Maine GOP Platform Hijacked By Tea Party: 'The Inmates... Are Running The Asylum' (VIDEO)

Maine GOP Platform Hijacked By Tea Party: 'The Inmates... Are Running The Asylum' (VIDEO)

The great state of Maine: it's like America's Nova Scotia! Only now much, much crazier now that the Tea Party has managed to get its hands on the platform of the Republican Party of Maine. Over the weekend, at the Maine Republican convention, a majority of the gathered delegates voted to scrap the state party's old platform and replace it with whatever 99 theses Tea Party activists were planning to staple to the walls.

As Maine Politics reports, "The official platform for the Republican Party of Maine is now a mix of right-wing fringe policies, libertarian buzzwords and outright conspiracy theories." Or as Frum Forum's Jeb Golinkin puts it: "The inmates... are now running the asylum."

David Weigel has a copy of the platform document, and man, it is a doozy! Here are the important highlights:

* Creeping Tentherism: The platform directs "the State of Maine to join with other states in asserting our 10th amendment sovereignty rights which protect us from unconstitutional government intrusions." Which is a fancy way of saying "people should not have health care."

* Mandates a "Read The Bill" Act: The platform authors say this will "restore clarity," as well as "eliminate the corruption associated with side issues, earmarks, pork or riders." Mind you, they don't want to eliminate the "side issues, earmarks, pork or riders," just the "corruption" associated with it. (Which presumably disappears by reading bills!) Hey, even a Tea Party activist has got to get paid by special interests!

* No Fairness Doctrine: Like President Obama, the Tea Partiers are against bringing back the Fairness Doctrine. But they are against it the hardest!

* No EFCA: Or, as they put it, no Employee Free Choice Elimination Act, or EFCEA, pronounced "eff-KEY-ya." This is a fancy way of saying, "Let's not have unions, or fair workplaces."

* ACORN, yargh!!: The Maine Tea Partiers are very concerned that poor people might organize and vote for things, so they will destroy ACORN or anything like it! "Prohibit any public funding of advocacy groups such as ACORN, no matter what it or its affiliate organizations rename themselves. Also, they want to scrap the "motor voter" initiative, which allows people to register to vote at the DMV, because that's way too convenient.

* No more treaties with the foreigns!: The platform calls for the rejection of the "UN Treaty on Rights of the Child" and the "Law Of The Sea Treaty," which makes some sense, seeing that our territorial waters are slowly becoming our "Strategic Petroleum Reserve."

* Roll up the illegals: The platform calls for arresting and detaining illegal immigrants "for a specified period of time" before deporting them. No indication on what they will do with these undocumented immigrants during that "specified period of time."

* Super Christianism: The platform seeks to "Reassert the principle that 'Freedom of Religion' does not mean 'Freedom from religion." Which means Mainers had better like religion, because they'll be getting a buttload of it.

* Bailout for heterosexual marriage "Marriage is an institution between a man and a woman." Some forms of big government intrusion into the personal lives of citizens are okay.

* No idea what this means at all! "Return to the principles of Austrian economics." Basically, worshipping Ludwig von Mises and/or Leontopodium alpinum.

* Let Ron Paul destroy the Federal Reserve: With torches!

* Defeat cap and trade and climate change scientists: With whatever torches are left over from that time Ron Paul destroyed the Federal Reserve.

* Healthcare is not a right: "As a compassionate society we will aid those in need." For example, Maine has many beautiful woodlands in which you can crawl off to and die, here's a Google Map, go Galt, sickie!

* And of course...: Eliminate the Department of Education, one world government, and "Dirigo" -- which either means the Maine state motto or the Maine state healthcare system.

Now, does any of this really matter? Maine's GOP Chairman Charlie Webster basically says no: ""Platforms are a way for the activists to express their opinion, and as far I'm concerned this document is fine... candidates don't run on the platform specifically. They run based on individual issues, and what the people in their areas want."

Still: Good luck navigating these waters, moderate senators Susan Collins and Olympia Snowe!

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