ISBL Asshat of the Week: Dan Patrick

The big news down in Texas is the Governor’s race, what with Wendy Davis, Democratic hopeful, and Queen of the Filibuster, in the running, but maybe there should be a little more focus on the Lieutenant Governor Republican primary.

While the four GOP candidates have all toed the party line, appealing to the religious wingnut GOP and the anti-gay GOP, and the anti-women GOP, one candidate has stepped up, and also claimed a strong anti-immigrant stance.

And that would be Dan Patrick, a radio host and state senator out of Houston. Patrick’s as wingnutty as they come, as when he insisted on reintroducing creationism into Texas schools, like when he mocked Houston Mayor Annise Parker’s recent wedding to her partner, like when he called himself the only candidate for Lieutenant Governor who disagreed with Governor Ricky Perry on allowing children of immigrants in-state tuition costs except that he wasn’t in office at the time, and was a regular anti-immigrant Joe citizen.

But that makes no never-mind to an asshat, you know.

And, as evidence of more of his asshattedness, especially in the area of undocumented immigrants comes the tale of one Miguel Andrade. Andrade has come forward to say that he and a few colleagues, in the US without papers, worked for Dan Patrick in the mid-80s, when Patrick owned a handful of sports bars. And Mister No Path To Immigration For You apparently felt no need to check on the legality of his employees even after Andrade specifically told Dan Patrick he was in the country illegally.

As GOP goosesteppers caught doing the thing they rail against — a la Larry Craig and his wide-stance in airport men’s rooms while standing up against LGBT rights — are apt to do, Dan Patrick is calling the claims just the typical “dirty politics”.

Not the kind of dirty politics that allows you to hire undocumented immigrants to man the fry station in your beer joint and then a few years later run for political office as tough on immigration. Not that kind of politics, mind you.

Dan Patrick, our goosestepping, hypocritical ISBL Asshat of the week.

via The New Civil Rights Movement