Missouri Republican is hoping to attract Steve Bannon’s support for his Senate race with campaign positions that border on parody.
Courtland Sykes has launched a GOP primary race in hopes to challenging Sen. Claire McCaskill (D-MO), and he’s marketing himself as a hardcore supporter of President Donald Trump, reported the St. Louis Dispatch.
The 37-year-old Arkansas native, Harvard graduate and Navy veteran said he has met Bannon, and hopes to win his backing by promoting an aggressive “America first” agenda and regressive political beliefs.
“Chanel (Rion), my fiancee, has given me orders to favor (women’s) rights, so I’d better,” Sykes said in an 11-page policy document. “But Chanel knows that my obedience comes with a small price that she loves to pay anyway — I want to come home to a home-cooked dinner at six every night, one that she fixes.”
“It’s exactly the kind of family dinner that I expect one day my future daughters will learn to make after they too become traditional homemakers and family wives — think Norman Rockwell here — and Gloria Steinham (sic) be damned,” he added.
Sykes sent the lengthy document to the newspaper after faring poorly in a 20-minute interview, and he declined a second interview.
The document called for 20th century social programs to “go away,” and hopes to “stop Muslim immigration cold” while eliminating most existing U.S. laws.
He also praised Bannon’s Breitbart News website and criticized political correctness, “Big Media” and public education.
“(Detroit) is crawling with uneducated people who can’t read a breakfast menu,” Sykes wrote.
One political scientist who reviewed the document can’t be 100 percent certain Sykes is serious, and described his views as “Trump-inspired populism on steroids.”
“I’m 99.9 percent sure it’s not parody,” said John Messmer, a political science professor at St. Louis Community College at Meramec. “It’s not something strategic done by the Democratic side or someone that’s looking to criticize the conservative or Republican position.”
“I do hold back that 0.1 percent,” Messmer added. “This might be one of the greatest examples of political performance art I’ve ever seen.”