Hoffman's mentor: Glenn Beck

By Michael J.W. Stickings

Earlier today, I mentioned that NY-23 Conservative (and now Republican) candidate Doug Hoffman is the Glenn Beck candidate in the race.

Well, it would seem that it goes much further than just Hoffman having the support of Beck's 9/12 group, or Hoffman pledging his support for the 9/12 principles.

As Think Progress is reporting (saving us from having to subject ourselves to such madness), Hoffman was on Beck's radio show today, and Beck and his co-host Pat Gray were aggressively pushing him even further to the right (in this case, on climate change) -- and Hoffman was like a supplicant without any will of his own:

BECK: He's getting stronger, there it is, every second.

GRAY: Every second. What about...

HOFFMAN: I have good mentors here.

BECK: Wait, wait. Wait, wait. Are they mentors that will show –

HOFFMAN: I'm talking about you, Glenn.

BECK: Oh, okay. I was going to say all right, as long as they are standing out from the shadows. [...]

HOFFMAN: No. Yeah, well, I'm going to keep in touch with people like you so I don't get infected with that disease [being bought off].

There's something sick about this exchange, about a candidate for the House of Representatives prostrating himself before a "mentor" like Beck and allowing himself to be molded into a Beck-style paranoid.

And there's something sick about global warming denial, a sickness of willful ignorance that opposes truth.

But that's Beck for you, insane even by the standards of the right.

And that's Hoffman for you, the candidate of the far right -- of neocons, Club for Growthers, mainstream conservatives of all stripes, and, even before Scozzafava's withdrawal, the Republican establishment.

And, it would seem, one of Glenn Beck's puppets.

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Steve Benen:

So, the leading congressional candidate in New York's 23rd considers a deranged, self-described "rodeo clown" his "mentor"?

I guess Michele Bachmann and Steve King won't be lonely in the House Mad as a Hatter Caucus meetings.

No, Hoffman, assuming he wins, will be welcomed by a large group of like-minded Republicans, the narrow sliver of ideological extremism that dominates the GOP these days, and that's all that's left of the GOP in the House.

And Glenn Beck will no doubt continue to fill his head with all the glennbeckery he can muster.