Nevada Assemblyman Would Vote for Slavery If Constituents Wanted It

Ahhh, the GOP, the party of hard work, strong values, and totally never ever ever being racist and HOW DARE YOU EVEN SUGGEST SUCH A THING. If there’s one thing I know about the GOP, it’s that they would certainly never abandon their extremely strong and heartfelt convictions in order to pander to uneducated bigots and then use those bigots’ votes to prop up big business and line the pockets of billionaires! Oh, wait, is that kind of the only thing that they do? My bad, boo. My bad.

Jim Wheeler, a GOP Assemblyman from rural Nevada, is in the hot seat for telling fellow Republicans at a party meeting that he would vote for slavery if his constituents wanted him to. Because “voting the way your constituents want is part of the Republican form of government.” Wheeler’s audience applauded.

Via the New York Times:

“If that’s what they wanted, I’d have to hold my nose … they’d probably have to hold a gun to my head, but yeah,” Assemblyman Jim Wheeler told members of the Storey County Republican Party at a meeting in August.

His comments were swiftly denounced by Republicans and Democrats alike.

“Assemblyman Wheeler’s comments are deeply offensive and have no place in our society,” Republican Gov. Brian Sandoval said in a statement. “He should retract his remarks and apologize.”

U.S. Sen. Dean Heller, R-Nev., called Wheeler’s comments “insensitive and wrong,” while the Assembly Democratic caucus said they were “reprehensible and disgusting.”

Senate Minority Leader Michael Roberson, R-Henderson, on Twitter said Wheeler’s comments are “outrageous, they are embarrassing and they are just plain sad.”

“It’s time for Jim Wheeler to find a new line of work,” Roberson said.

Translation:

“YOU GUYS, THIS LOOKS REALLY REALLY BAD. LIKE, REALLY BAD.”

That scraping sound you hear is every GOP politician in the country scooching their chairs away from Jim Wheeler. And that clackety-clacking sound is thousands of Republican PR consultants frantically typing up “Things to Say I Wouldn’t Vote For Even If My Constituents Asked Me To” cheat sheets, so no unsuspecting client will e’er again be victimized by such a cruel and beguiling gotcha question as “IS SLAVERY BAD.”

For his part, Wheeler—despite saying quite recently that he’d vote for slavery if constituents wanted it—says that he would never vote for slavery even if his constituents wanted it. In fact, JIM WHEELER HATES SLAVERY SO MUCH HE SHOULD PROBABLY GET A TROPHY OR SOMETHING.

“Obviously I would never vote for slavery,” Wheeler said Monday. “That’s the dumbest thing I have ever heard. My constituents would never want that, and I would never vote for slavery.”

And:

“Anyone who knows me knows that I could never vote for something like that,” he said of slavery. “It’s disgusting. It’s beyond disgusting.”

He added, “There is absolutely no room in my life for any bigotry.”

The tape in question was only circulated internally among Democrats, as far as I can tell, but I did find this video of Wheeler being unbelievably boring (at the same event, I think), if you want to get a read on his general Droopy Dog steez. For a guy who has “absolutely no room” for bigotry in his life, he sure drones on about “demographic changes” (i.e. old white-guy code for “terrifying brown people who vote wrong”) quite a bit. How odd.

(Also, there’s never a bad time to repeat the fact that we actually still have slavery in America.)