Fresh off his trip to Michigan to campaign for far-right extremist Tudor Dixon (and to “make Trump look like Travolta,” LOL), Glenn Youngkin is now headed off to Maine, to campaign for former Gov. Paul LePage (R). So what’s the deal with LePage, you ask? Given that all those WaPo articles last year assured us – albeit completely falsely – that Youngkin was some sort of “moderate” in a sweater-vest, you’d think that LePage would also be a “moderate” Republican, not an unhinged, extremist, “semi-fascist,” bigot, whatever? Except…that’s right, yet AGAIN, Youngkin will be campaigning for a right-wing wackadoodle. Here just a short list of LePage’s many career “highlights”:
- “As governor he made controversial remarks regarding abortion, the LGBTQ community, racial minorities, the death penalty, voting rights, campaign financing, the government and the environment that sparked widespread national criticism including calls for impeachment.”
- “LePage rejects the overwhelming scientific consensus on climate change, which states that climate change is dangerous and primarily human-caused. According to Democratic state senator Brownie Carson, during LePage’s time in office ‘he not only didn’t care about the environment, he was actively hostile toward it.’...LePage has claimed, despite an abundance of scientific research to the contrary, that climate change may be beneficial, arguing that the opening of the Northern Passage through the melting of arctic ice could have an advantage for Maine…LePage has criticized wind power and in particular the large-scale expansion of installed capacity mandated by Maine’s 2008 Wind Energy Act and wind energy’s large role in the state’s Renewable Portfolio Standard.”
- “He has called for repeal of the federal Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, saying he believes it is unconstitutional…On July 8, 2012, LePage said, while discussing the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, that the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) was ‘the new Gestapo” due to their role in enforcing the law’.“
- “On the topic of transgender students in grades K–12, he said he did not understand ‘how people, at least sane people, would want to allow transgender in our primary schools and our high schools.'”
- “At the beginning of his term as governor, he was criticized for refusing either to attend Martin Luther King Jr. Day events in Portland or Orono or to meet with Maine representatives of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), telling the press the group could ‘kiss my butt’ His actions were called ‘astonishing and troubling’ by civil rights group leaders and local newspapers.”
- “On June 30, 2014, the website Talking Points Memo reported that LePage had met eight times with members of the sovereign citizen movement between January and September 2013. According to participants, the sovereign citizens group used these meetings, some of which lasted nearly three hours, to inform LePage of their beliefs, which include assertions that the U.S. dollar and Maine state courts are illegal, that Maine Senate President Justin Alfond and Maine House Speaker Mark Eves are guilty of treason and should be executed, and that the U.S. government and the United Nations are planning for a war against Americans.”
- “LePage generated national headlines by stating at a January 6, 2016, town hall meeting in Bridgton regarding drug dealers: ‘(Drug dealers) are guys with the name D-Money, Smoothie, Shifty; these types of guys, they come from Connecticut and New York, they come up here, they sell their heroin, they go back home. Incidentally, half the time they impregnate a young, white girl before they leave, which is a real sad thing because then we have another issue we have to deal with down the road.‘ On August 24 [2016], LePage was asked about these comments; he denied being a racist but said that he had been compiling a binder of drug arrestees since January and that ’90-plus per cent of those pictures in my book, and it’s a three-ringed binder, are black and Hispanic people.’ When asked to provide the binder, LePage replied, ‘Let me tell you something: black people come up the highway and they kill Mainers. You ought to look into that. You make me so sick.'”
- On August 25, 2016, “a reporter insinuated to LePage that Democratic State Representative Drew Gattine had called him a racist. LePage responded by calling Gattine and leaving him a voicemail message: ‘Mr. Gattine, this is Governor Paul Richard LePage. I would like to talk to you about your comments about my being a racist, you cocksucker. I want to talk to you. You want — I want you to prove that I’m a racist. I’ve spent my life helping black people and you little son of a bitch, cocksucker. You — I need you to just fricking — I want you to record this and make it public because I am after you. Thank you.'”
- In August 2017, LePage said that “the enemy right now, the overwhelming majority of people coming in, are people of color or people of Hispanic origin.”
On and on it goes with this extremist, racist, homophobic, conspiratorial, unhinged fascist. The question is, why would anyone in their right mind want to actually support him, let alone campaign for him? Of course, Youngkin’s the same guy who just campaigned for an extremist candidate in Michigan who said, when asked “ whether a 14-year-old rape victim should be allowed to get an abortion,” that “I’ve talked to those people who were the child of a rape victim and the bond that those two people made, and the fact that out of that tragedy, there was healing through that baby.” So yeah, this is exactly who and what Glenn Youngkin is; judge him by his ACTIONS, including the people he CHOOSES to associate with and support for high elective office…
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