Discussion:

Idiocy for idiots. The aptly named Brat aims to appeal to the non-opposable thumbs crowd.

New levels of stupid reached every week, how do they do it? I have made a game at home of it and these assholes beat me hands down I cannot purposefully be as fucking stupid as any GOP pol.

Rep. Brat once again proves the old aphorism:

Wingnuts: Crazy? Stupid? Evil? - Pick Three.

Even Canada’s conservatives know you don’t screw with healthcare. Sometimes they make noises about it but they never actually pull the trigger.

Is the Republican “base” occupied by primarily stupid people? I don’t understand how their elected officials keep coming up with ever more bizarre falsehoods, with impunity. As a Democrat, if you dispute settled science or compare some law that passed in Congress and was signed by the president to the most extremist governments in history, I’m not going to vote for you because I think you are an idiot.

So my question is, how do these people keep getting elected despite trying to champion the art of absurd statements? Is it that their voters are idiotic enough to believe them, or that they just don’t care?

Yes.

“Look at every country in the world”

Uh, we did that. And as it turns out, every developed nation in the world with some form of a nationalized healthcare system is doing healthcare far better than the United States in a number of ways. Turns out the U.S. ranks pretty low in that regard.

With his academic and professional background,Brat is clearly not stupid. That means he is a liar, a con-man, and a grifter like Ted Cruz, Marco Rubio, Chris Christie, etc. In other word, they are all evil.

Oh Eric Cantor. I never thought there would be someone that would made you look like Mother Theresa in comparison.

Actually, Obamacare makes the US look more like Israel. Israel’s system has health insurance provided by private companies and mandated insurance coverage that is partially subsidized by the government. The big difference is that the Israeli system is single payer.

No, there is no end to the stupidity. From his wikipedia profile:

To Brat, culture matters in economic markets. He believes that the culture that produced Adam Smith was a Protestant culture and that fact and the ethics of that culture are important in understanding market efficiency. In his 2011 essay titled God and Advanced Mammon — Can Theological Types Handle Usury and Capitalism?, Brat posits that if Christian people “had the guts to spread the word”, government would not need to “backstop every action we take”. According to Kevin Roose in a New York Magazine article, Brat “sees free-market economics as being intricately linked to ethics and faith and he makes the case that Adam Smith’s invisible hand theory, should be seen in the context of Christianity”. Furthering the central theme of Max Weber’s seminal book The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism, Brat argues in his 2004 paper Economic Growth and Institutions: The Rise and Fall of the Protestant Ethic? that “institutions such as religion, democracy and government anti-diversion policies all significantly enhance a country’s long-run economic performance,” and concludes that “the religion variable may be the strongest ex ante, exogenous institutional variable in the literature.” In a paper titled Is Growth Exogenous? Taking Bernanke Seriously, Brat debates former Federal Reserve chairman Ben Bernanke, asserting that Bernanke’s work on economic growth overlooks religious institutions – in particular Protestant – in a country’s economic growth, and that while savings rates, population growth and human capital accumulation help drive economic growth, the larger factor is “the Protestant religious establishment”, which Bernanke ignores.

Brat has advocated that Christians, both individually and through the church, should more forcefully support free-market capitalism, and should behave more altruistically, in the manner of Jesus, so that “we would not need the government to backstop every action we take.” He has blamed the rise of Adolf Hitler in Germany on the lack of “unified resistance”, adding, “I have the sinking feeling that it could all happen again, quite easily.” Brat believes that countries with Protestant pasts have economic advantages over countries that do not, and that Protestantism “provides an efficient set of property rights and encourages a modern set of economic incentives” that often lead to “positive economic performance”. He believes in Christ as a transformer of culture, and that capitalism is the key to world transformation, which can be achieved when capitalism and Christianity merge; if people follow the gospel, and as a consequence behave more morally, he argues, then the markets will improve.

Although Brat has stated he does not identify as a Randian, he has acknowledged having been influenced by Ayn Rand’s novel Atlas Shrugged and has expressed appreciation of Ayn Rand’s case for human freedom and free markets."

So, to recap: If you’re not a conservative Christian, you can’t be a successful capitalist. Sorry, all you Jewish folks out there. But at the same time, Ayn Rand is awesome, even though she was explicitly atheist.

David Brat is a fucking moron who would be better off using his divinity degree thumping a Bible than serving in Congress.

But, Congressman, Obamacare makes America less like an Ayn Rand wet dream, and that is an unmistakeable good!

None of the GOP conservative wingnuts want to embrace the Heritage Foundation or RomneyCare any longer? They would rather have Medicare for everyone? Seems to me that a lot of Republicans not only don’t like their own conservative ideology any longer but would rather be FDR Democrats.

I think we could give Mr Brat (hoo boy there snark in that name) two dollars in his left hand and three in his right and then ask him which hand had more money in it. He’d choose incorrectly. We could point out the money in his right is the relative cost of free market health care and in his left is the cost for that same health care via the Affordable Care Act.
I would then ask him why he is against saving money rather than spending unnecessary amounts.
This boy seems slow on the uptake.

Rep. Brat’s comments are embarrassing to thinking people.

1daven: Is it that their voters are idiotic enough to believe them, or that they just don’t care?

geez, dave, this is one of the great, unsolved mysteries you want an answer to. WTFK? i have some very intelligent republican friends. i ask them, how can you buy into this bullshit? they answer, well i’ve always voted republican.

But GOPers like Brat live in their insular bubble and aren’t really aware of how other industrialized first world countries deal with health care costs. He’d be shocked by how “socialist” some are.
When Jesus was around health care was dependent on miracles and faith healers like Jesus as medical science did not yet exist and i guess that would be fine with him in today’s world.

Let’s see. Just for fun let’s look at the “map” the way he did.

Germany is all lit up. They have universal health care
The UK is all lit up. They have universal health care
France is all lit up. They have universal health care
South Korea is all lit up (as he observed). They have universal health care
Canada is all lit up. They have universal health care
Taiwan is all lit up. They have universal health care
Japan is all lit up. They have universal health care
Norway is all lit up. They have universal health care
Sweden and Denmark are all lit up.
And the list goes on and on…

This man is an idiot, no offense intended to idiots.

There is no end to GOPer stupidity. It will get much…MUCH worse as the election approaches.

Yes, and what the hell is wrong with the water around Richmond?