Sen. Jason Rapert (R-Bigelow) is the Arkansas version of a conservative Renaissance man. Depending on the day, he may show up as a fiddle player1, a flouter of campaign-finance laws (repeatedly), obliquely racist, a proselytizer of the highest order, a bigot who would attack anyone who doesn’t subscribe to his world view, vehemently anti-Muslim2 and anti-woman, fully bent over in service of the oil industry, a pompous ass who is willing to turn his back on any constituent who doesn’t blindly support him, neither a doctor nor a scientist, a huge proponent of unconstitutional bills that accomplish nothing, and completely disingenuous about his level of transparency when pressed on an issue.
With that kind of schedule, you might think it would be impossible for Sen. Rapert to add “jingoistic moron” to his already impressive curriculum vitae. How dare you underestimate his ability to multitask?!
BUT WAIT! THERE’S MORE!
That’s right: the distinguished3 gentleman from Bigelow thinks the best way to deal with the Islamic State involves firing a nuclear weapon.
I assume there’s not a lot of need to explain why this is the dumbest thing any Arkansas Republican has said in…minutes, at least.
Nevertheless, let’s review, just for some snow-day shiggles:
1. Rapert makes it sound like nuking ISIS would be as simple as targeting a specific house, hitting it with a nuclear weapon, and not worrying about anything else in the world. Which, honestly, is about as far from reality as one can get in this context. ISIS holds an area roughly the size of Pennsylvania, with footholds into an area many times larger. There is no chance — literally none — that Rapert’s plan would wipe out ISIS or convince ISIS to abandon it’s efforts. In fact…
2. Assume the U.S. took complete leave of its senses and followed Rapert’s insane advice; in addition to killing thousands of non-combants and causing long-term disfigurement and health problems for tens of thousands more, how do you think the region as a whole would react to the U.S.’s actions? How do you think Russia and China and multiple other places that are not pro-U.S. as it stands would react? Are we supposed to assume that everyone would say, “whoa…check out America! If they’re listening to the Bigot of Bigelow, we better fall in line!”?
3. So…Rapert is cool with violating the law?4 That’s what we’re to take away from this? Since Missouri v. Holland in 1920, it’s been settled that a validly entered treaty has the same force and effect as the Constitution. The United States is party to a number of non-proliferation and other treaties that would preclude the proactive use of nuclear weapons. But, hey, who cares about federal law when there’s an asinine point to be made by some fool that the worst parts of Faulkner County had the poor sense to elect?
At the end of the day, for better or worse5Jason Rapert is a state senator from Arkansas. As such, his opinion on how America should handle foreign affairs and enemy combatants is not even remotely important.6 He has no sway with anyone who would make such decisions.
Unfortunately for his constituents, admitting this limitation on his own importance,and engaging his Facebook followers on actual issues is anathema to Jason Rapert.
Or, as Chris Hicks put it on Facebook:
His one admirable trait, actually.↩
I must’ve missed the part where Jesus said to be hateful and intolerant of others.↩
This is a lie.↩
Based on his abortion bills, the answer here is almost certainly yes.↩
Worse. Definitely worse.↩
This should be self-evident, given that someone who did have input into the decision would probably not be running his mouth about it on Facebook.↩