Maine Gov. Paul LePage likens the IRS to the Gestapo

By Michael J.W. Stickings 

And for that he's rewarded with our award for Craziest Republican of the Day.

The Portland Press Herald / Maine Sunday Telegram reports:

Gov. Paul LePage used his weekly radio address to blast President Obama's health care law and described the Internal Revenue Service as the "new Gestapo."

The IRS description was a reference to a provision in the Affordable Care Act that requires Americans not insured by their employers or Medicaid to buy health insurance or pay an annual penalty when filing their tax returns. The provision, known more broadly as the individual mandate, was the subject of a multi-state lawsuit, but was recently upheld by the U.S. Supreme Court.

LePage said the court decision has "made America less free."

"We the people have been told there is no choice," he said. "You must buy health insurance or pay the new Gestapo -- the IRS."

Yes, because whenever the government requires you to do something, like wear seat belts or, I don't know, not steal from people, it's just like the Gestapo.

You know, those horrible Nazis who forced Germans to get health care and levied a penalty when they didn't.

What brutal totalitarianism that was.

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Seriously, LePage isn't just crazy, he's a fucking idiot.

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The response has been swift:

Maine Democratic Party Chairman Ben Grant, responding to LePage's remarks, said, "We've come to expect a bunch of nonsense from Gov. LePage, but this is a step too far. There appears now to be no limit to the extreme language he will use to misinform, degrade and insult people. Somebody needs to explain to him that he's the governor of a state, and not a talk radio host. I demand a full apology on behalf of all those who suffered at the hands of the real Gestapo."

"There is nothing that degrades politics more than purported leaders who so cavalierly invoke the worst in human history when they can't get their way in legitimate, modern policy disagreements," Grant said.

An apology would be fine, but "a full apology on behalf of all those who suffered" seems a bit much.

I understand that hyperbole is often used in politics, and even if he's an idiot LePage hardly meant to dismiss the Gestapo's real victims.

The real issue here is that Republicans like LePage -- which is to say, most Republicans these days -- traffic not just in such exaggerated language but in extremist opposition to government. So much so that the government can't do anything without being called oppressive, or worse.

So in the aftermath of the Supreme Court's ruling we heard all sorts of nonsense about how freedom was under attack, about how the Constitution was being undone, about how the American way of life was being destroyed -- from elected officials, from commentators, from special-interest groups. As if a requirement to purchase health insurance, necessary because it lowers costs, constitutes something along the lines of what Pol Pot did in Cambodia, or what Stalin did.

"You don't want decent health coverage? You don't want care in the event of illness? Off to the gulag!"

As silly as it is, this comment from LePage fits right in with that line of attack. And while the language is certainly part of the problem, reflective of simplistic thinking and gross partisanism, the real problem is the "philosophy" behind it, the view that the best form of government is really no government at all, a government that protects property, at least the property of the privileged, but does little else, certainly nothing in terms of building a fair and just society.

What these conservatives clearly want is the Hobbesian/Lockean state of nature with a law-and-order Leviathan to ensure that the strong really do prevail. Or, in more contemporary terms, what they want is a society along the lines of what Ayn Rand wanted.

Anything more, apparently, is Nazism.

To Maine Gov. Paul LePage: Go fuck yourself

By Michael J.W. Stickings 

HuffPo's Amanda Terkel is reporting that the teabagging governor of Maine, Paul LePage, gave the following advice to the unemployed at the state GOP convention on Sunday: 

Maine's welfare program is cannibalizing the rest of state government. To all you able-bodied people out there: Get off the couch and get yourself a job. 

He's an asshole, obviously, something we've known for a long time, but this is also the standard Republican view: People on welfare are lazy shits who don't want to work. They try to prove this by holding the exceptions up as the rule, but their intention is to slash government by cutting support to those who need it most, and to that end they vilify entire swaths of people without any regard for context, so ignorantly enamored are they of their cruel right-wing ideology.

The point is, if there were jobs, they'd be filled. Last time I checked, though, the economy sucks and a lot of good, honest, and decent people are struggling.

LePage, like so many Republicans, obviously doesn't give a shit. The people of Maine really need to put him out of work.

Elephant Dung #25: Maine Republicans slam Republican Gov. Paul LePage

Tracking the GOP Civil War

By Michael J.W. Stickings

(For an explanation of this ongoing series, see here. For previous entries, see here.)

I wrote last year about "Mainesanity," the takeover of Maine's state GOP by Tea Party wackos. And by that I don't mean your run-of-the-mill small-government Teabaggers, the sort who are extreme but not utterly insane, or not necessarily so, but rather... well, wackos. As Maine Politics explained at the time:

The official platform for the Republican Party of Maine is now a mix of right-wing fringe policies, libertarian buzzwords and outright conspiracy theories.

The document calls for the elimination of the Department of Education and the Federal Reserve, demands an investigation of "collusion between government and industry in the global warming myth," suggests the adoption of "Austrian Economics," declares that "'Freedom of Religion' does not mean 'freedom from religion'" (which I guess makes atheism illegal), insists that "healthcare is not a right," calls for the abrogation of the "UN Treaty on Rights of the Child" and the "Law Of The Sea Treaty" and declares that we must resist "efforts to create a one world government." 

This was extreme even by Republican standards.

November 2010 witnessed yet more "Mainesanity" with the election of Tea Party Republican Paul LePage as governor. (It was a narrow win. LePage squeaked by an independent candidate and won with just 38 percent of the vote.) He proved to be a pretty nasty character during the campaign and has done nothing since then to indicate that he's anything but a right-wing extremist who rode the Tea Party wave, got lucky with a split vote, and somehow got himself elected in a state where leading state-wide Republicans typically resemble Olympia Snow and Susan Collins, not, well, Paul LePage.

And like certain other Republican governors -- Scott Walker of Wisconsin and John Kasich of Ohio come to mind -- he's made labor unions (and working people generally) one of his primary targets. But that isn't going over all that well in Maine, including among Maine Republicans, some of whom (presumably not the ones who wrote that platform) are pushing back:

Eight Republican state senators have issued a rare public rebuke of Maine Gov. Paul LePage (R), writing an op-ed expressing "discomfort and dismay" with some of his recent comments directed at labor backers.

The controversy centers around LePage's recent decision to order a mural depicting the state's workers' history removed from the Department of Labor, arguing that it was biased against businesses and employers. When asked how he would react if protesters carried out their plan to form a human chain around the mural, LePage replied, "I'd laugh at them, the idiots. That's what I would do. Come on! Get over yourselves!"

"But for him to announce that he would 'laugh at the idiots' should they choose to engage in our honored tradition of civil disobedience is another personal attack that only serves to further lower the bar of our public discourse," write the senators in the op-ed, which ran in The Portland Press Herald and the Kennebec Journal. "We may disagree with civil disobedience in this particular instance, but it is a fundamental right each and every one of us might engage in if we found the issue important enough. 

Now...

These are "proud Republicans" who "want Gov. LePage and his administration to succeed." They want to see his right-wing policy agenda (lower taxes, less government, etc.) enacted. And their criticism of LePage isn't directed at his opposition to organized labor but at "the tone and spirit of some of the remarks he has made." What they seek to uphold is civil disobedience, the right to dissent, a political culture of dignity and respect, a spirit of civility. While they claim that they "are not the enemy of labor and labor is certainly not an enemy to [them]," it is clear that the rights of workers, and particularly organized workers who bargain collectively, not only isn't their priority but may actually be antithetical to their pro-business ideology.

So is this really dung at all? These Republicans like LePage. They just want him to tone it down and respect their common opponents.

Fair enough, but this is a case of a prominent Tea Party Republican going too far and members of his own party publicly chastising him. And even if these Republicans aren't necessarily pro-labor, and even if they support much of the Tea Party agenda, their call for greater dignity and respect, including towards labor, is very much a rebuke to the politics of extremism and absolutism that characterizes so much of the right these days. 

It's good to see that at least some Republicans have had enough.