The Typical MAGA Candidate in 2022

Echoes of Tea Party candidate Todd Akin, the 2012 Republican Senate nominee from Missouri, who provoked ire across the political spectrum by saying that in instances of what he called “legitimate rape,” women’s bodies somehow blocked an unwanted pregnancy. Senate Candidate Provokes Ire With ‘Legitimate Rape’ Comment.

A decade later, Republican MAGA candidates have only grown far worse. This year’s poster boy for offensive rape comments is Robert Regan, a Republican candidate for a seat in the Michigan House. Michigan GOP candidate says he tells daughters to ‘lie back and enjoy it’ if rape is inevitable:

A Republican candidate favored to win a seat in the Michigan House said he tells his daughters to “just lie back and enjoy it” if raped, as he attempted to make an analogy about abandoning efforts to decertify the results of the 2020 election.

Robert Regan, who is running to represent Michigan’s District 74 in the state legislature, made the comments during a Facebook live stream Sunday. The discussion was hosted by the Rescue Michigan Coalition, a conservative group that supports former president Donald Trump’s false claims that the 2020 election was stolen from him. The Justice Department found no evidence to support Trump’s baseless allegations.

During the discussion, fellow panelist Amber Harris, a Republican strategist, told the group that it is “too late” to continue challenging the results of the 2020 election, suggesting Republicans should instead move on and focus on future races, to which Regan replied: “I tell my daughters, ‘Well, if rape is inevitable, you should just lie back and enjoy it.’ ”

Regan then moved on to other comparisons, drawing a parallel between his recent victory in the Republican primary and the biblical story of David and Goliath.

A shocked Harris, however, tried to cut in as Regan and the discussion’s host, Rescue Michigan Coalition founder Adam de Angeli, moved on. When de Angeli gave Harris the chance to speak, she said Regan’s comments were “shameful.”

“I’ve got advice to give to your daughters: Don’t do that,” Harris said. “Fight all the time.”

Regan’s three daughters urged voters not to elect him to office in a viral tweet during his 2020 bid for the state House.

Regan, who last week advanced to the general election after winning the special Republican primary by 81 votes, did not respond to multiple requests for comment. He told Bridge Michigan, a local news outlet, that “sometimes” his words “aren’t as smooth and polished as the politicians are because I’m not a politician.”

Dumbass, you are running for office; you are a politician.

He said his comments on rape and the election only meant “nothing is inevitable.”

This Dude is, of course, an election denier who promotes the Big Lie (as is required of all GQP candidates now):

During the discussion, Regan also said that, if elected, he’d push for the decertification of the results of the 2020 election in Michigan. Under both state and federal law, a state can’t decertify an election. [This is not an actual thing.]

“We do want to decertify this election and we do want it returned to the rightful owner, just like if someone stole your car or stole your jewelry,” Regan said. “It goes back to the rightful owner. You decertify and you give it to the rightful owner, and that’s Donald Trump, and that’s what I’m pushing for and we’re going full-bore on that.”

Moron.

But wait, there’s more!

This Dude is also an anti-Semitic white nationalist. You’re shocked, I’m sure. Michigan state House candidate has shared antisemitic posts, including one calling feminism ‘a Jewish program to degrade white men’:

Robert Regan, the Republican nominee for a safely conservative state House seat in Michigan, has frequently re-posted antisemitic content and shared his own extreme views on Jews.

Regan is in a good position to win a May 3 special election for a vacant seat representing Kent County, Michigan’s 74th state district, after winning a crowded Republican primary last week by a narrow margin of 81 votes (according to unofficial tallies). Michigan’s Republican Party congratulated Regan on Wednesday for winning the primary.

In May 2021, Regan’s personal Facebook page shared two posts, still visible on his page as of Monday, in which he expressed antisemitic opinions. In one, he shared an image of a quote branded by the logo of Smoloko News, a now-defunct antisemitic website. The quote described “feminism” as “a Jewish program to degrade and subjugate white men.”

In January of last year, Regan shared a link to an antisemitic “family history” of the Rothschilds, the Jewish banking family often at the center of conspiracy theories about Jews and world banking domination. Two months later, he shared a meme made by a QAnon influencer that called “(((Them)))” the “real virus” in a post calling public health measures to combat COVID-19 “nonsense.” The triple parentheses, or echo symbol, is used online by antisemites to identify Jews.

In another post, Regan himself called Jewish financier and political activist George Soros a “Jewish communist investor” and “pure evil.”

Regan, a Grand Rapids resident whose LinkedIn page says he is a trucking company executive, frequently posts his views on social media alongside right-wing memes. Recent Facebook posts show that he supports causes including COVID vaccine skepticism and the debunked lie that former President Donald Trump won the 2020 election. “Climate change is a hoax, just like Covid was,” he tweeted in 2021.

During a Zoom call with other proponents of decertifying Michigan’s 2020 election results, Regan [reiterated his] comment about rape that may have been sarcastic: “Having three daughters, and I tell my daughters, well, if rape is inevitable, you should just lie back and enjoy it.”

Regan has never held elected office despite being a perennial candidate for state House. The seat he is running for has been held by Republicans for the last decade. The winner of this election would only serve for just under eight months, as Michigan’s new independent redistricting panel has eliminated the district starting in 2023.

Regan became an infamous national figure during his 2020 campaign for the same state House seat after one of his daughters posted a viral tweet urging Michigan residents to “please, for the love of God” not vote for him.

Further posts of Regan’s involving Jews celebrated Trump for signing the Abraham Accords, saying the image of the White House Rose Garden’s signing ceremony was “what a real man in leadership looked like,” and compared Nazi brownshirts to Antifa. Regan has also said that Ukraine is “culpable” in Russia’s ongoing invasion of the country.

The Post continues:

Regan’s comments drew criticism from Republicans and Democrats alike, with Michigan GOP co-chair Meshawn Maddock calling them “offensive and disappointing.”

“I’d like to think he didn’t mean what he said,” [he did] Maddock told Bridge Michigan. “If I could control what our candidates say all the time, that would be a great thing.”

The state party’s other co-chair, Ron Weiser, a former U.S. ambassador to Slovakia, also criticized Regan.

“Mr. Regan’s history of foolish, egregious and offensive comments, including his most recent one are simply beyond the pale,” Weiser said in a statement. “We are better than this as a Party and I absolutely expect better than this of our candidates.”

Still, the party leaders did not call for Regan to drop out of the race.

“Increasingly, I think there’s a lot of frustration that we’re giving away our opportunities statewide, and I think this adds to the problems,” said Jason C. Roe, a Republican strategist in Michigan, of Regan’s controversy. Regan, he said, is still poised to win this year’s election, but once the district is redrawn, “he’s gone.”

Regan will face Democrat Carol Glanville, Walker City commissioner, in a May 3 special election to fill the vacant Michigan House seat in the state’s Kent County.

The chair of the state’s Democratic Party, Lavora Barnes, said in a statement Monday that the state’s GOP should denounce Regan’s remarks and make clear that the 2020 presidential election will not be decertified.

“This type of language is disgusting and Michigan Republicans have got to stand up and denounce Regan’s remarks and what his candidacy represents,” Barnes said. “If they don’t, Regan will be the face of the Michigan Republican Party. His extreme views and reckless comments on the Russian invasion, 2020 election results and now rape show he is totally unfit for office.”

Arizona has a disturbing number of GQP candidates for office just as horrifying as this guy. Regan is not some aberration but represents the typical MAGA/QAnon GQP candidate for office in 2022.

For the love of God, DO NOT vote for these horrific Republican candidates.