The Republic | azcentral.com
It's the final week to request an early
ballot for the primary, and the kookometer is waving wildly. Nowhere more so
than in Prescott, where one of our esteemed legislators invited an Ohio
congressional candidate to come help her raise funds last weekend.
He proceeded to explain how to solve our
illegal-immigration problem.
"For years I've said, you know, put a damn
fence on the ... border going to Mexico and start shootin'," Samuel Joseph
Wurzelbacher, aka "Joe the Plumber," said during a Friday fundraiser for our
favorite gun-toting lawmaker, none other than state Sen. Lori Klein.
"I'm running for Congress, and that should
be a bad thing to say," he continued. "You know what, that's how I feel. I'm not
going to hide it because I'm running for an office. I want my borders protected.
I'm very, very, uh, uh, adamant about that."
Actually, I think most people want the
border protected. I'm just assuming the sane ones wouldn't suggest turning the
place into a rootin' tootin' shootin' gallery.
They wouldn't, would they?
Given that Klein didn't immediately move
to distance herself from Wurzelbacher's comments -- which he repeated on
Saturday during Klein's "Patriot Rally" in Dewey -- I thought I'd offer her a
chance on Tuesday to put a little daylight between her and her "honored
guest."
Already one of her opponents for a
legislative seat, House Speaker Andy Tobin, has questioned Wurzelbacher's
comments, and U.S. Rep. Jeff Flake flat out decried them.
"Here's one Republican hoping that Joe the
Plumber plies his politics far from Arizona," Flake tweeted on Monday
evening.
Could Klein do less, given that
Wurzelbacher was in Arizona speaking at her request and for her benefit?
"He was joking," she told me on Tuesday.
"He was not serious. He was certainly tongue in cheek, and I think the media
making such a thing of this is ridiculous.
"He was making an expression that we do
need to be strong on the border. And, furthermore, Laurie Roberts, I absolutely
have no respect for you as a journalist for the things you said about members of
the Legislature."
Those of you who have followed Operation
Dekookification know that Klein made my list of top 10 kooks at the Capitol. (To
see the list, along with my picks for keepers and up-and-comers, go to dekook.azcentral.com.)
The Anthem Republican was redistricted out
of her Senate seat and is now hoping to snag one of the House slots held by
Tobin and Rep. Karen Fann.
Among the reasons Klein achieved kookdom
status was her love affair with her raspberry pink Ruger -- going so far as to
point it at a Republic reporter -- her
19th-century bid to bring back nullification and her decision last year to stand
up on the Senate floor and read an unverified letter from a substitute teacher
who complained that Hispanic students refused to stand for the Pledge of
Allegiance because they hate America, refused to speak English and tore up
textbooks.
Klein seemed far more interested Tuesday
in talking about that letter than the appropriateness or lack thereof of
shooting people on sight if they cross the border.
"I have very little respect for the lies
that you told because you basically said in your thing about the kookification
that I read a letter that was fictitious," she said.
"Well, the fictitious guy who wrote the
letter, by the way, exists. His name is Tony Hill. He worked as a substitute
teacher and, furthermore, I got hundreds of letters from teachers all over this
state, all over the country verifying that these types of incidents of
disruption in classes happen all of the time with people who do not want to
speak our language.
"So, Laurie Roberts, I have no respect for
you because you've lied in your reporting, and I have nothing further to say to
you."
Actually, I never said that the teacher
was fictitious, merely that the school district investigated his claims after
Klein read the letter publicly and found them to be inaccurate.
Sadly, Klein hung up before I could point
that out or return to the subject at hand, which was her defense of
Wurzelbacher's comments. It's a shame, too, because I'd have liked to ask her
one more question about his "joke."
Was it funny?
Read more: http://www.azcentral.com/arizonarepublic/local/articles/2012/08/14/20120814roberts0815-joe-plumber-adds-kleins-kook-credentials.html#ixzz23dDT28uQ
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