Quote of the year (so far): Legislative edition

During Wednesday's session of the Senate, where they railroaded through the same budget package that Jan Brewer vetoed on July 1, but somehow failed to pass a ballot referral of a temporary sales tax increase, Russell Pearce uttered a pearl of bigotry and ignorance so rancid that it stands out.

Even in a year full of rancidness, both of the legislative and teabagger variety.

The lege's video archive page is here.

The offending quote can be found in the "8/12/2009 Senate Third Reading #2 - Special Session" video link.

Pearce starts his speech at the 15:01 mark.

The money quote came at the 16:59 mark, after a remark lauding the teabaggers (emphasis mine) -

"All you have to do is watch what is going on with health care and see what is happening with our gangster government in D.C. You know...the Mafia couldn't run government any better than they are."

Nice racial stereotyping there, Senator Pearce.

Now some may read that quote and think that Pearce wasn't engaging in racial stereotyping, what with the reference to the Mafia (not that was really much of an improvement, but more on that in a moment). Watch the video. The "Mafia" bit was a backpedal.

Admittedly, it was a little smoother than his backpedal in 2006 after he was caught sending emails to his campaign supporters with links to the website of the National Alliance, an infamous white supremacist group. At the time, he said that he was unaware it was a racist group, just that he liked what they wrote.

Not exactly an improvement, which he didn't seem to understand, or perhaps didn't care to understand.

Of course, the "Mafia" backpedal, while smoother, isn't exactly perfect.

After eight years of the Bush Administration, with the Abramoff scandal, Tom Delay, warrantless wiretapping, torture, scandalous firings of U.S. Attorneys, no-bid contracts for Halliburton, and more, perhaps he's not thinking of the Obama administration with that crack.

OK, probably not. :)