Straitjacket Fits: Crazy Conservatives

A couple prominent conservatives seem to be (or have) experienced severe mental health issues. One you may be familiar with, but the second is a surprise. First, the open secret: The Debbie Schlussel Experience

Imagine, if you will, that you're a normal person and then one day a quasi-famous mentally ill blogger becomes fixated on you the way Gollum was fixated on the Ring. Even though she hasn't been setting the world on fire lately, she has been on TV, on the Howard Stern show and she's written for the New York Post, The Wall Street Journal, & The Washington Times. Most people in the know realize she's off her rocker, but how many people are in the know? How many fans does she have who don't realize what she's really like?

So this person, this quasi-famous mentally ill blogger, starts claiming you support death threats against her. She tells people you're an anti-Semite. She calls your job and tries to get you fired. When she hears of people connected with you, she tries to contact them to lie about you. When people mention your name on the web, she shows up to tell untrue stories about you. Then, she starts going after your friends. She accuses them of supporting death threats against her and being anti-Semitic for being associated with you.

You tried ignoring her. It didn't work. You tried sincerely apologizing for offending her. Not only did it fail, she misrepresented what you apologized for in an effort to use it against you. Since she was a lawyer, you even eventually tried filing a complaint with the Michigan Bar, trying to get them to keep her from obsessively harassing/cyber stalking you; it didn't work. You hoped, over time, the obsession with you might fade. However, four years have gone by and it's still going as strong as it was in the beginning.

This, my friends, is not a rhetorical discussion. The victim here is namedEmily Zanotti. The quasi-famous mentally ill blogger I'm speaking of is Debbie Schlussel.

I never thought much of Schlussel, even before she moved to Area 51, but was completely turned off when she called Bristol Palin a "baby mama" and dubbed Todd Palin a "Mr. Mom." Huh? Forget crazy. Do we really need more people insulting Sarah Palin's children?

Schlussel is also running around yelling that Mark Levin supports Hezbollah. Nuff said.

Now, the surprise. Dan Riehl has some pretty convincing evidence that a GOP candidate for Congress in Florida has had multiple run-ins with the police due to her erratic emotional state. Lest you think this is some peripheral Orly Taitz type, you should know that Karen Diebel has already been endorsed by Mike Huckabee and seems to have some sort of insider fund-raising connection with the national GOP. She is a favorite in the primary, yet she may be unelectable: Karen Diebel And Florida's Baker Act

A second troubling police report involving Karen Diebel has emerged, one suggesting she may have been subjected to a short-term involuntary commitment for mental health issues by police as recently as September of 2008.

I've done two previous posts on Huck PAC endorsed Republican primary candidate for Congress, Karen Diebel. They detailed a troubling history ofapproximately 100 9-1-1 calls over many years and a subsequent insufficient response to the controversy from the Diebel campaign. Rep. Brian Bilbray (R-Calif.) and former Rep. Tom Tancredo have also endorsed Diebel. (link)

With no intention of backing any candidate in the primary, but wanting the best nominee, I continued researching and found several troubling unconfirmed references to Karen Diebel and Florida's Baker Act on the Internet. They span almost two years. Florida's Baker Act allows for the involuntary examination of an individual under certain pre-defined conditions.

Now, I'd like to think that Huckabee, the national GOP, and the local GOP down in FL-24 knows something that Dan doesn't and that there is nothing to this. But, I am not so sure. How many times have we heard that we must support a particular candidate because they are telegenic, or vote the "right" way, or (ugh) it's "their time." That may be, but those are not good reasons to hand someone a congressional seat, or at least the right to contest that seat in the general election.

The fact is there are a lot of troubled souls in Congress on both sides of the aisle. Yet, they remain in office through the iron laws of incumbency and inertia. It is only when they snap (I'm thinking Mark Foley, Larry Craig, Patrick Kennedy, and this week's hero Bob Etheridge) that we find out and by then it's too late. Do you feel any comfort knowing that Kennedy and Etheridge were providing crucial votes to pass Obamacare, and God knows what other legislation?

You may remember the tragi-comic tale of California GOP Assemblyman Mike Duvall, who was dumb/reckless enough to give a graphic description of sex with his lobbyist girlfriend while seated next to a live mike. Everyone had a good laugh over that, but the joke's on us, especially those Republicans who voted for him. There is simply no way that at least some of his colleagues in the GOP caucus, as well as Republican Party swells back in Yorba Linda, didn't know that Duvall was a ravenous hound dog. But, this was the guy they let remain in office.

To paraphrase a Chicago-based political scientist: a Congressional seat is a valuable f***in' thing. There's no reason why it should be wasted on someone with a history of mental illness, that includes multiple run-ins with the police. Surely, somewhere in Florida's 24th District there is a worthy candidate. But, the GOP can and should do better.