THE MULTI-DECADE GOP OBSESSION WITH CARIBOU SEX

Timothy Egan has an opinion piece at The New York Times about the dominance of the House of Representatives by Republicans who are white, male, crazy, and extreme. The piece is well worth reading, but I want to focus on Egan's lede:

Not long ago, the congressman from northeast Texas, Louie Gohmert, was talking about how the trans-Alaska oil pipeline improved the sex lives of certain wild animals -- in his mind, the big tube was an industrial-strength aphrodisiac. "When the caribou want to go on a date," he told a House hearing, "they invite each other to head over to the pipeline."

Gohmert, consistently on the short list for the most off-plumb member of Congress, has said so many crazy things that this assertion passed with little comment....

Yes, apparently this did pass with little comment when Gohmert said it in February -- but maybe that's because the idea that the pipeline is a caribou aphrodisiac is an article of faith in the GOP. In 2008, Think Progress cited a Michele Bachmann interview:

"Some suggestions are that perhaps we would see an enhancement of wildlife expansion because of the warmth of the pipeline," she said during her Wednesday appearance on WCCO-Radio's "Jack Rice Show."

Bachmann noted a caribou population increase, from 2,700 to 30,000, since the Trans Alaska Pipeline System from Prudhoe Bay was built in 1977.

The pipeline has now become a meeting ground and "coffee klatch" for the caribou, she said.

TP also quoted Rush Limbaugh from a week earlier:

RUSH: Well, in fact, where the Alaskan pipeline is concerned, one of the original concerns was that the pipeline would upset the caribou population, and physically reduce it. Turns out the caribou have multiplied 'cause they like the warmth --

CALLER: Yeah.

RUSH: -- that surrounds the pipeline.

But the source of this notion was George Bush -- no, not the really stupid one, but the one who was supposed to be reasonably intelligent. Here's Poppy Bush in 1987, when he was vice president:

Bush made light of concerns of environmentalists that drilling [in the Alaska National Wildlife Refuge] would spoil the refuge. He said similar concerns had been raised before construction of the Alaska oil pipeline, which environmentalists feared would hurt the caribou population.

"Caribou like the pipeline," he said. "They lean up against it, have a lot of babies, scratch on it. There's more damn caribou than you can shake a stick at."

Y'know, I think these folks really like talking about sex -- at least when it doesn't involve (ick!) humans.