Joseph Farah’s July 1 column is all about “the kind of vice-presidential candidate Mitt Romney should consider if he is serious about winning the election and setting up the party with a viable successor in 2016 or 2020.” Before listing his “safe, politically pragmatic choices that would be good for the country and for the future of the Republican Party” — Scott Walker and Rand Paul — Farah lists the “completely different list of personalities” he’d pick “if it were up to me to select the presidential nominee or vice-presidential nominee.”
And who is at the top of Farah’s list, ahead of even Michelle Bachmann, Jim DeMint and Allen West? Jerry Boykin. Farah elaborates:
I don’t know why America isn’t clamoring to get a man like this in the White House. He’s genuine hero – a spiritual man of vision who loves America and would always do what’s right for the country. He would make us all proud to be Americans, again.
What Farah doesn’t tell you, which explains why America isn’t clamoring to get a man like this in the White House: Boykin is a far-right, anti-Muslim extremist who’s prone to conspiracy theories. Right Wing Watch lists a few examples:
- Boykin: President Obama has created a Hitler-style Brownshirt army to force Marxism on America
- Boykin: Islam not protected under the First Amendment
- Boykin: No mosques in America
- Boykin: There can be no interfaith dialogue between Muslims and Christians because Islam is not an Abrahamic faith and has nothing in common with Christianity
- Boykin: Christians must go on the offensive against Islam
- Boykin: George Soros and Council on Foreign Relations members are working to create a Marxist, global government
As if to prove Boykin’s extremism — which is obvious, it seems, to everyone but Farah and his WND subordinates — a July 2 WND article by Drew Zahn touts Boykin’s new “video warning that Barack Obama is following in the footsteps of Fidel Castro, Joseph Stalin and others who have led communist revolutions in their nations.” Because likening your political opponents to Castro and Stalin is a sure sign of vice-presidential timber.
Zahn fawningly describes Boykin as “a former senior Pentagon official who has battled Marxism around the globe.” He also uncritically repeats Boykin’s bogus claim that Obama’s reference to a “civilian national security force” is “the model that has been used when societies have moved to Marxism.” WND has fearmongered about this for years, obscuring the fact that Obama was talking about an expansion of the foreign service.