With Friends Like These…

by Stuart Shapiro

The pages of Liberaland are often filled with embarrassing quotes from Republican candidates or their supporters (see here and here).  One could ask,”How hard is it to find such crazy quotes?”  Well, dear reader, not hard at all.  Adele Stan has a handy list of some of the most embarrassing endorsements the four presidential candidates have received:

What’s stunning about this year’s crop of endorsers of Republican presidential candidates is the torrent of venom, mendacity and absurdity that spills from their mouths and pens — not to mention the fact that most of these endorsements have been warmly received, and none have been rejected. There’s also a peculiar dichotomy of styles represented: They either hail from the priggish, uptight wing of the party that loathes popular culture as coarse and sinful, or they represent that coarse and sex-laden culture. The thing they have in common? Hatred — of somebody who’s not like them.

As Stan notes, the list is just partial.  The reason its so easy to find supporters of Romney et al. that say things that repulse many voters isn’t because we’re looking so hard; it’s because there are so many of them!

By: Stuart Shapiro

Stuart is a professor and the Director of the Public Policy
program at the Bloustein School of Planning and Public Policy at Rutgers
University. He teaches economics and cost-benefit analysis and studies
regulation in the United States at both the federal and state levels.
Prior to coming to Rutgers, Stuart worked for five years at the Office
of Management and Budget in Washington under Presidents Clinton and
George W. Bush.