Posted: June 28, 2012 at 5:00 pm

REALLY?! TEA Party Lawmaker: Returning Bison to Tribes Part of Communist Plot to Drive Gas to $25/gallon

Eric Olsen, Krayton Kearns (center) and Dennis Rehberg — TEA Partiers huddle at a GOP event, perhaps to discuss how glad they are that women aren’t present. Pictured are Eric Olsen (left), Rep. Krayton Kerns (center) and Congressman Dennis Rehberg (right)

A new conspiracy is afoot in the Big Sky, according to a TEA Party Republican state legislator.

TEA Party Republican Rep. Krayton Kerns (R-Laurel) has written on his website that returning bison to the Fort Peck Indian Reservation is part of a communist plot to “crush the Republic” and drive gas prices to $25/gallon. In case you’re one of the few people who doesn’t immediately grasp the obvious connection between bison and $25 gas, Kerns kindly explains how the plot will go down.

First, Walt Disney’s cartoon “Bambi” brainwashed the masses to the extent that “state sponsored worship of the earth and creation surpassed worship of our Creator.”

Returning wild bison to the Fort Peck reservation:

“is the second of a four step process to crush the republic and bring our populace into perfect dependence on big government—just as Karl Marx dreamed”

The third step in the Marxist plot, says Kerns, is that “bison will overpopulate” and soon “thousands” will be “ravaging” the area.

Finally, Kerns rationally concludes,

“The world’s economy will grind to a halt due to instability in the Middle East driving the price of gasoline over $25 per gallon.”

Read more about the conspiracy on Kern’s website. I’ve also got screenshots here, here, and here.

Rep. Kerns is outraged that wild, genetically pure bison have returned to tribal lands on the Great Plains. The move reunites American Indians with the iconic species that has been a fundamental part of their culture and the prairie ecosystem. I’m not sure how Kerns would explain the fact that gas prices have actually gone down since the bison were returned to Fort Peck.

Sounding the alarm about this conspiracy will no doubt be a key component of the TEA Party’s message this fall. How anyone could believe this stuff is a puzzle, but what the TEA Party lacks in intelligence, they more than make up in rage. When a TEA Party candidate arrives at your door this fall to share their anger over this latest conspiracy, do not panic. Simply hold up a book, which should make any tea baggers desirous of leaving your immediate vicinity. (It works like a crucifix on vampires.)

Rep. Kerns is the same TEA Party Republican that compared Georgetown law student Sandra Fluke to a rutting bulldog. Sandra Fluke is the woman Rush Limbaugh called a slut for asking that since Viagra is covered by insurance, so should birth control.

Posted: January 26, 2011 at 10:55 pm

Nutwatch: An Analysis

Montana’s TEA Partiers seem obsessed with making Montana into the mecca for right-wing nutters.

The legislature is no exception. The same day that the state TEA Party Republicans pushed a radical Arizona-style immigration law, they embraced the “birther” conspiracy about President Barack Obama. The Flathead Beacon reported today that state House TEA Party Republican Bob Wagner (R-Harrison) has introduced a birther bill would require Obama and any future federal candidate to show her birth certificate to order to be included on the ballot in the presidential election.

But the birther bill could potentially backfire against the Montana GOP if the public comes to believe that such nutty extremism drives their whole agenda. While the TEA Party wing of the MT GOP has yet to explicitly link its birther bill with the anti-immigration, black helicopter, anti-UN, anti-victims of domestic violence, anti-Indian, anti-vaccine and other conspiracy theory based legislation, it seems clear that all of these initiatives spring from the same desire to play to the right-wing base. The same GOP lawmakers are behind most of the proposals, after all.

By the way, isn’t the fact that Obama’s “illegal” human (as the Helena IR would write) status old news by now? How is Rep. Wagner just now getting around to pandering to the crazies about this? He just likes the Constitution you say? Sure, he loves it. He loves it so much he chopped it up into pieces, put it in the blender, and freebased it with a little baking soda.

But these bills won’t improve the lives the state’s crackpot conspiracy theorists and TEA party ralliers-nor will they create higher paying jobs or attract innovative businesses to Montana. They will simply humiliate the legislators who’ve endorsed the measures by making them (and our state) the laughingstocks of the nation-a task they set out upon achieving even before they were elected. The birther bill–and the other black helicopter, Area 51-level conspiracy, racist, sexist and fundi bills–are all forms of reactionary hysteria, but much of this legislation could actually cause profound substantive harm to Montana residents.

The more these ideas are linked, the better.