Some of the crazy things we heard from the right this year defy categorization. So let’s just call these examples “potluck nuttery.” Click here to read more quotes from the right in 2014.
“The best gun lubricant around.”
— U.S. Rep. Steve Stockman, R-Texas, saying he uses “liberal tears” to lubricate his gun. Stockman is leaving Congress after losing a race against Sen. John Cornyn in this year’s Republican primary.
“God wrote the 1st Castle Doctrine in Exodus 22:2. It says if a thief breaks into your home & you kill him you are not guilty. In 2007 we passed the Castle Doctrine (I was a Joint Author). Last Session I added you car so that ALL that applies to your home applies in your car too. This was the topic of my “God & Government Moment” in our Sunday School class. Next Sunday we will have another ‘God & Government’ moment!”
— Texas state Rep. Debbie Riddle, R-Tomball, explaining her role in passing castle doctrine legislation in 2007.
“I’ve been a right-wing extremist and proud of it for a long time.”
— Former state Rep. Wayne Christian, speaking at an appearance in the Rio Grande Valley during his failed race for the Texas Railroad Commission.
“We don’t want to motivate her voters. What we want them to think is ‘There’s no reason. She doesn’t have an opponent. I don’t need to go to the polls. I’ll go spend my food stamp money at the grocery store, or whatever, you know, on Election Day.'”
– Ron Natinsky, Republican candidate for Dallas County Judge, speaking in a video in which he voices his hope for keeping voters represented by Democratic Congresswoman Eddie Bernice Johnson from voting.
“My gosh, I’m beginning to think that there’s more freedom in North Korea sometimes than there is in the United States.”
— Former Arkansas governor and Republican presidential candidate Mike Huckabee, making a favorite — and ridiculous — right-wing “argument” that freedom is under attack by the Obama administration.
“I am standing up against [the federal government’s] bad and unconstitutional laws, just like Rosa Parks did when she refused to sit in the back of the bus.”
— Nevada rancher Cliven Bundy, who says the federal government is limiting his freedom by forcing him to pay for grazing his livestock on public lands, attempting to explain his much-publicized remarks about African Americans somehow being better off during slavery than they are today.
“Any growing interest in soccer can only be a sign of the nation’s moral decay.”
– Ann Coulter, because crazy.
“You need to get somebody with you who understands the spiritual dimension and doing spiritual warfare. If I were you, I would look back in your family. What in your family — do you have anybody involved in the occult, somebody in witchcraft or tarot cards or psychic things?”
– Televangelist Pat Robertson, telling a mother that she could cure her son’s stomach pains by finding someone to cast out demons that were possibly caused by an ancestor who practiced witchcraft.
“I think that’s why the left wants to run a female, be it a Hillary Clinton or an Elizabeth Warren, because if you don’t stand up for them then you’re a sexist and a misogynist, and then they’ll run Julián Castro as the first Hispanic president because then you’re a xenophobe, who knows, it just goes on ad nauseum ad infinitum.”
– Republican former congressman Allen West from an speaking in a radio interview.
“We were getting over two inches of rain an hour in parts of Virginia this morning. Now it’s a nice sunny day. But this is a very poor turnout. It ain’t no millions. And it ain’t looking like there’s going to be millions. Hundreds is more like it.”
— Jackie Milton, head of the Texas group of Operation American Spring, talking about the pitiful turnout for a much-hyped rally that organizers claimed would bring 10-30 million “patriots” to Washington D.C. to overthrow the “elected Republican and Democrat usurpers and despots.”
