Donald Hawker sports a neck beard. This is the only picture I could find of him - anywhere.
After the
Augustus Shaw debacle (Shaw was removed from the ballot for not actually living in the district), Don Hawker is the only Republican running for the Arizona state house seat in LD17. His recent interview with ultra right “journalist”
Marcus Kelley is, needless to say, quite the exercise in quackery.
From the very beginning when Marcus lays out the right wing slogans he is going to propagate, the awkward Hawker is led through the interview like a stray puppy. Pandering for the tea bag vote, Hawker seeks to solidify his credentials as a hypocrite. As we already know that being an
unabashed hypocrite is essential for picking up the far right vote, just ask J.D. Hayworth and John McCain.
Don says his marriage is based in religion and he is therefore not allowed to divorce, but answering the very next question he admits he has a son from a previous marriage. He calls himself a fiscal conservative but
like Ricky Gervais Dean Martin, supports building a statewide border fence regardless if the federal government every pays the state back. In the midst of record state deficits Hawker proposes tax cuts for individual property owners to businesses, but also admits he voted from Prop 100. (For those not living in Arizona, Prop 100 was a recent voter approved sales tax increase of $.01 to prevent the Republican legislature from further gutting the education, police, and fire budgets.) He repeatedly calls health care reform an unfunded mandate, but lambasts the federal spending it required. Ignoring that freedom of religion also includes freedom from religion, Don supports “religious liberty”. By that he means the right of the state to push their preferred religion in the public schools by injecting prayer and creationism - a big government indeed, eh Don? Hawker goes as far to actually call George W. Bush a liberal, something that I’ve noticed is increasingly trendy on the far right as they continue to deal with the fall out the Bush years, and reconcile their own hypocrisy.
Don Hawker is clearly not comfortable discussing his policy positions (probably because he knows they will turn off everyone but teabaggers); he often gives one word answers while slouching deeper into his chair. When asked about controversial issues, his mumbling often becomes so incoherent and inaudible that it's a struggle to understand exactly what he is saying. He gives wishy-washy answers and is never pushed by the softball interviewer to for clarity. The disingenuousness of the "interview" is truly staggering. Sean Hannity thinks this Marcus Kelley guy has credibility problem.
On a more superficial note,
his website is absolutely terrible. By far the worst I’ve seen from someone running for public office. From an awful layout, atrocious spacing, bad grammar, random capitalizations, outrageous misspellings (cam-pain, WTF?), conspiracy theories, to intelligent design propaganda, his site hits on all the negative stereotypes one associates with the so-called “Tea Party”.
Also, what’s with the full on neck beard? Is he going to raise a barn later or what? Not a good look, Donald.
UPDATE: In my article I said Hawker called Bush a liberal, it was in fact Mr. Kelley. Though, even as such, the sentence is still completely valid if you just substitute Kelley for Hawker, without any other changes. It was an innocent mistake, and I even had it written has Kelley saying in my notes.
Mea culpa.
