrome, but the children will have to get by in an environment of, as Washington Monthly notes today, social darwinism.
esaud on August 23, 2012 10:28 AM:
You have to go back to Barry Goldwater's time to find any real distance between mainstream Republicans and the various John Bircher or religious nutters.
Richard Nixon crossed the line of decency with his odious Southern Strategy, and the party never looked back. In other countries, the main conservative parties don't include their nutters, generally in various splinter parties.
I have been wondering for years now how this will all play out. The party now is completely off the rails (the last wheel to come off was when the party handed foreign policy over to all of those crazy neocons).
Unless the Republican party looses hugely (which I don't think will happen, given 2010's comeback) my guess is that the whole country will be down the tubes in a few years.
c u n d gulag on August 23, 2012 10:29 AM:
Northeast Elizabeth,
Let's compromise.
YOU believe the Clinton story, and I'll believe the one about Ronald Reaga -, when Selene Walters later described what what happens between them as "date rape."
SELENE WALTERS: "THE BATTLE OF THE COUCH"
Reagan met starlet Selene Walters in a Hollywood nightclub in the cart) 1950s. Although I was on a date," she quotes Walters as saying, "Ronnie kept whispering in my ear,'I'd like to call you. How can I get in touch with you?' " Hoping that Reagan, then president of the Screen Actors Guild, could boost her career, Walters gave him her address and was surprised when he came calling at 3 A.M. "He pushed his way inside and said he just had to see me. He forced me on the couch...and said,'Let's just get to know each other.' It was the most pitched battle I've ever had, and suddenly in a matter of seconds I lost.... They call it date rape today...."
Here's the link:
http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/chatterbox/1999/03/gipper_the_ripper.html
I need to caution you before you read it, though:
It might change your opinion of Reagan - if you're capable of changing your mind, that is (which I doubt).
Or "was she just another lying slut...?"
There were other rumors along the same lines about Ronnie before he met Nancy.
Still want to play?
Gandalf on August 23, 2012 10:31 AM:
To Northeast Elizebeth-I accuse you of taking money for sex since you were twelve years old. Does that make you a prostitute? Now this may be hard for you to understand but just accusing someone of anything doesn't mean that it actually happened the way an accuser says.
LAC on August 23, 2012 10:33 AM:
oh, northeast elizabeth - I had to read the wikipedia link on Broaddrick...
you're kidding, right?
Peter on August 23, 2012 10:34 AM:
Szabo's entirely logical position is that if you believe, as is national GOP doctrine, that a zygote is metaphysically equivalent to a full-grown human being, then they ought to be protected by law...
I would disagree. This is logical only if you assume that the woman does not have rights as well, that have to be balanced against the rights of the zygote. His assumption is that the rights of a zygote will always outweigh the rights of a woman. But she has a right not to have her body used by another being without her consent.
Without the right to an abortion, her right to her own body simply does not exist. The zygote has, for the sake of argument, a right to remain alive, but not to remain alive at her expense, without her consent.
You could make an argument that the right to remain alive does outweigh the right not to have your body commandeered by another, but it brings up two implications. The first is that none of us have a right to our own bodies (which would, for example, make non-consensual organ harvesting moral), which they don't want to support. The other is that women are a form of life inferior to zygotes (and certainly to men), which is something they don't want to admit believing.
Peter C on August 23, 2012 10:37 AM:
"My aim here isn’t to identify the national Republican Party or the conservative movement with the exact utterances of its zaniest members"
WHY NOT??? The conservative movement in the Republican Party has been expelling its 'sane' members in favor of these idiots all over the country. They don't want Mike Castle in Deleware - they want Christine O'Donnell. They don't want Lisa Murkowski in Alaska - they want Joe Miller. They don't keep Michelle Bachmann or Steve King in check. They don't quietly tell Jim Imhofe that he's nuts and he should take a remedial science course. They quietly cheer, instead.
It is time to stop pretending that the nuts in the Republican party are 'outliers'. They are not. They are in charge. That's why Bohner can't control the Republican House caucus.
And, the supposedly 'sane' ones (the mainstream Republicans in the Bush Administration) weren't much better; they believed that they 'created' reality with their wizardry and scoffed at the rest of us in the 'reality-based' community. They were the ones who 'knew' that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction. They were the ones who said (in 2000) that our biggest fiscal problem was that the national debt might 'go away' (creating a financial crisis because there would be no more 'riskless rate' when the Treasury department stopped issuing T-bills). They were the ones who were sure that cutting taxes would increase revenues.
The loony bin has been the Republican's 'minor league team' for decades now. They've pumped these idiots up through the ranks (electing them as dog-catcher, then drain commissioner, then county clerk, then state senator, then House member, etc.). They don't choose people for their 'competence'; they choose them for their 'true belief'. However, when they run for high office, they've occupied position of responsibility and thus have credibility.
Now, the whole party has no grounding in reality; they only have unshakeable and dogmatic dedication to a conservative ideology absolutely untempered by any degree of practicality.
Despite all the evidence, they believe their dogma will work, and they are doubling down.
The Republican Party is no longer a club of kindly old grandpas who want things to 'stay the same' but will work for the common good. They are a bunch of wild-eyed zealots who have shunted Grandpa to the back seat (or left him at the last rest stop) and who are going to test their theory that a car can fly if only they drive it fast enough. They have 'faith' that it will work, and 'faith' is something they've been encouraged to hold despite all the promptings of reality.
rrk1 on August 23, 2012 10:54 AM:
There are several issues involved here, and none should be taken lightly.
Those who can't make a distinction between what is law, and what is moral, one being written with obvious intents and the other being a personal subjective judgment based on complex cultural influences, shouldn't be in positions where they confuse and conflate the two.
Increasingly, exactly those exact individuals who should not have power over others are seeking and getting positions from which they can impose their own (usually narrow, bigoted, and political/religion-based views) of morality on the rest of us.
The partisan divide in this country has been growing by the day, and the threats of violence from the right if they don't get their way are becoming more bellicose and frequent. Will we know when we've hit the point of no return? Will there be uprisings in places like Lubbock, Texas if Obama is reelected, however unlikely, instigated by the ignorant, racist, fanatics increasingly occupying seats of power?
Where will the first stoning of a woman who had an abortion be? No matter, it will be televised live in 3-D.
Peter C on August 23, 2012 10:55 AM:
Frank Szabo isn't just some Repubican who wants a desk job in State Government. He's a guy with wacky ideas about deadly force who WANTS TO BE ENTRUSTED WITH THE LEGAL, OFFICIAL USE OF DEADLY FORCE!
We entrust sherrifs with guns and the discretion to use them in our names. They, as much as any government official, had better have a clear understanding of their limits and not feel empowered to act on their own questionable ideas of the difference between 'legal' and 'lawful'!
This is the person that the Republican Party has decided is the best to person for this job. I think that casts legitimate doubt on the whole party and their trustworthiness.
Mimikatz on August 23, 2012 10:59 AM:
I disagree with Anonymous at 10:07. The GOP leaders like Mitch McConnell and Karl Rove don't believe anything but power for themselves and more money for the rich. They are traditionalists about social issues to some extent, although their antipathy to gays may be vastly overstated. But as for the religious stuff? It is a means of social control, as it has Been since Constantine.
There is, however, a fairly large element in our society that is unhinged by the social and economic changes of the last 60 years that have left them in a less privileged position than they expected. The shift from civil rights as an organizing issue to abortion in the post-Roe v. Wade years was thoroughly documented in Max Blumenthal's book "Republican Gommorah: Inside the Movement that Destroyed the Party" (I think that's the name) and involves an appeal to somewhat marginal personalities who are becoming increasingly unhinged. The GOP fundamentally has no interest in solving any ifnthe problems at leave these folks so vulnerable, be it increased economic inequality or more mental health services, because they need the troops to fight their battles. Yes, it is all looking a little out of control now, but win or lose this election, I don't think it is going away. Only time and an economic recovery will change that.
Gandalf on August 23, 2012 11:00 AM:
NE Elizebeth could you step out of your bubble for a couple seconds? No one here accused Juanita of being a lying slut or of sanctioning rape. What are you a one celled organism?
Shane Taylor on August 23, 2012 11:09 AM:
"they can’t encourage or embrace extremist premises and then reject as alien entirely plausible applications of these premises just because they sound crazy"
Exactly, and the same is true for Occupy's anarchists. Leszek Kolakowski's indictment of Marxism is better known than his case against anarchist revolutionaries, but the latter is more relevant today:
http://pl.indymedia.org/pl/2010/12/52790.shtml
Like Todd Akin's position on rape and abortion, the link between revolutionary anarchism and terrorism follows as neatly from absurd premises.
c u n d gulag on August 23, 2012 11:10 AM:
Gandalf,
Don't insult one-celled organisms.
They actually do some good on this planet.
She's nothing but a flesh-coated recorder-player, replaying FOX and Rush's greatest hits.
And anyone noticed ho NE Elizabeth ignored my response which had an accusation of her beloved St. Ronnie committing date rape?
She pays attention to one accustion, while patently ignoring another accusation.
Hmmm...
I wonder why?
Don't answer that!
c u n d gulag on August 23, 2012 11:26 AM:
NE,
What about Ronald Reagan raping a woman?
Doesn't THAT count?
Is it ok because since it was Reagan, it was "legitimate" rape?
Please respond, lest I think you're a coward on top of being a moron.
MattT on August 23, 2012 11:54 AM:
It's good to see events and commentary casting light on the twisted logic that follows from the assumption that human life begins at conception. The next step is to present an alternative and more rational assumption in simple terms, eg: a fertilized egg or zygote or embryo simply is not a human being, no more than an acorn "is" an oak tree.
SecularAnimist on August 23, 2012 12:10 PM:
Ed Kilgore wrote: "Szabo’s entirely logical position ..."
Huh?
Szabo's position that there is a difference between "legal" and "lawful" is "logical" if words have no meaning.
Szabo is just babbling nonsense.
LAC on August 23, 2012 12:39 PM:
"Seriously, the ladeez are not going to like this . . . ROFLMAO!!!!"
With that sentence, you pretty much confirmed why no one should take your dumbass seriously. Seriously, teh wingnut fatheads come out of teh woodwork - LOL!! LMAO!! WTF!!! BFF!! Totes!!
idiot...
Old Uncle Dave on August 23, 2012 12:45 PM:
“Just because a law is on the books does not mean that it’s lawful,” said Szabo.
Prohibition of cannabis, for example.
POed Lib on August 23, 2012 12:45 PM:
Juannita Broaddrick was and is a lying slut. And Clinton is very popular with the ladies and the gents. He made a mistake, and paid a heavy price.
jsjiowa on August 23, 2012 2:36 PM:
I never personally cared for William F. Buckley or some of the issue positions he took, but he did succeed in drawing a line against the Birchers and Ayn Rand, and keeping them out of the establishment GOP for a time. (now of course, the Birchers co-sponsor CPAC, and a national candidate for VP believes in Rand...). I don't know who, if anyone, has the ability to get the party under control and weed out the fringes. I also wonder if they have the proper motivation. As their demographic base shrinks, they need every vote they can get, and loonies count as much as anyone else at the ballot box. I don't even think electoral defeat because of the loonies is enough to make them change, however.
Josef K on August 23, 2012 3:29 PM:
I was prepared to try arguing with Northeast Elizabeth concerning Clinton's speech, but frankly its not worth the time. NE has made their stance clear, other have done the same, and honestly I'm not even sure what the point of it was.
Has anyone thought about the ultimate conclusion of Szabo's reasoning? If the law is not absolute, and the only arbiter of what is/isn't "lawful" is one's own decision, then literally nothing is prohibited and everything is permissible. Including murder.
I wonder how long Szabo himself, never mind the rest of us, would last in such an environment?
stratplayer on August 23, 2012 4:32 PM:
If it's going to happen, the Republican establishment is going to have to summon the courage to face losing a whole lot of elections until they can form a more reasonable coalition. I'm afraid it's probably already too late, however.