We all know someone who takes in stray human beings out of either kindness or cluelessness. I call such a person a weirdo magnet, and you probably do too. Senator Aqua Buddha and his father seem to be political weirdo magnets. They keep attracting enough nuts to keep Florida out of the news as the weirdo capitol of Murica. At least that’s what the Paulists would like us to think. I’m inclined to believe that it’s their wacked out and extreme ideology that keeps the nuts rolling in their direction.

That brings me to the latest twisted weirdo attracted to the Paulite orbit:Jack Hunter aka the Southern Avenger. He’s, of course, the guy who was Aqua Buddha’s ghostwriter and key aide until yesterday. He’s also a neo-con. Not neo-conservative ala Cheney, Wolfie, and Rummy, but a neo-Confederate. That’s right, he thinks John Wilkes Booth and Jeff Davis are swell guys. He also has a rather odd take on the first Republican President :

My purpose here is not to say that Lincoln was on par with Hitler, but
that if someone insists on making the comparison, the 16th president had
far more in common with the Nazi dictator than the Southern soldiers
who died fighting for their country’s independence.

Actually, over the course of this rant and others, Hunter makes precisely that point; over and over again. I am constantly gobsmacked by the extent to which wingnuts use Nazi analogies. There are NO EQUIVALENTS in American history to the Nazis. There’s no American Hitler. There have been wannabes, but that’s as far as it goes. Bull Connor was a *horror* but he was not a Southern fried Himmler and the ATF are not the Gestapo.

The mere fact that the “Southern Avenger” survived as long on Senator Aqua Buddha’s staff as he did shows how low the teabagger dominated GOP will sink. Neo-confederates should be the 21st Century equivalent of the Birchers who were read out of the Republican party by William F. Buckleyand some other conservatives who didn’t buy the notion that Ike was a Commie stooge. There’s nobody in the GOP with Buckley’s stature or balls today so it won’t happen. I just praised Bill Buckley, which is a first for me, but he was a statesman compared to the Ron and Rand Pauls of the world. Btw, the John Birch Society seems to making something of a comeback. Hide the fluoride, y’all.

Senator Aqua Buddha’s tolerance of the “Southern Avenger” should disqualify him for the Presidency, but in the modern GOP it will not have that effect. I do hope, however, that people on the left will stop saying that he’s not too bad because he’s a “libertarian” who filibustered drones. He’s another common garden variety right wing hypocrite who’s anti-marriage equality, anti-choice, and soft on neo-Confederates.That’s the profile of an extremist, not a potential President.