When a far-right group last week tried to blame the Boston Marathon bombing on abortion and gays, it was fairly easy to chuckle and marvel at the inanity. When a Republican state lawmaker tries to blame the Boston Marathon bombing on the United States government, it's a lot less funny.
State Rep. Stella Tremblay (R-Auburn) posted on conservative talk show host Glenn Beck's Facebook page Friday that the attack and the subsequent search for suspects was playing out how Beck had suggested. She said the bombings were a plot by the federal government, and included a link to a video from another conservative talk show host Alex Jones, in which Jones also claims the federal government planned the bombing. Tremblay's message to Beck was posted Friday morning, before suspect Dzhokhar Tsarnaev was arrested.
Though she didn't clarify, Tremblay said the events had unfolded in Boston "just as" Beck "said would happen."
As the Huffington Post report added, Tremblay is also a birther who recently argued that former President Woodrow Wilson agreed with Adolf Hitler, despite the fact that Wilson died before Hitler rose to power. One of Tremblay's aides believes the U.S. government is under the control of Queen Elizabeth II.
Pressed for an explanation by a local news outlet, the New Hampshire Republican said she had suspicions of some kind of plot involving Secretary of State John Kerry, Saudi nationals, and "black ops" soldiers.
Say hello to the Glenn Beck wing of the Republican Party.
And before you dismiss this as the strange rants of a crazed and largely unknown state lawmaker, let's not overlook the fact that last week, Beck used his Internet show to push a bogus claim about a Boston suspect, but his arguments quickly drew attention from the chairman of the House Homeland Security Committee, the chairman of the House subcommittee on Oversight and Management Efficiency, the chairman of the House subcommittee on Counterterrorism and Intelligence, and the chairwoman of the House subcommittee on Border and Maritime Security -- all of whom are Republicans, and all of whom took Beck's nonsense seriously.
There's a strain of madness running through contemporary Republican politics, and it runs deeper than just some random state lawmaker in New Hampshire.