Two members of Congress who lost their reelection campaigns are inventing outlandish tales to explain their losses.
First, Rep. Carol Shea-Porter (D-N.H.) told ABC News that unknown Chinese forces, buoyed by the Supreme Court’s decision in Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission, may have swayed the midterm elections:
“I think it’s strangling us,” she said. “They’re in the halls of Congress everywhere, and it means, for example, that you sit on a committee and you say something about concern about Chinese influence or something, you don’t even know if in the next election, somehow or another, they manage to send some money to some group that now doesn’t even have to say where they got it.”
Later in the interview, Shea-Porter hilariously—and hypocritically—complained that the media focused too heavily on negativity in Congress based on spurious allegations of campaign finance corruption:
“I have listened to people on television say things like, ‘Well, everybody’s on the take in Washington,’ as if that’s a given fact. I think it just makes people more cynical about the whole process,” Shea-Porter said.
Not to be outdone by Shea-Porter, outgoing Rep. John Hall (D-N.Y.) told the New York Observer that the ability of corporations to spend money on politics is putting America on the road to fascism.
“I learned when I was in social studies class in school that corporate ownership or corporate control of government is called Fascism,” he said in an exit interview. “So that’s really the question—is that the destination if this court decision goes unchecked?”
Most sane, rational people think Republicans will take control of the House of Representatives when the 112th Congress starts this week. It seems more than a bit odd that Shea-Porter and Hall think either communists or fascists are coming to power.
*(10:41 p.m., Jan. 3) CCP founder dude Brad Smith adds:
Merriam Webster defines “Fascism” as a political philosophy “that exalts nation and often race above the individual, and that stands for a centralized autocratic government headed by a dictatorial leader, severe economic and social regimentation, and forcible suppression of opposition.” Dictionary.com defines it as “a governmental system led by a dictator having complete power, forcibly suppressing opposition and criticism, regimenting all industry, commerce, etc. …”
In other words, the first two dictionaries I checked comport with what I learned in social studies class in school—that government ownership or government control of corporations (not to mention forcible suppression of opposition speech) is called Fascism, not the other way around. Seems Hall got his social studies lessons backwards. But to be clear, we don’t think that former (thankfully) Rep. Hall is actually a fascist, even if he seems to think that we are.
