Who ARE These People?, Part 5: Hans Zeiger, of the GOP Farm Team. PLUS, a Hall of Shame E-Stocking Stuffer

One thing this boy sure ain't short of is mindless platitudes.

by Noah

Warning. I didn’t make this guy up. He really exists.

Meet Hans Zeiger. He’s not on the Washington, DC, scene yet, but he has just been elected to the state of Washington’s state legislature, and what a fine, typical up-and-coming young Republican he is! I’m writing about him because: (1) He certainly represents the state of Republican mental illness today, and (2) it’s important to keep an eye on the farm team, as it were.

At 25, Zeiger has a lot of backing from high places in the world of wingnuttia. He is a “senior fellow” at the American Civil Rights Union, a right-wing “think tank” whose board membership includes such human cesspools as Ed Meese and Ken Starr. Zeiger is considered a Great Right Hope, and something of a prodigy, having written his first book of hate at the precocious age of 16. The book even comes with a forward by Ollie North! He is also prolific with his blogging and writes for WorldNetDaily, but has had to spend an inordinate amount of time backtracking and removing his incendiary statements. Fortunately, there are some who catalog his positions and statements.

What’s so special about Zeiger? Is he, as his name might indicate, the progeny of some Brazilian Germans? Honestly, I do not know. But what we do know is . . . well, let me let Hans define himself in his own words. Here he is on the Girl Scouts of America:

One might wonder why the Girl Scouts have been spared the painful attacks that have been launched upon the Boy Scouts by the left in recent years. The reasons are simple: The Girl Scouts allow homosexuals and atheists to join their ranks, and they have become pro-abortion, feminist training corps. . . . If the Girl Scouts of America can’t get back to teaching real character, perhaps it will be time to look for our cookies elsewhere.

Wow, lesbian, god-denying abortion cookies! All of that in one tasty snack! All hail the power of the cookie!

Glenn Beck would love this guy! The great Girl Scout Conspiracy. Throw in a connection to Mussolini and Stalin and you’ve got it! What Washington has is a state legislator (District 25) who thinks the 100-year-old Girl Scout organization has been brainwashing children by feeding them lesbian abortion cookies, turning our daughters into godless, man-hating, pro-abortion lesbians. “Feminist training corps”? This clown sure has some fears! Was Daddy bitter?

To Republicans, even the Girl Scouts are “other” and to be feared! Don’t leave your daughter alone with them! What’s the next great Republican target, girls' softball leagues? This puts a whole new spin on that old “We have come for your daughters” thing.

I knew those mints tasted ungodly! Of course, when Zeiger’s campaign found out what his feelings about the Girl Scouts were, unexpectedly controversial, they immediately scrubbed his statements from his website. Being Republican, they had obviously never thought the statement was problematical. Zeiger explained that he removed the statement because it doesn’t represent his values anymore, adding that the statement would be a distraction from the campaign. Yeah? No kiddin’? But personally, I always regard such statements not as distraction but as information. So often, Zeiger deals with any controversy by playing the “youthful indiscretion” card, but when you’re 25, nasty statements that you made in your "youth" tend to be something from a year or so ago.

But wait, there’s more! Here’s Herr Zeiger on public education!

I spent most of my K-12 education at my local government indoctrination center. I was also home schooled during the seventh and eighth grades. The corridors and classrooms of the modern public school are so polluted with the filth of moral relativism that the typical public high school graduate moves into the world devoid of character, conscience or courage.

How about Zeiger on religion? Or at least his version of it. Here he is in one of his numerous screeds in WorldNutDaily, writing about the National Day of Prayer. The Republican god is the only god. Zeiger isn’t one of those inclusive, diversity kind of guys, but what Republican is? He can’t stand the fact that there was a more diverse competitor.

Frustrated with the fact that the bulk of people involved in the Nationa Day of Prayer actually believe in God . . . left-wing atheist-secularist-ecumenists are holding their own counter-events this year. . . . Unitarians, mainstream Baptists, Muslims, Jews, Buddhists, members of the “Military Pagan Network” and other watered-down ecumenists will hold an “Interfaith Day of Prayer and Reflection” on the steps of the Oklahoma State Capitol today to pray to the generic god.

But . . . the significant difference between the kumbaya sessions and interfaith vigils and atheist protests of the Religious Left and the Bible Studies and prayer circles of the Religious Right is that our God is real.

Yeah. I’m not sure what the “Military Pagan Network” is either, but I guess to the utterly delusional,it’s all too real, and it’s a big, bad threat, right up there with the Jews and Buddhists and Muslims, those creepy “mainstream Baptists” and Unitarians. Be aware! Be afraid! They worship false idols!

Where does this Republican wunderkind stand on education? Three guesses, and the first two don’t count.

This week the National Education Association at its annual convention is bestowing an award for Creative Leadership in Human Rights to Kevin Jennings, co-founder and director of the Gay Lesbian Straight Education Network (GLSEN). This is notable not because the NEA is championing the the radical homosexual agenda (it has long done so), and not because GLSEN is in our schools (it has long been there), but because both are terrorist organizations and we ought to be reminded of that.

We speak much of terror networks in our time, and here is one of the vilest, for it has made greater progress in the tearing down of American institutions and ideals than Iraq of Al Qaeda have. NEA and GLSEN are not the only groups in the network; the ACLU, and NAARAL and Planned Parenthood and Americans United for Separation of Church and State and others come to mind.

Then, there’s this: "Growing up on talk radio, that informed some of my early views.”

That doesn’t surprise me at all. You? Just this month Rush Limbaugh said the same thing about Nancy Pelosi being a terrorist and a bigger threat than Al Qaeda that Zeiger said about the organizations in the above quote.

Zeiger would have us believe that he’s a changed guy. Hey, he’s a politician. He’s adaptable! Any sane person would be right to expect, given the very short time frame, that his original views are still very much in the forefront of whatever mind he has left. One of the most interesting things about all of this is that Zeiger became famous for these statements and hundreds like them before leading Republican luminaries like Meese and Starr rallied behind him. They saw what they liked, and they endorsed him.

How’d he get elected? Well, for one thing his statements were not only scrubbed from his website for the campaign season but were also ignored by the local media, such as the Seattle Times and the Bellingham Herald. He had the protection of the media, and he beat his four-term incumbent Democratic opponent, Dawn Morrell, in a recount by 30 votes. Republicans like this guy, and they turned out. Democratic voters stayed home. But Hans didn’t sneak by the system. The system kept silent, and he may be on his way to being yet another Republican stain on history.

Bottom line: What we have here is another Republican focusing way too much on things like the religion and the sexuality of other people, quite possibly because he has deeply hidden “concerns” about his own. Ten to one, if he doesn’t end up as a congressloon in DC, he’ll end up as a smarmy televangelista bilking old ladies and blaming disasters on “our permissive society," “atheists,” or “radical homos,” or in the Boy Scouts as a scoutmaster, teaching boys how to cook a wiener while the campfire glows.


AN E-STOCKING STUFFER IN THE "WHO
ARE THESE PEOPLE ANYWAY?" SPIRIT

Our friends at People for the American Way report that they're "involved in a small e-experiment to see whether a first-of-its-kind collection of the shameless political comments of the year can be sold as a 'stocking stuffer' to benefit People for the American Way. This experiment will rely on the willingness of our friends to share this story far and wide."

Paul Slansky's THE YEAR OF LIVING SHAMELESSLY is a first-of-its-kind collection of the hypocrisy, bigotry, cowardice, idiocy and just plain lunacy that have defined this political year. It's a living museum of bad behavior curating the worst moments of 2010 by taking full advantage of the e-book format, allowing readers to click through, pop open a new window, and actually witness the preposterous moments of shamelessness as they happened.

Then, simply close the window and you're right back in the book.

They're all here: the Senate candidate who's not a witch, the one who called a press conference and ran away from reporters when they dared to ask her questions, the would-be congressman with the penchant for dressing up in Nazi regalia, the lieutenant governor who compared giving food stamps to the needy to "feeding stray animals," and the former president who misses "being pampered," along with Sarah Palin, Glenn Beck, Michele Bachmann, Joe Lieberman, Pat Robertson, Rand Paul, John McCain, Rudy Giuliani, John Edwards, Jim DeMint, John Boehner, Alvin Greene -- WHO? -- and all the other brazen Republicans, quivering Democrats and rabid Tea Partiers who made 2010 such an embarrassingly shameless year.

Plus, coming in early January, a new social publishing feature will give you the ability to comment on or add to the contents of the book, communicating with the author and other readers within the book itself. And, at $3.99 including tax, it could hardly be more perfectly priced for your holiday gift-giving needs.

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At $3.99 the price is certainly right.


THE "WHO ARE THESE PEOPLE?" SERIES TO DATE

Part 1: Freakshow Pollitics (Dec. 9)
Part 2: Elections do have consequences -- meet John Shimkus (Dec. 10)
Part 3: Meet the man who isn't as crazy as John Shimkus and Joe Barton -- Fred Upton (Dec. 13)
Part 4: Rep. Andy Harris, Hypocritical Oaf (Dec. 15)

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