Rep. Paul Broun Says Obama Upholds 'Soviet' Constitution; Nation Sighs & Rolls Eyes

 
 Georgia Rep. Paul Broun allowed a torrent of raw stupid to tumble out of his mouth again this week, so let's look at what this paragon of Americanism said this time. On Tuesday, Broun told the Atlanta Journal-Constitution 

“I think my role is to uphold support and defend our Constitution...The Constitution I uphold and defend is the one I carry in my pocket all the time, the U.S. Constitution. I don’t know what Constitution that other members of Congress uphold, but it’s not this one. I think the only Constitution that Barack Obama upholds is the Soviet constitution, not this one. He has no concept of this one, though he claimed to be a constitutional lawyer.”

It's sort of cute that he thinks he can be more inflammatory than, say, Michele Bachmann, who set the bar for questioning the loyalty of the Democrat Party way back in 2008, but we imagine that for Broun, brainless hyperbole about the President's loyalty is just one of his job duties, to keep Teabag Nation fed.

No doubt he was aiming for responses like this one, from Weasel Zippers:  "Libs feign outrage in 3… 2… 1." And of course, the comments to that piece praise Broun for having the stones to call out the commie, blah blah blah. (Fun fact! Did you know Thomas Paine, "the Father of the American Revolution,"invented communism more than 50 years before Karl Marx invented communism?) But the post missed the real fun. It links to the HuffPo story, but for some reason doesn't include the lede:

A Republican member of the House of Representatives said Tuesday that President Barack Obama upholds the constitution of a socialist state that ceased to exist more than 20 years ago.

Guys, that doesn't even rise to feigned outrage. That's smirking.

The best response to the nontroversy came from diligent Mother Jones reporter Asawin Suebsaeng, who took Broun's pronouncement exactly as seriously as it deserved:

It's pretty clear that there's nothing to suggest that President Obama adheres to the "Soviet constitution." What isn't clear is which Soviet constitution Broun was referring to.

During the seven-decade existence of the Soviet Union, the government approved three separate constitutions. There is the one approved in 1924, which defines the "camp of capitalism" as "national hate and inquality, colonial slavery and chauvinism, national oppression and massacres, brutalities and imperialistic wars." The one adopted in 1936 (also called "Stalin's Constitution") actually pays a lot of lip service to universal suffrage, individual rights, health care, and the like. And the constitution adopted in 1977 (also called the "Brezhnev Constitution") praises the Soviet people, their army, and Vladimir Lenin for winning the Russian Civil War and therefore starting the "epoch-making turn of mankind from capitalism to socialism."

I reached out to the congressman's Washington office to ask which of these three he meant.

Bravo, sir. Bravo. 
 

[ AJC.com / HuffPo / MoJo ]

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