Race to the Center of the Earth

Meet Renee Elmers, scourge of the Burlington Coat Factory Mosque and so much else:

Tea Party activist Renee Ellmers defeated Democratic Rep. Bob Etheridge by less than 1% of the vote in North Carolina’s second district.

A self-declared “product of the tea party,” Ellmers ran on an anti-health care and anti-stimulus platform: she compared President Obama to “Louis XIV, the Sun King” and asserted that his administration is establishing “a socialistic form of government.” She blasted Democrats for their “imperial ruling class attitude,” and referred to the economic stimulus plan as “massive government takeovers of the economy.”

Ellmers believes that Obama puts the country at risk because he supposedly refuses “to recognize – and tell the American people – [that] he understands radical Islamic terrorism does exist.” She also launched an ugly and bigoted campaign ad equating all Muslims with the 9/11 terrorists, [] arguing that the planned Islamic Community Center in Lower Manhattan is a “victory mosque” and a symbol of Muslim conquest:

Narrator: “After the Muslims conquered Jerusalem, and Cordoba and Constantinople, they built victory mosques. And now, they want to build a mosque near Ground Zero. Where does Bob Etheridge stand? He won’t say, won’t speak out, won’t take a stand.”

Ellmers: “The terrorists haven’t won, and we should tell them in plain English, ‘No, there will never be a mosque at Ground Zero.'”

[…]

Ellmers says she decided to run for Congress after she started campaigning against health care reform with Americans for Prosperity, a corporate front group tied to the Koch brothers. She told G. Gordon Liddy that the health care reform bill was “put in place simply to control our lives,” and maintained that “physicians are not going to be able to continue to practice” because of the reform law, which she said “is just a monster.”

According to Ellmers, insurance companies should be able to deny individuals coverage for pre-existing conditions. “Private insurance companies [should] decide how they’re going to handle the pre-existing conditions situation,” she said. Ellmers also attacked a requirement that insurance companies to cover maternity care and other health issues, calling such coverage “very costly.”

In a debate, Ellmers came out against emergency funding to protect the jobs of teachers, and suggested that diverting public funds towards private school vouchers through “school choice” would help prevent job losses among public school teachers.

She said that her plan to reduce the debt would be to cut taxes and end foreign aid. As a proponent of the “FairTax” she believes that the progressive income tax should be scrapped and replaced with a regressive national sales tax.

An avowed opponent of immigrant rights, Ellmers claimed that Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer showed “the kind of leadership we have not seen in a long time” when she signed SB 1070, and suggested that Congress vote to defund the Department of Justice over their lawsuit against the draconian immigration law.

Ellmers told the conservative RedState blog that she is fiercely anti-choice and opposes the feminist movement. She was been endorsed by Sarah Palin, Concerned Women for America, and the Susan B. Anthony List.

And she was classy right to the end:

After Republican Congresswoman Renee Ellmers got out of her car to vote Tuesday, she greeted a woman by name and then told the woman she had “gained some weight.”

Ellmers continued walking by and said, “You’re eating a little bit too much pork barbecue. Whoo!”

The woman, Maggie Sandrock, is a former chair of the Harnett County Republican Party. Sandrock said she worked on Ellmers’ previous two runs for Congress, but is supporting Republican Congressman George Holding this time.

The good news is that Ellmers lost her primary campaign last night. The bad news is that she lost for being insufficiently wingnutty. But I’m sure that moderate center-right party Tom Friedman is hankering for will materialize any minute now.