Pat Carlson, president of the radical-right group Texas Eagle Forum, has filed to run for the District 91 seat in the Texas House of Representatives. The Fort Worth Republican used TEF’s e-newsletter Monday to announce her run for the open seat. (Republican incumbent Kevin Hancock is seeking a state Senate seat.) Carlson told TEF activists:
“I am seeking this position to be a ‘citizen legislator’ going to Austin to hold back the overreach of government.”
“Overreach”? Well, considering her own fringe political views, Carlson should know the meaning of that word.
She claims, for example, that mainstream organizations like the Sierra Club, Environmental Defense Fund and the World Wildlife Federation are actually “radical environmental groups” that have “have brainwashed a generation of young people into believing the planet is in environmental distress.” (Yeah, never mind massive oil spills that pollute our water and beaches, smog that chokes cities and their residents, chemical and nuclear calamities, increasingly erratic climate patterns, and… well, you get the point. Carlson thinks concerns over those very real challenges are simply products of “brainwashing.”)
She also peddles anti-Muslim hysteria, ranting that mosques are centers of subversion in America and that “Sharia law is becoming part of the American landscape as Christianity is being systematically removed.”
After the 2010 elections, she was part of an unsuccessful right-wing effort to replace Republican state Rep. Joe Straus of San Antonio as speaker of the Texas House. Carlson — a strident opponent of sex education — circulated the claim that Straus wants Planned Parenthood to “control” sex education in Texas public schools, which PolitiFact rated as a “pants on fire” lie.
Other right-wing attacks on Straus, who is Jewish, included calls for the election of a “Christian conservative” speaker. We’ll give Carlson some credit for not going quite that far. But just last month, Carlson suggested that a Republican member of the State Board of Education couldn’t be a “true conservative” because he’s gay.
So let’s see: rabidly anti-environment, anti-Muslim, anti-sex eduction and anti-gay. And that’s just for starters.
Carlson faces four other Republicans in the Republican primary for the District 91 House seat: Barbara Nash of Arlington and Ken Sapp, Charles Scoma and Lady Theresa Thombs, all of North Richland Hills. No Democrat filed for election to the seat.
From what I have witnessed her, it seem that Texas Republicans have to have an IQ below 50 to be a candidate.
All of them have no credibility, they are nothing but sheep to the wealthy nuts & religious nuts.