There is a story that Caligula had his horse Incitatus declared a member of the Roman Senate because Caligula was an insane tyrant with a deep, quite possibly perverse, affection for his favorite beast of burden. There is a competing story that Caligula was less interested in enobling his pet than in humiliating his Senate enemies, by forcing them to accept a dumb brute as their equal in mutual dependence upon the whims of a sociopath with a penchant for public displays.
The Tea Partiers have made themselves America’s collective Caligulas, voting a whole herd of dumb, dangerous brutes into the House of Representatives through some toxic psycho-social mixture of resentment, ignorance, superstition, and bone-deep stupidity. Sean Cunningham, at the Esquire Politics Blog, has a slideshow “Introducing Your Crooked New Republican Leadership“:
So 2011 is here, and on Wednesday morning, so are the Republicans, and they’re ready to get America rambling as they mount the perches of their new respective committee chairs after winning themselves a majority in the House of Representatives. Yet, a few of them make for curious fits, if “curious” is a euphemism for “unbelievably asinine” or “stunningly absurd.” If you thought former House Energy and Commerce Committee chair Joe Barton was bad — and that’s the guy who apologized to BP for their oil spill — his replacement’s even worse. And have you met Darrell “The Sledgehammer” Issa?…
Click over for the complete Rogues’ Gallery, which raises the possibility that Issa’s years pimping “the Viper” car alarm may yet become his second-worst assault upon American society.