If everything is bigger in Texas, it would appear that the lengths to which some GOP candidates will go with their election rhetoric is also outsized when it comes to unsubstantiated claims about our current commander in chief, Barack Obama.
Mary Lou Bruner, a 68 year old retired kindergarten teacher who is currently running for a seat on the Texas State Board of Education, has gone on social media claiming that Barack Hussein Obama II, the 44th president of the United States, worked as a gay prostitute during time spent in New York as a teen.
While this accusation in and of itself would seem to be a shocking first with regards to bipartisan mudslinging – not to mention it is mudslinging against the highest elected official in the land, what is more sobering is that the slanderous quality of these claims would seem to have no deleterious effect on Bruner’s chances for election in her home state.
In last Tuesday’s Texas Board of Education Primary, Bruner received 48% of a vote that was split between three candidates – leaving her just 2% away from what would have otherwise been a clearcut 50% win of the seat in question against opposing candidates Hank Hering and Independent School Board President Keven M. Ellis.
Despite further unsubstantiated claims voiced by Bruner in the past, such as her belief in 2010 that Middle Easterners were “buying textbooks” in order to unduly influence the State of Texas school curriculum, and more current claims that humans and dinosaurs walked the earth together, to the tune of dinosaurs on Noah’s ark that, ” may have been babies and not able to reproduce,” Bruner may actually find herself in a position of real power after her up coming runoff with Ellis, who received only 31% of the vote last Tuesday.
In response to Bruner’s views, her popularity in her home state, and her ability to affect the Texas School Board, Thomas Ratliff, the moderate Republican who is vacating the contested seat had this to say of the likely scope of Bruner’s reach should she prevail in her campaign: ” I think she will have minimal, if any, influence on the board.”
While many would like to take Mr. Ratliff at his word, interestingly enough that’s precisely what everyone was saying early on about GOP frontrunner Donald Trump’s ability to make a name for himself in the GOP presidential race.