The XX Factor

Republican Congressional Nominee: A Woman Can Run for Office With Husband’s Permission

Jodi Hice has some funny ideas.  

Photo via Jody Hice/Facebook

Just because Tea Party favorite Chris McDaniel lost to incumbent Sen. Thad Cochran in Mississippi doesn’t mean that conservatives are done using the primary system to drive the Republican party further to the right. Finding someone more right-wing than the Rep. Paul Broun of Georgia may have seemed impossible. Conservative group the Madison Project gushed, “It is not an exaggeration to say that Congressman Paul Broun (R-GA) has sustained the most conservative voting record over the longest period of time of any sitting Republican in Congress.” But as ThinkProgress reports, Georgia’s 10th District voters did it on Tuesday, booting Broun and awarding Baptist minister and bizarro talk-radio host Jody Hice the Republican nomination to Congress instead. 

Hice has many colorful opinions, such as arguing that Americans should be allowed to own bazookasIslam isn’t a religion deserving of First Amendment protections, and immigration is a “threat to our liberties” and therefore should be met by citizen-organized armed resistance.

He also has opinions about women. In a 2004 Athens Banner-Herald story about the influx of women into politics, Hice said, “If the woman’s within the authority of her husband, I don’t see a problem.” How very generous of him. Sadly, the Banner-Herald did not follow up and ask about the political futures of women who don’t have husbands on hand to give them permission. 

Hice has been hosting a syndicated radio show for a long time, creating a treasure trove of comments for journalists—or interns, at least—to comb through. Or it would have, if most of his radio archives hadn’t recently disappeared from the Internet. Right Wing Watch reports that all but a month of radio shows up and walked away from Hice’s main website and his YouTube page. Luckily for connoisseurs of the strange pathways of AM talk radio, Right Wing Watch collected some choice bits

I was particularly impressed by this one about “blood moons,” for being especially incomprehensible. “It’s unprecedented that you would have four blood moons, all which are falling on major Jewish holidays—feasts,” he “explains.” He cites fundamentalist pastor John Hagee, saying that Hagee teaches that when blood moons have “fallen on Jewish holidays, they have preceded world-changing, shaking, type events,” going on to claim blood moons signaled the Spanish Inquisition and the creation of Israel. NASA offers an alternate explanation of what causes “blood moons,” which are a form of lunar eclipse that makes the moon look red.