Radical remarks by Minnesota conservatives ‘show how extreme they really are’
Friday, January 08, 2010 at 11:39 am
- 4 Comments
Clockwise from upper left: Allen Quist, Lynne Torgerson, Jim Hagedorn, Mike Parry
Over the last few weeks, several candidates for public office in Minnesota have made (or had revealed) statements extreme enough to garner terms of rebuke like “intolerant,” “appalling,” and “poisonous.” From state Senate candidate Mike Parry’s tweet linking Democrats and pedophiles, to Congressional hopeful Jim Hagedorn’s punningly homophobic “Mr. Conservative” blog posts, recent candidate communiques prompt a few questions: What’s going on? Has the flu jumped to the state’s body politic?
“It’s an especially virulent strain of hatred and intolerance that we see,” says DFL Party Chair Brian Melendez about recent comments by three Republicans and an independent. “I’ve never seen people so openly racist and homophobic.”
Melendez blames “the Teabagger movement” and conservative agenda-setters like U.S. Rep. Michele Bachmann and Rush Limbaugh. But he also recognizes changing conditions imposed by a new media environment that affects everyone in public life.
“Our lives are much more on the record than 10 years ago or even two years ago,” he tells the Minnesota Independent.
Prof. Ronald W. Greene, who researches political communication at the University of Minnesota, sees the same shifting ground for partisan rhetoric, but he puts the recent rash of outrageous comments in the context of “in-group” speech that has been studied as a commonplace phenomenon for 50 years.
“It’s a well-known process that seems to have been intensified in the new media,” and it’s heightening the fragmentation and polarization of politics, Greene says.
“Speakers think they’re rewarded for this kind of behavior. They have to be more representative of the group than anyone else. You would only be able to differentiate yourself by being more extreme.”
Four on the edge
Addressed to in-groups to varying degrees, the recent crop of statements were made or revealed — and in a few instances, recanted — by four candidates on four online platforms: a campaign website, a blog, Twitter and YouTube.
First was Torgerson, a Fifth Congressional District independent who tacks conservative on cultural issues, is seeking to unseat DFLer Keith Ellison, the first Muslim elected to Congress. At her campaign website and in comments to MnIndy and other media, Torgerson espoused a no-holds-barred critique of Islam as antithetical to American values of free speech and equal rights, and called Ellison as “not a proper person to have in our federal government” for his ties to the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR).
Next came Jim Hagedorn, a Republican running for Congress in the state’s First District. His blogging as “Mr. Conservative” was riddled with homophobic and harshly partisan wordplay. “Until Paul Wellstone’s plane crash, DFL Trotskyites were confident the Senator would soar [emphasis his] to victory over Norm Coleman” is one example. Another: Judges striking down Texas’ sodomy law “injudiciously fisted two hundred and twenty-seven years of the Republic’s mores into the bowels of cultural debauchery.” Hagedorn scrubbed those comments from his site.
President Obama is “a Power Hungry Arrogant Black Man,” wrote Mike Parry, the endorsed Republican in this month’s special-election campaign to replace retiring state Sen. Dick Day in District 26, on Twitter. Like another tweet that asked “what’s with Dems and Pedophiles?” in apparent reference to hate-crimes legislation, that message was scrubbed, and Parry issued a partial apology and explanation.
Most recent is Allen Quist, like Hagedorn a Republican running for the state’s First District seat in Congress, seen in a GOP YouTube video saying: “Our country is being destroyed. Every generation has had to fight the fight for freedom… Terrorism? Yes. That’s not the big battle. The big battle is in D.C. with the radicals. They aren’t liberals. They are radicals. Obama, Pelosi, Walz: They’re not liberals, they’re radicals. They are destroying our country.”
Not quite what they intended
None of the four — with the possible exception of Torgerson, writing at her campaign site – seems to have meant for their statements to reach a wider audience. Bloggers acted almost as the candidates’ literary agents, pushing sample quotes into the online political marketplace — sometimes, as with Parry and Quist, all the way into the mainstream media.
Greene sees the resulting whipped-up ferment as a kind of challenge to political polarization and fragmentation by appealing to voters not yet committed to a party. In the competitive dynamics of the new-media environment, such exposures “get the public to look at how extreme these people really are, and erode [candidates'] ability to speak to that voting middle.”
The message, says Greene: Candidates who make extreme statements are “not really ‘of’ these people.”
For his part, Melendez contends outrageous rhetoric isn’t really “of” the rank-and-file Republicans he knows.”They’re not haters like this.”
4 Comments
Comment posted January 11, 2010 @ 11:59 pm
I got an email message from Lynne Torgerson in response to this post. First she questioned whether Brian Melendez meant to include her in his comments, based on their long acquaintance. (Although I asked him about all four candidates, Melendez’s comments were mostly general. He had held a press conference specifically to respond to Parry’s statements, which was the reason I sought him out for a broader view.)
Torgerson also asked that this statement from her be added:
“I don’t hate muslims. I like muslim people. I do take great issue however with the way they want to run their countries, and more importantly, the United States. They want to institute Sharia Law, Islamic Law, in the United States. I take great issue with that. Islam is not only or purely a religion. Only the “religion” PART of Islam is protected by the First Amendment. Rather, Islam, or Islamic Law, or Sharia Law, is an ideology, with a political agenda. And, it must be stopped in the United States. The ideology of Islam conflicts with American values and the United States Constitution. Actually, too many of Islam, wish to eliminate American values and the United States Constitution, and wish to supplant it with Sharia Law. A desire to eliminate the United States Constitution is, technically, and quite frankly, seditious. Further, too many of Islam hate America, hate Western freedoms, and hate Americans. Too many of Islam wish to destroy America, and, they are in America. This position is not that of a “hater” and is not racist or any other bad thing. Americans need to open their eyes to these facts. We have been trained so well to protect freedom of religion and that is such a good and wonderful thing. And, we must continue to do so. However, we have a new thing in America, Islam, and a new concept, and it is very difficult for we Americans to understand what Islam is. However, we must realize that Islam is not simply, nor purely, nor solely “religion.” Rather, again, it is an ideology–contrary to American freedoms. Indeed, where Islam is in a majority in other countries, how are their countries run? Is it a democracy? Do they have freedom of religion? Do they have freedom of speech? Do those countries look anything like America? Are they tolerant to the freedoms we have in America? The answer is no. Well, the next question then becomes: what if they were a majority in America? How would they run America? Well, they would run the government just like they currently do in those other countries. For example, Saudi Arabia, Iran, Syria, Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Yemen, Sudan . . . . Well, no one has ever moved to any of those countries for a better way of life. There is an American Dream. There is no “Saudi Arabian Dream.” There is no “Iranian Dream.” I am not a “hater.” I don’t hate those people. I am also not a bigot or a racist. Rather, I am simply pointing out how we must protect America, America’s freedoms, and the United States Constitution. We must now think about how our country is going to be run in 10, 20 40 and 80 years from now.”
Comment posted January 12, 2010 @ 9:10 am
Every one of these people are disgusting evil profit mongers that look to take away all that is good that is given to those most in need in Minnesota.
Anyone who supports anyone on the Republi-thug side of the fence is evil and should be made to suffer like they are tying to make all of us suffer.
Tax them into oblivion. Take away every dollar they have. They deserve it. The rich just use the poor to steal more of their money anyways. Let’s take it back and give it to the people that deserve it.
Comment posted January 18, 2010 @ 9:01 am
First, let me say that there is a difference between “racism” and “culturalism”. Wanting to maintain a culture which includes maintaining its values, laws, and life experience is NOT being racist. I am a culturalist – I want to maintain the culture that I grew up with, believe in, and know. I don’t like when other people or the federal government try to push their values and culture on me. Example: I grew up in WI and I believe that when a person is 18 and they can get married, sign contracts, be tried as an adult, and die for their country that they should also be able to buy a beer. The fact that they can’t is absolutely crazy to me. How did this happen? It happened because the other people pushed their values on us by black mailing states to make laws to make drinking age 21. How? By saying “if you don’t change your laws we will pull fed funding for highways and roads”. I do not care what age a state decides to have as their drinking age. I do feel that it should be up to the people of each state to decide and if they had the right to decide their laws will reflect their people’s culture. I do not wish to push my values or culture on other states. If a state wants to make alcohol illegal and the people vote for that I am totally supportive of them making that choice and creating their culture. Lynn Torgerson is a culturalist – she want to protect us from other people pushing their values, laws, and culture on us.
Comment posted January 21, 2010 @ 12:39 am
actually Torgerson is being a bigot she is going under the assumption that every Muslim wants to implement Sharia that is not simply not the case.
If Christians can separate the more outlandish call for death sins in the old testament to live in a democracy where we don’t kill people for masturbation, adultery, and various other common behaviors that just being a human and alive bring, then Muslims can too.
Since no American Muslim has even remotely suggested that Sharia and esp not Rep Ellison be enacted in the united states along with being a bigot she is a fear-mongering moron to boot who needs to buy a comb.
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