Dave Brat’s Campaign Manager Scrubs Facebook Page of Extremist Comments After Election
Would you be surprised to learn that Tea Party heartthrob Dave Brat’s campaign manager has a Facebook page with loony comments about abortion, racism, and links to extreme right wing websites?
Well, it did before yesterday, when he scrubbed it.
From comparing George Zimmerman’s shooting of unarmed black teenager Trayvon Martin to abortion to calling for the abolition of the Food and Drug Administration and encouraging the adoption of the silver monetary standard, Zachary Werrell - one of just two paid staffers for the upstart campaign of Randolph-Macon College economics professor Brat - in 2012 and 2013 sought to build a public profile as a socially conservative libertarian voice. The Facebook postings were either taken down or made private overnight Tuesday in the wake of Brat’s win, but Yahoo News took screeshots of some of the remarks before they were removed from view. A cached version of Werrell’s page remained available on Google as of mid-Wednesday.
“Can someone who was outraged that George Zimmerman was found not guilty of ‘SOMETHING ANYTHING’ and who is simultaneously pro-choice explain the logical dissonance there? Ie. Why its not ok to kill someone who is banging your head into concrete but its ok to kill someone for simply existing who, through your conscious actions, you brought into the world?” Werrell had written in an Oct. 24, 2013 posting.
The month before, the campaign manager for the likely next congressman for Virginia’s 7th District - no Democrat has represented that district since 1971 - questioned whether existing state lines were defensible. “Should sections of States be allowed to secede from a State if they feel they are un/underrepresented in the State Government?” Werrell asked. “I say yes. I derive that opinion from our first foundational document - the Declaration of Independence. What say you?”
On Oct. 25, 2013, he called for an end to the regulation of prescription drugs, citing a story from the Ludwig von Mises Institute. “Abolish the FDA!” he wrote.
On Oct. 29 of that year, it was a piece by Fred Reed from Lew Rockwell’s website on “The Wussification of Boys” that set him off. “There is a war on boys!” Werrell wrote. “Rough housing, playing soldier, etc, are all punished or medicated away. And we wonder why there is gender inequality in the classroom and in college/attendance/graduation rates.”
The Reed piece called for the end of women teachers in co-ed or boys’ schools. “It is time to get women out of the schooling of boys,” wrote Fred Reed. “It is way past time. Women in our feminized classrooms are consigning generations of our sons to years of misery and diminished future.” The piece further argued that “women should not be allowed within fifty feet of a school where boys are taught” and that “Women are totalitarian. Men are happy to let boys be boys and girls be girls. Women want all children to be girls.”
But don’t worry! Dave Brat may be anti-gay, anti-immigrant, and anti-choice, but Vox Media’s Timothy Lee says he’s going to be fantastic for civil liberties because NSA.