Jan Brewer, the Republican whack job governor of Arizona, has done something surprising. She vetoed two bills this week. One was the so-called birther bill, which would require presidential candidates to show their birth certificate before appearing on the ballot in Arizona, and the other would have allowed Arizona students to bring guns to school.
Too long in the Arizona sun is not good for your skin.
Yes, this is the same state where a right wing nut case with a gun recently shot congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords through the head and killed several other people. But, it seems like a majority of the state’s citizens think that the solution to the problem is more guns, not fewer, and up until now, Jan Brewer was their champion. She loves guns almost as much as she hates Mexicans.
Her veto on the birther bill is also surprising. Of course, it was clearly unconstitutional (It’s the federal government that sets the rules for federal elections. The state of Arizona has precisely zero authority to determine which candidates appear on the ballot.) Also, the bill had a fairly comical provision that was bound to lead to mockery. In lieu of a birth certificate, a certificate of circumcision would have been acceptable. Seriously. Now, I don’t think hospitals actually issue such a thing. I know I don’t have one. Perhaps if you have a traditional Jewish circumcision the Mohel gives your parents some paper but if so it’s probably written in Hebrew and, besides, Arizona does not have a huge Jewish community.
So, maybe Jan Brewer just realized that these bills were a little bit over the line, a bridge too far on the road to crazytown, but somehow I doubt it. There’s some other factor at work here. You may well ask “Why are you so cynical? Is it that bizarre that a right winger occasionally does the right thing?”
Well, yes, actually, it is. Sane people go crazy all the time – it’s why we have so many crazy people. But crazy people very seldom go suddenly sane. Among 21st century Republicans, it’s virtually unheard of. So, what happened?
Did Obama have something on Brewer? Was a deal made? Does she have a skeleton in her closet? We will probably never know. But I don’t believe she suddenly turned into a decent human being. If she did that, she’d probably spontaneously combust or something.
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