A Tea Party Michigan state lawmaker arranged a smear campaign against himself to lessen the impact of an extramarital relationship he was having with a fellow lawmaker, reported CBS News. The lie Republican Todd Courser made about himself is actually worse than his affair, by Tea Party Christian standards.
Courser, a married father of four, had an aide create and distribute an anonymous email stating that Courser was “caught behind a Lansing nightclub” having sex with a man. Courser was actually having an affair with fellow Tea Party lawmaker, state Rep. Cindy Gamrat. The lawmakers reportedly used their taxpayer-funded offices to maintain and hide their affair.
They are described as “socially conservative legislators who often invoke their Christian faith in pursuit of new legislation governing gun rights, abortion, and marriage.” An audio recording revealed Courser saying the email is intended to be “a complete smear campaign” and should make the actual affair look “mild by comparison.” Michigan House Speaker will ask the nonpartisan House Business Office to determine “whether there was a violation of House rule or any evidence of illegal behavior.”
There’s no way to describe this scandal as anything else but twisted. It’s political suicide, not to mention the impact the scandal will certainly have on their respective families. Nothing about this arrangement is a good idea. How dumb can two people be? Well, apparently pretty dumb. This supposedly was not Courser’s first self-smear campaign. In a tight race, he once supposedly had a flyer created accusing him of being a child molester, and then claimed his opponent was using the lowest form of a smear campaign by creating and distributing the false flyer.
