the NRCC reportedly remove Mr. Iott’s photo from its collection of Young Guns
Question #1:Â Does this help or hurt his campaign?
An election year already notable for its menagerie of extreme and unusual candidates can add another one: Rich Iott, the Republican nominee for Congress from Ohio’s 9th District, and a Tea Party favorite, who for years donned a German Waffen SS uniform and participated in Nazi re-enactments.
Iott, whose district lies in Northwest Ohio, was involved with a group that calls itself Wiking, whose members are devoted to re-enacting the exploits of an actual Nazi division, the 5th SS Panzer Division Wiking, which fought mainly on the Eastern Front during World War II. Iott’s participation in the Wiking group is not mentioned on his campaign’s website, and his name and photographs were removed from the Wiking website.
When contacted by The Atlantic, Iott confirmed his involvement with the group over a number of years, but said his interest in Nazi Germany was historical and he does not subscribe to the tenets of Nazism. “No, absolutely not,” he said. “In fact, there’s a disclaimer on the [Wiking] website. And you’ll find that on almost any reenactment website. It’s purely historical interest in World War II.” […]
Iott says he does not recall exactly when he joined the Wiking group (his name appears on a unit roster as far back as 2003), but did so with his son “as a father-son bonding thing.” He says his name and pictures were removed from the Wiking website not out of concern that they would harm his political career, but because he quit the group three years ago, after his son lost interest.
Father-Son relationships. Encourage your son to cultivate his interests. Avoid the “Cat’s in the Cradle” song from becoming a reality.
Iott participated in the group under his own name, and also under the alias “Reinhard Pferdmann,” which has also been removed, and which Iott described as being his German alter ego. “Part of the reenactor’s [experience],” Iott said, “is the living-history part, of really trying to get into the persona of the time period. In many, not just in our unit, but in many units what individuals do is create this person largely based on a Germanized version of their name, and a history kind of based around your own real experiences. ‘Reinhard’ of course is ‘Richard’ in German. And ‘Pferdmann,’ ‘pferd’ is a horse. So it’s literally ‘horse man.'”
Huh.
Horse man. Is that another of those “Human Animal Hybrids“ about which everyone’s in a panic?
Otherwise, we’re getting into “fury” territory, where everyone is dressing up and acting out as their Animal Ideal. Except, in fury-land, they’re dressing up for characterisics of animals. Substitute Nazis for Animals, and you get the idea.
Civil War Re-Enactments are problematic, and I suppose there probably is a bigger percentage of Civil War Re-Enactors in the “Tea Party” than in the general population. Nazi Re-enactments are a bit more problematic.
As the Wiking site goes on to explain, “It is our aim to bring you a bit of actual history behind the men who fought against the “Bolshevik scourgeâ€; volunteers who came from the various Northern European countries allied with Hitler’s Germany who only had a desire to see an end to Soviet Communism.â€
It is at that point, the Tea Party ideology that paints Liberalism as Socialist as Communist as Bolshevik becomes relevant to this peculiar hobby.
Iott explains his former hobby by likening it to Civil War re-enacters, noting that “you couldn’t do Civil War re-enacting if somebody didn’t play the role of the Confederates.â€
“I’ve always been fascinated by the fact that here was a relatively small country that from a strictly military point of view accomplished incredible things,†Iott told Green. “I mean, they took over most of Europe and Russia, and it really took the combined effort of the free world to defeat them. From a purely historical military point of view, that’s incredible.â€
Iott’s explanation, strained as it is, might be slightly more convincing if he and his friends had chosen to emulate a standard unit of the German Army, or Wehrmacht. The moral culpability of draftees conscripted into the German military is at least arguable.
Hm. CBS News reported that the NRCC reportedly remove Mr. Iott’s photo from its collection of Young Guns.
In other news … do you take this comment seriously?
For the first time, I have a voice, for the first time politicians will hear my voice either they like it or not. I’ll remain as registered democrat, but my vote will no longer be for them. I’ll vote for someone who will listen to me, listen to the people. We will change political atmosphere of this country for the sake of future generation. The future generation has the right to pursue their own happiness, determine their own future, NOT the government. Whatever is left of my life here on earth, I’ll dedicate it to secure freedom and liberty for future generation as those that has come before me had done; I owe it to the young, to the unborn; to leave them a better USA than the one I’ve found.
Internal numbers-crunching showed the difference between Adler and his Republican opponent — then undetermined — would hover around 5 percent. To give Adler an edge, Ayscue had recruited a then-unidentified man to run as a third-party candidate.
That candidate would act as a conservative spoiler to confuse voters and pull votes from Adler’s eventual Republican challenger. But first he had to get on the ballot. With the filing deadline just weeks away, CCDC needed volunteers to hit the streets and collect signatures — fast.
Some of the SJYD members were stunned. Others willingly signed on.
By June 8, more than the 100 valid signatures needed were collected and received by the state Division of Elections.
That candidate was Peter DeStefano, a picture framer from Mount Laurel. On Nov. 2, he will appear on the “NJ Tea Party” line on the ballot.
Quick question: is this better or worse than Arizona Republican Party’s recruitment of hoboes to run on the Green Party line? Hard to say. This candidate is running off of a fictional persona, after all.
I long ponder the problem of third party candidacies, and how a viable message party can be operated without these obvious shenanigans. The “Tea Party” is just an abject right flank in the Republican Party, and thus has been rightly suspicious of any “Tea Party” parties forming in various states – after all, they know this trick themselves.