One of my favorite TV shows turned into an episode of “The Twilight Zone” today with the appearance of tea-bagger, book-burner and anti-gay hatemonger Wendy Day.
Day appeared as a guest on the long-running weekly Michigan PBS political show "Off the Record.” The show must be scraping the bottom of the barrel for guests. Day craves the spotlight more than anything else, and although the show has a small audience with political junkies like me, it was just more exposure for the divisive Howell School Board member.
Host and long-time Capitol Correspondent Tim Skubick usually asks tough questions, but Day got nothing but softballs. Day has a long history of supporting rightwing hate and extremist groups that gained her national attention, but she really took advantage of the racist anti-government Astroturf “tea party” movement that sprang up last year that attracted some extremist right wing groups to get even more attention.
With health care reform so close to becoming a reality, a couple of rightwing extremist Washington, D.C. lobbying firms helped organize the “tea parties” and spread the more that $1.4 million a day the insurance companies are spending to defeat it.
She is billing herself as the president of another misnamed “tea party” group called “Common Sense in Government.” It apparently follows the Bush Administration’s practice of naming things the opposite of what they really do, like the Clean Skies Initiative, the Healthy Forest Initiative and No Child Left Behind.
Apparently, Day wants to re-fight the American Civil War and turn back the clock with the “state’s rights” farce that the southern states used in order to maintain the institution of slavery.
“Our beef is government has too much focus and control over the individual lives of Americans, and that the federal government has more power than they are supposed to,” she said. “What you are looking at is a state’s rights issue.”
The only half way hard question was asked by panelist Chris Christoff from the Detroit Free Press’s Lansing Bureau, who asked her how large the state budget was, and she had no idea.
“If it’s in the phone book, government should probably not do it,” Day answered.
For someone who says they want the federal government to adhere to the U.S. Constitution, Day’s support for a part-time U.S. Congress is even more hare-brained.
She claims her teabag group is bipartisan, and her group is currently behind robo calls against Democrats. Day also said her hate group plans to form a political action committee (PAC); no doubt funded with the massive amounts of cash from the insurance industry, former U.S. House Majority Leader and rightwing Republican Dick Armey’s Freedom Works and the Washington, D.C.-based rightwing think tank Americans for Prosperity.
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