Republican House candidate: 'Either way, people and stegosaurs were living at the same time'

Note: This did not actually happen
(Derek Chatwood)

Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-Crazy Town) has a new favorite candidate for the House, and he sure seems like an interesting fellow:

Allen Quist, a 67-year-old soybean farmer and onetime anti-sodomy crusader who believes that humans and dinosaurs may have coexisted in Southeast Asia as late as the 11th century. [...]

During his time as a state representative, Quist slammed a gay counseling clinic at Mankato State University by comparing it to the Ku Klux Klan (both would be breeding grounds for evil'AIDS, in this case) and went undercover at an adult bookstore and a gay bathhouse in an effort to prove to a local newspaper reporter that they had become a "haven for anal intercourse."

He "went undercover," eh? Is that what they're calling it now? Too bad Sen. Larry "Wide Stance" Craig didn't think of that one.

Quist doesn't just hate gays, though. He's not very fond of women either:

In one memorable interview, Quist told a British reporter he believed women were "genetically predisposed" to be subservient to men, pointing to, among other things, the behavior of wild animals.

It's easy to see why Michele Bachmann would consider Quist her intellectual soulmate:

"But the Lord says, 'Be submissive wives; you are to be submissive to your husbands.'"

Quist and Bachmann also share a particular fetus fetish:

Quist was a staunch pro-lifer who once argued that abortion should be classified as a first-degree homicide.

Quist, like Bachmann, has also devoted years to fighting against public education, including this contribution to an online curriculum supplemental:

One section asks this leading question: "Did dinosaurs and people live at the same time, and why do so many recently discovered ancient art works accurately picture dinosaurs?" The answer is a resounding "yes." "The only reasonable explanation for the stegosaurus carved in stone on the wall of the Cambodian temple is that the artist had either seen a stegosaur or had seen other art works of a stegosaur," Quist writes. "Either way, people and stegosaurs were living at the same time."

What's most striking about Quist, and his work with Bachmann, is that when they first found each other in the '90s and joined forces to "take down Minnesota's state curriculum standards, which they considered a gateway to a totalitarian society built on moral relativism," their brand of conservatism was considered, you know, extreme. When Quist launched a challenge to then-Gov. Arne Carlson (a Republican), even Republicans thought Quist was a nutjob:

"At one point," the St. Petersburg Times reported in 1994, "a Senate leader suggested he had an unhealthy preoccupation with sex, having devoted 30 hours to it in a single session." [...]

Mike Triggs, a former Carlson aide, told the Minneapolis Star-Tribune, "Mr. and Mrs. Gopher are going to think [the Quists] are damn weird." He dismissed Quist supporters as "zombies." The governor himself played up his opponent's under-the-covers ops. "Instead of prowling through dirty bookstores, why didn't he go out and change state spending policy?" the governor asked the Associated Press.

But that was then, and now that the nutjobs have taken over the Republican Party, this once-radical Republican is now just another standard Republican on a mission to spread the gospel of stupid.