I think it’s time to be done treating this guy like he’s purposefully saying outrageous things that he doesn’t believe for the sake of publicity. And it’s past time for demanding apologies out of him unless we’re fine with them being disingenuous.
Dude believes what he’s saying. Dude wants what he’s saying to be upsetting to other people. Dude likes using other people’s discomfort and unhappiness as a way to feel powerful. And dude likes feeling powerful. He straight-up believes that he is a moral man adrift in an immoral hell, surrounded by lesser immoral beings whose suffering is deserved, because of their immorality. It is, from his perspective, his job to increase the suffering of lesser immoral beings until they shape up and become disciplined and moral like him.
I will give it up to the Tennessee Republicans in that they have done as good a job as they can with a colleague of marginalizing him. (What Hardaway’s excuse is, I haven’t a clue.) But he needs to be put in his place hard, and publicly, by someone who can make him hurt and who he can’t best. And whoever does that needs to be aware that he will then be scheming against him or her for the rest of the time he’s in office, which is, apparently, going to be forever.
We treat him like a joke, but I advise you to go back and reread my second paragraph here. The scariest thing to me about him is that the best alternative for the people he knows in real life (or encounters in real life) is for him to have a large public platform where he can get his jollies hurting and upsetting people out where everyone can see it and he can get national attention for it.
I really wonder what happens when a man like him still has those impulses and doesn’t have the spotlight to both feed the impulses and keep them in check. And I’m afraid/certain we’re going to find out.
Tiny Cat Pants 
We don’t have to give a public damn about his private impulses or motivations. We need him out of power–and that’s all. It is better to have such people less powerful and less attention-getting in the public sphere. He is hardly the only one nearby who believes the things you nail well in paragraph two(There must be a number of them voting for him.) Bu we don’t have to deal with the maneuverings of most of them–which is enough, in practical terms. I’m not convinced people who vote for him have been turned off or even sufficiently embarrassed by any of this; we’ll see.
Oh, don’t get me wrong. I’m not arguing that we should keep him in office. I’m just saying, as I’ve said before, when/if they exhume his basement, I will be the least surprised person in Tennessee.
Aw; I hardly thought you were saying THAT. I thought you were suggesting that we’d better watch out for him if he’s ever OUT of office–and I guess you were!
Ya know, equating getting people health insurance with genocide is actually one of the least objectionable things he’s done. I mean, it may have triggered bad memories for some people, but this time he’s just flapping his lips, not proposing legislation that can actively harm large numbers of people, the way he usually does.
I think the GOP like him because he can say anll the things the rest can only think to themselves. And he deflects attention away from the really awful laws that they do pass–as we’ve seen since 2010.
Devaney did not call for Stacie to apologize to our President, only to Jews. I guess the GOP still enjoys defaming the uppity colored boy usurper. .
I am not a constituent but I had to have an email exchange with that fool after hearing a radio broadcast of his with horrifically inaccurate information about HIV / AIDS. I swamped him with facts from the CDC and other websites until I “won” that exchange he got sulky and quit answering. I considered that a win. I kept imagining my late husband during the broadcast if he had heard it. “Get in the car and we’re going to Tennessee right now how many hours will it take to drive there?” He would have said “I’m getting in the car you coming with me?” and would have driven down to that state legislators office, waited to see him and then let loose his temper. I of course couldn’t do it for him and he’s no longer here to do such things so instead I emailed the legislator in question and straightened him out. Not that he would ever admit to it or really believe some of the factual stuff I told him, it’s just the principle of the thing. I imagine if he got a factual
essay about the Holocaust in an email the same type of thing would occur.
I have to wonder about what kind of charisma he must be able to turn on when he’s on the campaign trail. I know people who would vote for him no matter what but those people can’t be enough to get him re-elected. in order to keep getting re-elected he must be showing his district something to get the less radical people to vote for him.
Right? I was thinking about how sad and frustrated he will be when nobody cares about the outrageous things he says or does. He’s basically an internet troll who can’t contain his sociopathy to the internet.