Jeb Bush Hires Anti-Muslim, Anti-Gay Extremist

So much for Jeb Bush's pretense of being the GOP "moderate."  After hiring a gay communications director - one has to wonder what that individual is now thinking - Bush has reportedly hired Jordan Sekulow, a far right Christian extremist as part of Jebbie's campaign staff.  The take away?  That Bush is only too happy to prostitute himself to the ugliest elements of the Republican Party base.  A piece in The Daily Beast looks at Sekulow's ugly track record which doesn't bode well for anyone hoping that the GOP might regain some shred of sanity.  Here are excerpts:

He [Sekulow] frequently appears on right-wing television to pontificate—his face caked with makeup, hair gelled back, suit shining, and double chin taking on a life of its own—about a wide range of topics, from Christian persecution to conservative persecution. On social media, he branded those behind the proposed Ground Zero Mosque “terrorists.” And in his capacity as executive director of the American Center for Law and Justice, televangelist Pat Robertson’s snake oil mega-mall of right-wing legal causes, he has lobbied foreign governments to ban homosexuality and fought efforts to allow exceptions to anti-abortion laws when the life of the mother is at risk.

And on Friday, he announced he’s going to work for Jeb Bush. That’s right, Sekulow will be a senior adviser to the political action committee of the likely Republican presidential candidate most often labeled a moderate.

While Bush has not endorsed Sekulow’s extreme anti-gay position, Salon’s Luke Brinker notes that he also has not “staked out positions substantially at odds with those taken by Sekulow and the ACLJ.”

Until this point, Bush’s hires have done nothing but bolster his moderate reputation—especially on the issue of marriage equality.

In 2012, when Sekulow and his father, Jay, chief counsel for the ACLJ and geriatric rocker, were advising the Romney campaign, it was reported by Mother Jones’ Andy Kroll that the pair had opened their own ACLJ offices in Africa to lobby local officials. In Zimbabwe, where homosexuality was outlawed in 2006, they “pushed an agenda that backs outlawing same-sex marriage and making sure that homosexuality ‘remain[s] a criminal activity.’” The younger Sekulow, the publication reported, traveled to Harare, Zimbabwe’s capital, to lobby officials in person. The father-son duo made similar anti-gay lobbying efforts in Russia.

In hiring Sekulow, Bush is extending an olive branch to the far-right, but he is also perhaps damaging himself should he make it to the general.

Sekulow has dabbled in islampahobia, even supporting anti-Sharia law measures in Oklahoma.