(More) Craziest Republicans of the Day: Ron Kirkland and Randy Smith

By Michael J.W. Stickings

More and more CRDs...

As Think Progress reports, at a recent Tea Party event featuring candidates for the Republican nomination for Tennessee's 8th Congressional District, Ron Kirkland and Randy Smith objected to the repeal of "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" and made some rather nasty comments about gays in the military:

Kirkland, a Vietnam veteran, said of his time in the military: "I can tell you if there were any homosexuals in that group, they were taken care of in ways I can't describe to you."

Smith, who served in the first Iraqi war, added: "I definitely wouldn't want to share a shower with a homosexual. We took care of that kind of stuff, just like [Kirkland] said."

Kirkland later said it was just a "joke" but that "[t]hings don't go well in military barracks when you have 50 guys sleeping on top of each other." "It was just the reality of the way things were. It'd be the same as having men and women in the same barracks." Which makes you wonder how women would have been "taken care of." Smith, meanwhile, later said he was only concerned about hazing and violence, even though what he said tells us that he "took care of that kind of stuff," presumably through hazing/violence. As for his other comment, what is he so worried about in the shower? Does he honestly believe that a gay man wouldn't be able to resist trying to get it on with him? When homophobia and arrogant self-regard combine like this, it's all so ridiculous as to be disregarded as utterly insane, if it weren't for the fact that it comes wrapped in bloodthirsty rage born of insecurity and self-loathing.

But this is what you get in the Republican Party these days, candidates for national office who think nothing of essentially sanctioning violence against gays, and admitting proudly that they are guilty of it themselves.

It's the party, that is, of Code Red: