Facts? We Don’t Need No Stinkin’ Facts

Rep. Peter King (R, N.Y.) seemed to be rehearsing a new version of the scene from Treasure of Sierra Madre when “Gold Hat” proclaims “Badges? We ain’t got no badges. We don’t need no badges! I don’t have to show you any stinkin’ badges!” In the new version King says that he doesn’t need facts in claiming that President Obama went on an “apology tour” in the Middle East despite the conclusion by independent fact checkers that he never apologized or said I am sorry on the tour. King barked “I don’t care what fact check says.” It appears that, according to Santorum below, the GOP has also decided to give up on trying to attract “smart people.”

Here is the exchange:

O’BRIEN: There are fact checks. You may not care, but they’re a fact checker.

KING: No. Soledad. Any commonsense interpretation of those speeches, the president’s apologizing for the American position. That’s the apology tour. That’s the way it’s interpreted in the Middle East. If I go over and say that the U.S. has violated its principles, that the United States has not shown respect for Islam, that’s an apology. How else can it be interpreted?

O’BRIEN: I think plenty of people are interpreting it as a nuanced approach to diplomacy is how some people are interpreting it. So I don’t think that everybody agrees it’s apology.

Finally, someone who is willing to liberate politics from tyrannical hold of facts.

This seems to dovetail well with the statement of former presidential candidate Rick Santorum (R-PA) who told an audience this weekend that “We will never have the media on our side, ever, in this country. We will never have the elite smart people on our side, because they believe they should have the power to tell you what to do.” Yes, those pesky “smart people” are always such a drag.

I hereby nominate Alfonso Bedoya for president . . .

Source: Think Progress