Totally different from Sharia law

I assume that the title of Charles Fuqua’s book—God’s Law: The Only Political Solution—was his second choice after he discovered that the phrase “final solution” was taken. Fuqua is a former Arkansas state legislator whose hits include calling for the expulsion of Muslims from the United States and noting that both followers of Islam and liberals want “violent, bloody revolution.” Now he’s running for the Arkansas legislature again, despite the fact that his aforementioned book calls for legalizing the death penalty against rebellious children. He’s also getting funding from the Arkansas Republican Party and prominent US Representatives, despite the fact that his book et cetera. And he’s against abortion, despite the fact that his book etc. You can do it with anything! Insane excerpt after the jump.

In case you’re wondering whether Fuqua is just a nut: no. He’s not calling for the execution of disobedient children without a firm logical explanation. On the contrary, it’s right there in the Bible:

The maintenance of civil order in society rests on the foundation of family discipline. Therefore, a child who disrespects his parents must be permanently removed from society in a way that gives an example to all other children of the importance of respect for parents. The death penalty for rebellious children is not something to be taken lightly. The guidelines for administering the death penalty to rebellious children are given in Deut 21:18-21. This passage does not give parents blanket authority to kill their children. They must follow the proper procedure in order to have the death penalty executed against their children.

Fuqua goes on to say that very few children would actually be executed, because the mere possibility would serve as a deterrent to misbehavior. If anyone understands mortality, it’s a child.

So that’s all funny and everything, but what does it teach us? Not to vote for Charles Fuqua? That’s not really a valuable lesson; I don’t think Combat! blog even reaches Arkansas voters, because it is written. It starts to look like Fuqua is only good for schadenfreude, but if you scroll down in the Arkansas Times article, you get this response from Rep. Steve Womack (R-AR,) about his donations to the Fuqua campaign:

I am disheartened by Jon Hubbard and Charlie Fuqua’s recent statements and do not support or agree with their views. Offering donations to their campaigns—and to all other Republican candidates seeking office in the Arkansas Legislature this fall—should not suggest otherwise.

Look upon that last sentence again and despair. Donating money to Fuqua’s campaign to become a lawmaker in the state of Arkansas does not mean Womack supports his views. It’s not his beliefs or legislative agenda that Womack supports; it’s the R after his name.

What Charles Fuqua appears to be, then, is a canary in the mine. He’s an example of how the present Republican Party rewards any kind of grandstanding extremism, particularly at the state level. The Tea Party may be a tired joke in national politics, but it’s enabled all manner of kook to win local nominations across the country. Outside the federal arena, Republican politics is an absurd race to see who can declare himself most conservative.

At the federal level, that’s called “firing up the base.” Steve Womack presumably opposes the death penalty for children, but not so much that he won’t give money to a candidate who advocates it. The important thing about Fuqua and “all other Republican candidates seeking office in the Arkansas Legislature this fall” is that they win. They can believe whatever crazy shit they want, so long as they are Republicans.

So that, in microcosm, is the present state of the Grand Old Party. The bottom end has discovered that calling the president a traitor and throwing around the word “antichrist” wins primaries, and the upper end believes that the party’s success is more important than its candidates’ agendas. It is a recipe for possibly effective politics and definitely awful government.

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