It’s election season again.  Unlike most people, I was born and raised in New Hampshire; home of the first Presidential primary.   By the time the primaries make their way to most of the states, there are one or two, maybe three candidates running.  In New Hampshire, it’s not unusual to have 30.  In 1992, there were 61 candidates!  (25 Republicans, 36 Democrats, 1 Libertarian plus two active write-in campaigns).

Election season in New Hampshire is crazy, and unfortunately, so are many of the candidates.  They’re crazy and they’re everywhere!  I remember once, the hostess at a restaurant sat me back to back with Pat Buchannan. There he was, looking just like a perfectly normal guy at a table for two with some other perfectly normal looking guy looking like they were talking about whatever two perfectly normal looking guys might be talking about.

I understand that it’s probably unusual for someone not accustomed to the NH Primaries circus to see the really far-fringe candidates, but it’s perfectly normal for me. My time in NH has set the bar pretty low for me when it comes to political candidates.  Guys shooting guns off in the street.  Guys campaigning from prison.  One year, there was even a hostage situation at a candidate’s office.  Good times.

This year, though, I saw what I am pretty sure is an all new low.  

It all starts with a Republican candidate for the Connecticut Statehouse.  I won’t use his name in print, but for now, I’ll call him “HF”.  HF came out and said loudly and proudly that the solution to the LGBGT “problem” was to systematically execute “them” all.  HF’s entire platform* was to:

“stand firmly against the Transgender and LGBT movement that has for too long corrupted our families, undermined parental authority, and eroded the foundational values of our society.”

And, by that, he meant that he would:

“fight relentlessly in the state legislature to protect our children from premature medical interventions, indoctrination in schools, and the normalization of perverse ideologies that threaten the innocence of the next generation.”

Because:

[…] he repeatedly compared LGBTQ+ people to “pedophiles and mass murderers,” said that Pride month “promotes sodomy,” and claimed that LGBTQ+ culture is more important than the child sex abuse epidemic in churches.

Believe it or not, there’s more (a lot more), but you get the point.

Learning about HF made me wax poetic for the days when Lyndon LaRouche had set the then-all-time low by running for President while serving prison time for mail fraud.  Oh, the Good Ol’ Days.  [Heavy sigh.]

Unfortunately, that’s not where the display of public decay stopped.  You see, HF had a primary opponent, and guess what? The Republican Party of Connecticut endorsed HF over his opponent.  Now, in their defense, HF only came out with his anti-LGBT manifesto AFTER the Republicans had endorsed him, and the party did try to get him to drop out. I can’t help but thinking that something about HF had to have felt “off”, right? They obviously missed it.  My rhetorical question:  Did they miss it willfully or was it an honest oversight?

Alas, I’m sure you’ll be sad to learn that HF lost his primary election by a vote of 90-368, that’s a 1:4 margin against for you non-math people.  I just have to optimistically chalk the 20% up to unaware voters and I’ll choose the hope that 80% voted against him for the right reasons.

But now, I’m going to ask this and many of you are going to dislike me for it, but I can’t help but wonder if the results would have been less hopeful were he running in someplace other than Connecticut.

And I’ll leave that at that.

Now, we arrive at what might possibly be the saddest part of this whole affair: the institutional response.  A notable Republican leader (also not wanting to use his name, I’ll call him “DA”) was quoted in a notable Connecticut newspaper commenting on HF’s anti-lgbt platform.  In the quote, DA said that HF’s comments showed that he is “immature and reckless” and that they prove that HF “isn’t ready for the responsibility he’s asking voters to give him.”

That’s putting it mildly, wouldn’t you say?

Was that your reaction to HF’s manifesto?

I can excuse HF’s rantings as he is clearly suffering from sociopathic disorders of some sort.  I can almost excuse the Connecticut Republican party for missing that something was “off” about HF.  What I really struggle with is DA’s, after-the-fact, mild mannered response dismissing HF’s clear signs of sociopathy as merely “immature”.  

DA’s use of the word “reckless” is particularly troubling.  What did DA object to?  Was it HF’s LGBT phobic ranting or the fact that he made the comments at all?  Was “reckless” meant to imply that DA thought HF should have just kept his mouth shut?

I am left wondering about what wasn’t said.  DA did say that HF’s ideas were “immature and reckless” and proof that HF “isn’t ready”.  DA didn’t say that HF would never be ready.  DA didn’t say that HF’s ideas were “contrary to the values and morals of the Republican party”.  DA didn’t say that they are “repugnant and go against America stands for”.  DA didn’t say that they are “so foreign to a moral character that they can hardly be considered as having come from a sane person.”  DA didn’t express concern over HF’s mental status or worry for his welfare.

Maybe he did in another interview and I just missed them. Yea, I’m going to go with that.

To be clear, HF’s anti-lgbt rantings weren’t merely “immature and reckless”.  They were a window into a dangerous, disturbed and decaying soul.  HF isn’t in need of a little maturation, he’s in need of institutionalization, whether he likes it or not.

Was DA dancing around the point to save face or to save HF any further bad press?  Possibly.  But if he was, that’s a real problem.  If there is anyone in this story who “isn’t ready for the responsibility he’s asking voters to give him”, it’s DA.

We have a crisis of conscience in this country.  The crisis is that most leaders have sold their consciences to the highest bidder.  The things DA didn’t say were intentionally not said.  The silence is deafening.  Weak souled, soft spirited leaders rarely lead to all boats rising on a rising tide.

What’s even more scary to me is how we can’t even see it anymore.  Where was the outrage over DA’s comments?  There was plenty of outrage over HF’s rants but DA was more or less accepted as the voice of reason in this drama.

In this day of outrageous, sociopathic comments from national leaders, DA’s flippant soft-rejection of HF went unnoticed and that’s a sad commentary on our nation’s soul.

 

* I want to thank lgbtqnation.com for their fine reporting on this topic.  Many of the quotes used here came from them.