“That’s not supposed to happen!”

Faux News did a piece on the puzzling, confounding and completely mysterious uptick in nazis, anti-Semites and white supremacists who are running for office as Republicans and “causing headaches” for the party.

Oh dear. Thoughts and Bayers.

Before I go any further, I must note that the reporter for Fox, an organization that shares direct responsibility for any headaches that the GOP now claims it did nazi coming, has no problem following the AP’s guidelines on describing the various flavors of hateful whites that Fox has helped inspire. And unlike a certain Jeff Zuckerborg, the reporter has no problem understanding the intent of Holocaust deniers.

Such displays of clarity make the rest of article seem more reality avoidant than the usual Faux output, and that’s saying something. Fox is aware that people who have tried for years to get onto the ballot have finally succeeded in doing so, as Republicans. But why it is working at all, much less why it is working now, is a mystery that can’t be acknowledged, much less unraveled. However, the GOProcedural whoopsies that the writer does mention are pretty telling. For example, there’s California candidate John Fitzgerald, who was able to get on the ballot by saying the right things to people who don’t ask questions if you have the right look:

Before the June 8 primary, he seemed like an ordinary candidate with a stock campaign platform that highlighted, among other things, a more isolationist foreign policy, Second Amendment rights and campaign finance reform.

But a deeper dive into Fitzgerald reveals a number of troubling beliefs.

That’s putting it mildly. For example, Fitzgerald believes that Jewish people played a significant role in the African slave trade. Also, he’s a big old Holocaust denier:

Last month, he posted on his site a reward of “$2,000 to anybody who can prove that the official Holocaust narrative is true” and said that Dwight D. Eisenhower ran concentration camps that killed Germans during WWII.

“Everything we’ve been told about the Holocaust is a lie,” Fitzgerald recently said on a neo-Nazi radio show. “My entire campaign is about exposing this lie.”

[…]

The California Republican Party at first had supported Fitzgerald’s bid for Congress, before learning about his open anti-Semitism. Matt Fleming, the communications director for the state’s GOP, said this was not an endorsement, but rather an automatic process — the result of Fitzgerald being the only Republican in the race. That process has since been strengthened, he said.

Fleming said that the party probably could have done more homework on Fitzgerald, but emphasized that the controversial views were not publicly known prior to the primary election.

So do a better job of burying your ‘controversial’ scat after you’re nominated, fascists.

The self-imposed confusion about where all these bigots are coming from is as convincing as the display of dismay by various Republican apparatchiks, including Ted Ooze (R-Texas)

“This is horrific. An avowed Nazi running for Congress,” Cruz tweeted. “To the good people of Illinois, you have two reasonable choices: write in another candidate, or vote for the Democrat. This bigoted fool should receive ZERO votes.”

I would send the same message to the people of Texas regarding Cruz. But why is the party that people like Steve King and D. Trump call home even pretending to care?

Because it makes the lefty snowflakes point and say mean things.

Nehlen, Jones, Fitzgerald and other fringe candidates in the GOP have emerged as PR problems for a Republican Party seeking to reject knee-jerk allegations of racism and xenophobia from the left, often aimed at Trump supporters of all stripes.

It could be the GOP’s decades-long support for increasingly repressive policies and candidates has something to do with it. Its voters’ habit of following orders and supporting and voting for increasingly unabashed bigots could be another reason for this alleged mono-synaptic response. One might even argue that a political party that was truly concerned about appearances would take steps to make sure the party was repellent to such candidates and such voters. But this is the GOP, it wants those voters. And if any of these candidates win, they’ll be as welcome as the unthinkable Republican DOPUS, and the bar for who is acceptable and what the party will defend, will be lowered once again.