Phil Robertson may not be your cup of tea. Maybe you don’t like how he carries around a Bible like some kind of totem, and advises young men to marry women who carry one too.
Maybe you don’t like how he denigrates gay people, wondering aloud how someone could prefer anus over vagina.
Maybe you don’t like how he reduces the complex issues of gender identity and transexuality to veiled accusatory phrases and bathroom jokes like he did at the “I Stand Sunday” event in Houston.
“For all you ladies in Texas, trust me when I tell you this, when you’re seated in your restroom putting on your Maybelline, when I need to take a leak I’m not going there,” he said to an approving crowd.
Maybe Phil Robertson doesn’t know any gay people or transexuals. Maybe if he did, like Dolly Parton does, he wouldn’t talk so flippantly about an issue that is rife with bullying, suicides, and depression.
Dolly said, “[A]s far as the Christians, if people want to pass judgment, they’re already sinning. The sin of judging is just as bad as any other sin they might say somebody else is committing.”
But at least you always know where you stand with Phil. He wants this country to seeing the way his “values” sit. He believes that, “bibles and guns brought us here, and bibles and guns will keep us here”.
Now Robertson is joining Sarah Palin to help shore up support for Rep. Bill Cassidy in his runoff race against Democratic Sen. Mary Landrieu in Louisiana.
Robertson campaigned against Cassidy in the state’s primary, siding instead with his Republican opponent Rob Maness. But in Louisiana, if no one candidate gets more than 50% of the vote on Election Day, the top two vote-getters go head-to-head in a second runoff. Maness only got 14% compared to Cassidy’s 41%. Democrat Mary Landrieu got 42%. So now Cassidy faces Landrieu.
And that means all hands on deck for the Republicans, with Maness throwing his support behind Cassidy.
Given the amount of controversy that Robertson has attracted, some are surprised that Cassidy would take his help. But Cassidy needs that far-right element that loves Robertson so much — an element that voted for Maness in the primary — if he is to defeat the Democrat.
“It seems clear given the ideological stand point of (Maness) supporters and the come-togetherness that they will give their support to Cassidy,” LSU political scientist Robert Hogan said. “Maness wasn’t puling from the middle. The Tea Party is motivated, and they usually vote in elections.”