Yes, normally it would be a lot easier to write a post called, “What is Right With The Republican Party” but Saturday I happened to spend the day with the very personification of what is wrong with the Republican Party. So the daunting task of cataloging all the things that are wrong with the modern Republican Party got a lot easier all of a sudden.
Saturday – 11:00 am
I show up at the Odessa Fire Hall and take my seat next to my Republican counterpart. A virulent racists “movement conservative” who claims that Hillary Clinton is a lesbian who was “uniformly despised by the secret service” who she regularly berated. He knew all of this because he “read it in a book.”
I said, “People say all kinds of things in books.” But that only seemed to egg him on to remember more of Hillary Clinton’s sins against humanity. I got a break from the Hillary Clinton hour of hate when he was on his cell phone with his roommate.
“What the FUCK Dude..?” and “Dude, What the Fuck?” was what I heard for the next few minutes. Over and over again. Loudly and regularly despite the fact that families with small children were using the polling place. He let up on the F-bomb when I said, “hey there are kids in here.”
When he got off the phone he went back to Hillary and said, “The Clinton’s are deplorable. They are like a crime family.”
“I could say the same thing about the Bush family, but look…. we are going to be here for a while, so let’s agree not to talk about politics.” This prohibition held up for a while. While trying to keep the conversation on topics not touched on by Fox News or Rush Limbaugh I found out that he had dual Israeli/American citizenship.
He informed me that if he lived in Israel he would be a member of the Kahane Chai party, which means “Kahene Lives.” He proudly pointed out that the party he identifies with was barred from Israeli politics in 1992 when it was found to be a terrorist organization. The party is openly racists and advocates the “removal” of all Arabs from Israel. He was going to put the Kahane Chai flag on his dorm room door, but thought that in the hyper PC environment someone might consider it a hate crime.
Back on his cell phone with his roommate he heard about an “Asian Student’s Meeting” which he called a “tribal gathering.”
It was slow so I said, “Can I buy you a soda?” To which he replied, “I don’t drink soda.”
Not, “no thanks” Not, “If they have bottled water that would be great.” But a sneering, “I don’t drink soda.” Like I was asking him if he wanted to pray to Jesus or something.
All of this time his job was to highlight names on a voter registration list when they were called out by an election official. The list would then be used by the GOP to focus their afternoon get out the vote calls. I was doing the same thing for the Dems. At first, when we missed a name he or I would say, “Was that Corbin or Colvin?” And the other would say, “Jean Colvin.” But an hour or two into it if I asked was that “Jennings or Jenkins?” he’d say, “I don’t give a fuck. This job sucks.”
He was getting paid $100.00
I was getting paid $0.00