As noted the other day, Loudoun Board of Supervisors Chairman Scott York (R) has been trying hard to forget all of that late unpleasantness about not-technically-indicted fellow Supervisor Eugene Delgaudio (R-Sterling), quietly restoring Degaudio’s assignment to one of the Board’s committees, which had been taken away as punishment for the little matter of his misuse of office, finagling public funds for political activity, and abuse of staff.
York’s new appointee to the Loudoun Library Board, demonstrating his support for the written word
Through all those little difficulties last year, Delgaudio remained the darling of the very far-out Tea Party crowd that runs the local Republican Party, and York seems eager to make amends now that bygone are bygones.
As reported first in the Washington Post this week, the love fest continues: York, at Delgaudio’s request, slipped into the we-don’t-even-need-to-have-a-vote-on-it “consent agenda” of the January 2 Board meeting the appointment of one Andrew Beacham to the Loudoun Library Trustees board as the Sterling District representative.
The 31-year-old Beacham, as the Post reported, has demonstrated his commitment to the written word, freedom of expression, and the advancement of literature by (a) standing in front of the White House and tearing pages out of the Koran to show his “support” for a Florida pastor who planned to burn copies of Korans in 2010; (b) disrupting a graduation speech President Obama gave at Notre Dame and heckling other speeches the president has made; (c) sending out a Twitter stream with such observations as “scalp early, scalp often, the only good progressive is a dead progressive”; “Feds can go screw themselves, shove the ACA [Affordable Care Act] u fascists”; calling the Rose Bowl Parade “the Pervert Parade & Queer Bowl”; and wittily observing that “Lake Michigan is steaming ’cause that is where Obama’s hot gay lovers are buried”; and telling former President George H. W. Bush, who expressed regret at being unable to attend Nelson Mandela’s funeral, “I didn’t know you supported communist terrorists killing Christians and raping innocent girls.”
Beacham has apparently made a “career,” such as it is, of issuing anti-government and anti-gay tirades, expressing sympathy for murderers of doctors who perform abortions, and (in his recent unsuccessful campaign for Congress in Kentucky) seeking to limit women’s sexuality to reproduction only: “A mother who uses her body to participate in sex and then at any point in time after decides she does not want to deal with the body of the baby that results as consequences of her sex and kills her child is guilty of murder. There is no difference between a baby in or out of the womb. There is no more guilt for a mom who abuses her 8 year old to death or uses birth-control,” he stated, elsewhere clarifying that all forms of birth control that he terms “pesticides” (including IUDs and hormone patches) must be outlawed. He also ran TV ads comparing Obama to Adolf Hitler and serial killer Ted Bundy.
Following the inspiring example of Chris Christie, both York and Delgaudio now claim they knew nothing about Beacham’s background when they nominated him for the Library Board position.
Of course, the striking similarity between Beacham’s anti-gay provocations and those of Delgaudio might have been a clue that that was not completely 100% true; and Loudoun Progress quickly dug up a picture of Beacham and Delgaudio together at one of Eugene’s phony media-event anti-gay “protests” (attended by 8 people) back in 2009.
It’s of course par for the course with Delgaudio that his first, automatic recourse when caught in the act doing anything is to lie.
York however has more to explain. Why is he still humoring the man he once accurately called “the clown”? The answer lies in one place only: the toxic bunch of ideological extremists who run the Loudoun County Republican Party these days.
The sad fact is, when you elect Republicans in Loudoun, behind their smiling faces and talk about “businesslike” government, you get hatchet men and errand boys for the most extreme, and apparently even violent, members of the far right fringe.
There’s only one way this will change: if the voters who show up in on-year national elections start showing up in the off-year local elections, and send the message to the local GOP that this brand of political extremism will not work on election day.
So far, sadly, it has.
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