Perhaps conservatives are confused, so let me remind them — people generally feel sympathy for those with physical disabilities. Mocking and threatening them is rarely a good idea.<\/p>\n
The president recently approached a Florida voter in a wheelchair by saying, “You look comfortable<\/a>.” He followed this up by mocking<\/a> a reporter with a visual impairment. Yesterday, Rush Limbaugh went after<\/a> Michael J. Fox for his Parkinson’s disease. And in Wyoming, Rep. Barbara Cubin (R) threatened a rival <\/a>whose multiple sclerosis keeps him confined to a wheelchair.<\/p>\n Thomas Rankin, the Libertarian running for Wyoming’s lone U.S. House seat, said Rep. Barbara Cubin, R-Wyo., threatened to slap him after a televised debate.<\/p>\n During a debate Sunday that also included Democrat Gary Trauner, Cubin and Rankin had a testy exchange over campaign contributions Cubin received from former House Majority Leader Tom DeLay, R-Texas.<\/p>\n Rankin, who has multiple sclerosis and uses an electric wheelchair, said Monday night in a telephone interview with The Associated Press that the confrontation occurred immediately after the debate.<\/p>\n “My aide and I were packing up to leave the debate, and Barbara walked over to me and said, ‘If you weren’t sitting in that chair, I’d slap you across the face.’ That’s quote-unquote,” Rankin said.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n The Cubin campaign didn’t deny the exchange, but issued a statement that suggested the lawmaker was justified in threatening Rankin because he “insulted her integrity.”<\/p>\n The response isn’t exactly persuasive. Cubin may be a little touchy on the subject, but sensitive enough to confront and threaten to slap a rival in a wheelchair? As Josh Marshall put it<\/a>, “It’s not easy being corrupt. But the pressure does seem to be getting to them.”<\/p>\n Maybe I’m looking at this all wrong. Maybe the Republicans’ willingness to “mix it up” with people with obvious physical disabilities is the GOP’s way of showing respect and demonstrating a sense of equality — Republicans are treating people in wheelchairs, for example, as poorly as they treat everyone else. It started in 2002 when the GOP attacked the patriotism of triple-amputee Max Cleland, it continued in 2004 when the GOP mocked U.S. troops<\/a> wounded in battle, and now we’re seeing the continuation of the party’s new found tolerance this year.<\/p>\n For what it’s worth, the fight for Wyoming’s lone House seat is quite competitive. Despite having served for 12 years in one of the most consistently Republican states in the country, Cubin lead Democratic challenger Gary Trauner in a recent poll<\/a>, 44% to 37%. No word yet on whether the “I’d slap you across the face” incident will make matters worse for the incumbent, but it probably won’t help.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Perhaps conservatives are confused, so let me remind them — people generally feel sympathy for those with physical disabilities. Mocking and threatening them is rarely a good idea. The president recently approached a Florida voter in a wheelchair by saying, “You look comfortable.” He followed this up by mocking a reporter with a visual impairment. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[617],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-8849","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8849","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8849"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8849\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8849"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8849"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8849"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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\nTwice during the debate, Rankin insisted that Cubin had taken $22,000 in improper campaign donations. Cubin denied the accusation, but it’s worth noting that Cubin received $22,520 in campaign contributions from Tom Delay’s Americans for a Republican Majority PAC. She refused to return the money even after DeLay was indicted and was forced to resign from the House in disgrace.<\/p>\n