Why The GOP's Far Right Base Loves Fringe Lunatics Like Louie Gohmert

New polling from Pew, indicates that the Republican Party-- at it's core (so values, principles, policies, agenda)-- is woefully out of step with normal American voters. We're not just talking about the sad antics of Republican psychopaths and vaudevillians like Virginia Foxx, Louie Gohmert, Ted Cruz, Michele Bachmann, Rand Paul and Steve Stockman; we're talking about the heart and soul of the GOP, their financial backers and the crackpot, Foxified base of the party. In short, the public disagrees with everything the Republican Party has been talking about for at least five years.

[A]s with previous conflicts over the debt ceiling and fiscal cliff, Obama holds the upper hand politically over congressional Republicans. If there is no deficit deal by March 1, 49% say congressional Republicans would be more to blame while just 31% would mostly blame President Obama.

Moreover, 76% say that the president and Congress should focus on a combination of spending cuts and tax increases to reduce the budget deficit. Just 19% agree with the current Republican position that tax increases should be off the table.

And while Obama’s 51% job approval rating is down slightly from a post-election high of 55%, it remains well above the 25% approval rating for GOP congressional leaders. The job rating for Democratic leaders is higher (37%), though more disapprove (55%) than approve of their performance.

The poll finds new evidence of the public’s concern over the federal budget deficit. Fully 70% say it is essential for the president and Congress to pass major legislation to reduce the federal budget deficit, including wide majorities across party lines. Last month, the Pew Research Center’s annual policy priorities survey found a sharp rise in the percentage rating deficit reduction as a top priority since 2009.

...By a wide margin (71% to 26%), the public favors increasing the minimum wage from its current level of $7.25 per hour to $9.00 an hour. But while large majorities of Democrats (87%) and independents (68%) favor raising the minimum wage, Republicans are evenly divided (50% favor, 47% oppose).

...Obama holds a sizable advantage over congressional Republicans on immigration. Half (50%) say that Obama has a better approach to dealing with immigration, compared with 33% who say congressional Republicans have a better approach. Obama’s job approval in handling the nation’s immigration policy, in negative territory for most of his presidency, also has improved.

As for gun control, Obama's #1 priority, universal background checks-- which is vehemently opposed by the gun manufacturers and their lobbying group the NRA as well as by the congressional lunatics they have in their pockets-- is favored by 83% of Americans and opposed by only 15%. Even most NRA members agree with the policy! 56% of Americans also favor banning assault weapons and 53% favor banning high capacity magazine clips.

Another poll, for Bloomberg, indicates that Republican Party approval numbers keep falling and are now lower than they've been any time since 2009, when Bloomberg started polling that question. Only 35% of Americans have a favorable view of the GOP. Most of them live in backward parts of the Old Confederacy.

But there is something if more toxic than the generic Republican Party-- the lunatic fringe Members of Congress who have been pulling it further and further to the right and happily tying the efficient functioning of government into knots. The crazies... no one likes them (except other crazies) and the more they're identified as Republicans, the more people get turned off to the whole party. Let's take Louie Gohmert, a clown from northeast Texas, hard up against Louisiana. Boehner and Cantor cringe when he opens his mouth in public. His perspective on everything comes straight from Hate Talk Radio. The guy doesn't have an idea in his head that doesn't come out of the mumbo-jumbo stew of a day of listening to Rush Limbaugh, Michael Savage, Sean Hannity and Glenn Beck. He's in his own cracked up, paranoid little world. When Gohmert, and a small vocal handful of other extremists talk about gun control, they're not interested in hunting or in people being able to protect their families from criminals. Gohmert is all about black helicopters, the tyranny of the U.S. Army and jackbooted thugs in law enforcement an, of course, the threat of Sharia Law. This is why normal people no longer see the Republican Party as a viable alternative to the less than ideal Democrats.

Tea Party Congressman Louie Gohmert (R-TX) told a conservative radio show on Thursday that the GOP must oppose gun regulations to protect the country from the threat of “Sharia Law.”

Appearing on The Voice of Freedom, Gohmert said he “hoped and prayed” that Congress rejects gun safety legislation, arguing that Americans may need to use the rights guaranteed by the Second Amendment to avoid succumbing to Muslims:

[The Second Amendment] is for our protection and the founders’ quotes make that very very clear and including against a government that would run amuck. We’ve got some people who think Sharia Law should be the law of the land, forget the Constitution. But the guns are there… to make sure all of the rest of the Amendments are followed.

A friend of mine from Gohmert's part of Texas lives in L.A. now. He's in a band. He called the other day, confused and upset, to read me some letters from his very conservative parents, hard core Republicans from a Lufkin area trailer park. And sure enough, it was filled with a language you only hear on Hate Talk Radio about issues only consequent on Hate Talk Radio. And the danger of Sharia Law was repeated over and over. Really? This is what poor people in Lufkin, Texas choose to worry about... a takeover of Texas by Muslim extremists? Muslims are the largest non-Christian group in 20 U.S. states, including Texas (also Arkansas, Mississippi, Louisiana, Alabama, Georgia, Florida, North Carolina Virginia, West Virginia, Kentucky, Indiana, Illinois, Michigan, Wisconsin, Iowa, Nebraska, South Dakota, North Dakota and Wyoming). Texas has 1,678 Muslims for every 100,000 people. About 2.4% of Americans are Muslims, around 6.7 million people. They're not taking over and imposing Sharia Law on anyone. Ironically, almost all of the GOP crackpots like Gohmert and Bachmann who scream the loudest about Sharia Law are advocates of very primitive, fundamentalist pseudo-Christian "law" that is the closest thing to Sharia Law anywhere in the world. Jesus, I don't want to know what these people's nightmares are like!