Who are these people?!?

The Plank has been just chock full of Southern Republican craziness over the past couple of days. I don't know what direction the GOP needs to go in to regain its national standing, but "overtly racist" seems like the wrong choice.

First there was this joke:

In a brilliant attempt to confirm the vague suspicions of much of the country that the Deep South remains a hotbed of retrograde racist sentiment, GOP activist and ex-chair of South Carolina's elections commission, Rusty DePass, recently joked on Facebook that an escaped gorilla from the local zoo must be an ancestor of FLOTUS Michelle Obama.

When confronted, DePass responded with a non-apology even more pathetic than most: "I am as sorry as I can be if I offended anyone. The comment was clearly in jest."

As Michelle Cottle comments, it's obvious that the comment was a joke. What the mealy-mouthed "sorry if you're offended" non-apology fails to mention, of course, is that the joke was horribly, unbelievably racist.

Not to be out-done by his fellow statesman, GOP apparatchik Mike Green shared the following insight on Twitter:

JUST HEARD OBAMA IS GOING TO IMPOSE A 40% TAX ON ASPIRIN BECAUSE IT'S WHITE AND IT WORKS.

His follow-up Tweets were more on the contrite side:

I sincerely apologize for the comments I made on Twitter yesterday. I made a mistake.

and

I realize that my comments were hurtful, wrong and have no place in civil discourse.

Well, if he's going to post something heinously racist, at least he actually seems to understand that it was an appalling mistake.

However, in what may be the most jaw-dropping snafu yet, we have the following photo-montage of US Presidents, inadvertently forwarded to the wrong people by a Tennessee state legislative aide:



I have no words. Honestly, who the hell thinks this is funny, much less an appropriate thing to forward to anyone? And this is someone who works in a government job, no less.

Her response?

When I asked her if she understood the controversial nature of the photo, Goforth would only say she felt very bad about accidentally sending it to the wrong list. When I gave her a second chance to address the controversial nature of the email, she again repeated that she only felt bad about sending it to the wrong list of people.

The comments over at The Plank about that last unbelieeeeeeeevably stupid, offensive and embarrassing screw-up are focused on whether Goforth should lose her job. (She hasn't.) One way or the other, I think it's clear that certain state parties need to figure out why people who work for them seem to:
1) Think racist humor is acceptable,

2) Be clueless about what it means to electronically disseminate racist humor about anyone, much less the President or First Lady.

Again, anyone wonder why this party is shrinking?