Rep Inglis(R) Is Now Free To Speak

Republican Representative Bob Inglis has been making a splash lately.  He lost his GOP primary because he had the gall to try to lead his constituents away from the fever swamps by telling them to "Turn turn the television off when Glenn Beck comes on."  Remember, Inglis was a 1994 Republican Revolutionary, and no moderate.  Of course, Rep. Inglis lost to his Tea Partying opponent.  There is no room in the Republican Party for anything but the most hard core conservatives.

Luckily for us, now that he's not beholden to his crazy-ass voters he's giving "straight-talk" to the AP:

Inglis, 50, who calls himself a Jack Kemp disciple because he has emphasized outreach to minorities as the late Republican congressman did, thinks racism is a part of the vitriol directed at President Barack Obama.

"I love the South. I'm a Southerner. But I can feel it," he said.

Racism. It's the Teapartiers, my friends.  When your spiritual leader is someone that's convinced Obama is ruining the economy on purpose in order to give him the chance to make reparations to the blacks for slavery, then Racism is par for the course.

"There were no death panels in the bill ... and to encourage that kind of fear is just the lowest form of political leadership. It's not leadership. It's demagoguery," said Inglis, one of three Republican incumbents who have lost their seats in Congress to primary and state party convention challengers this year.

Inglis said voters eventually will discover that you're "preying on their fears" and turn away.

Ahhh, honesty. Refreshing.

"I think we have a lot of leaders that are following those (television and talk radio) personalities and not leading," he said. "What it takes to lead is to say, 'You know, that's just not right.'"

Inglis said the rhetoric also distracts from the real problems that politicians should be trying to resolve, such as budget deficits and energy security.

"It's a real concern, because I think what we're doing is dividing the country into partisan camps that really look a lot like Shia and Sunni," he said, referring to the two predominant Islamic denominations that have feuded for centuries. "It's very difficult to come together to find solutions."

Very nice, Rep Inglis. Way to Lead.  Better late than never.