MAMMOTH FALLS, MISSISSIPPI — Andy LaFoy joined his local affiliate of The Tea Party Network in 2010, as the conservative activist group was rising to power. LaFoy says that at the time he was “fed up royally” with the Republican Party establishment, and wanted to “send those Washington bureaucrats a message” and that’s why he has voted a straight Tea Party favorite ticket in every election since. Back in 2012, when Texas Governor Rick Perry threw his hat in the ring for the Republican nomination, LaFoy says he was “solidly” in Perry’s corner since he was “unafraid to tell it like it is.”
LaFoy says even Perry’s famous “oops” gaffe didn’t turn him off to the possibility of a Perry presidency because “anyone who hates government so much they want to run it so they can’t eliminate it wouldn’t take the time to actually memorize the names of the things they hate, let alone figure out if they actually provide a valuable service to taxpayers.” However, when Perry recently ended his 2016 campaign due to low polling numbers and donations, LaFoy says Perry’s exit speech was “so sane and compassionate you’d think some hippy-dippy liberal wrote it.” That, says LaFoy, “proves beyond a shadow of a doubt” that Perry was unfit for the presidency.
“At first I was a little sad that Ricky left the race, but then I heard him imply we shouldn’t be harsh and Draconian with our treatment of illegal immigrants, and now I know he’s unfit for the presidency,” LaFoy said. He continued by saying, “we don’t need a president who will give these illegals invading our country from the south comfort and aide, we need a president who will turn a cold shoulder to immigrants and treat them like human garbage, just like our Declaration of Independence, Constitution and the plaque on the Statue of Liberty say we should.”
When Perry chastised what he called Trump and his supporters’ nativist rhetoric and admonished everyone to unite together instead of dividing into groups of natives and non-natives, that really set LaFoy off. “We just don’t tolerate that kind of rational, sane thinking in the Republican Party anymore,” LaFoy told us, continuing to add that “it’s all about the most drastic solutions to problems that we completely misunderstand, like immigration.”
When confronted with evidence that immigrants are a net positive for the economy, Mr. LaFoy didn’t miss a beat. “Of course immigration is ultimately a good thing for our country,” he said, continuing, “and always has been. Of course even though a massive number of people come here illegally because our immigration system is broke and it takes too long to approve people to come in, I’m afraid of a welfare state takeover and silent Mexican invasion, don’t you see?”
“Do all immigrants come from Mexico,” LaFoy asked rhetorically during the interview before answering himself, “not according to the alleged stats and so-called facts. But does that mean we shouldn’t be irrationally fearful of Mexican immigrants? You tell me.”
According to LaFoy, when Perry made his exit speech it became obvious that “deep inside of Ricky is some kind of something that keeps him from making the hard decisions we conservatives know we have to make.” Those decisions, according to LaFoy include “treating people like utter dog crap because we fear them and are paranoid about what it means when people who are different than us move next door to us.”
“The best presidents have always been the ones who are unafraid to shit on huge numbers of people to fire up the citizens. Jackson made war on the natives. Reagan made the poor seem like lazy leeches. We need that kind of otherism now more than ever,” LaFoy opined.
Ultimately, LaFoy says that if Perry can make such a rational-sounding speech, he will never be able to capture the GOP nomination, because according to LaFoy, rationality is not necessary to be a conservative, just “dogmatic belief that old traditions, no matter how obsolete and harmful to others, are to be respected above all else.”
“We deny climate change despite 97% of scientists agreeing it’s real. We want abortion banned instead of making contraceptives and sexual education available because that’s what studies and statistics have actually proven to work to reduce the number of unwanted pregnancies and therefore demand for abortions,” LaFoy said, listing the many ways in which his party has moved away from rationality in favor of fundamentalism, adding, “We think there’s nothing wrong with spending twice as much on corporate welfare as we do on social welfare yet still harangue and harass poor people for being ‘moochers.’ We are the party of idealistic extremes, and Ricky knew it. That’s why he was running so hard to the right in 2012 and even this year until The Donald started sucking all the bombast and racism out of the room.”
“When you are dead convinced that you’re losing elections because your candidate isn’t extreme enough, someone like Perry who can talk a good fundie game but always let his bleeding-heart rationality slip out, would never be our nominee, ever. Maybe it’ll be Trump this time, maybe it won’t be,” LaFoy conceded, “But one thing’s for sure, by the time the primaries are over, voters are going to know just how irrational, dispassionate and downright apathetic we Republicans are, and that will undoubtedly lead us to electoral victory now, and every single election hence forth!”
