The story, as of Monday: a Facebook friend of Audra commented, "obama bin lauden is the new terrorist....muslim is on there side .....need to take this country back from all these mad coons.......and illegals." And Audra responded: "You tell em Eric! lol."

Audra unfriended some people who complained about her reaction, but not racist Eric himself. And then the internet heard about it. But Audra is still running to be chairwoman of the Young Republicans. And John Avlon at The Daily Beast has tracked down all the other examples of Audra's Facebook nuttiness.

The weird and sad thing is that everything she writes is utterly crazy and deranged, but it is so within the current bounds of acceptable political discourse that we are like "why is she worse than Jim DeMint, again?" But here you go, here is the crazy:

In October 2008, in the wake of news that an effigy of Sarah Palin was being hung outside an affluent Hollywood home as an offensive Halloween decoration, Shay replied, returning to the "LOL" style that she employed after the "coons" comment: "What no ‘Obama in a noose? Come on now, its just freedome (sic) of speech, no one in Atlanta would take that wrong! Lol."

Posting and endorsing a conspiracy theory video that attempts to prove that Obama believes he can only "ensure his own salvation" and "fate" if he helps African-Americans above whites, complete with Barnum-esque captions ("LISTEN AS HE ATTACKS WHITE PEOPLE").

And so on! And she will still probably win her campaign for chairwoman of the Young Republicans. None of these crazy comments disqualifies her from leading them, because this is already what old Republicans say, openly, on TV and on the radio, all the time. So, good luck, Audra Shay. You certainly do represent the future of the Republican party!

Frankly? It is a pretty non-shocking example of the GOP's ability to find humor in the craziest and most racist of places. But here is the magical tale of Audra Shay, Young Republican leader:

Shay posted something dumb about health care, on her Facebook, and one of her friends responded, as anyone would, with an angry string of slurs.

Two minutes later, Piker posted again saying "Obama Bin Lauden [sic] is the new terrorist… Muslim is on there side [sic]… need to take this country back from all of these mad coons… and illegals."

Eight minutes after that, at 2:02, Shay weighed in on Piker's comments: "You tell em Eric! lol."

Yes. You tell em, Eric! Tell em something insane! And, hah, it got better! Shay only de-friended the people who complained.

Cassie Wallender, a national committeewoman from the Washington Young Republican Federation, then wrote: "Someone please help a naïve Seattle girl out, is Eric's comment a racist slur?" She answered her own question one minute later: "Okay, why is this okay? I just looked it up. ‘It comes from a term baracoons (a cage) where they used to place Africans who were waiting to be sent to America to be slaves.' THIS IS NOT OKAY AND IT'S NOT FUNNY."

This was followed soon after by the chairman of the D.C. Young Republicans, Sean L. Conner, who wrote "I'm really saddened that you would support this type of racial language. ..wow! Thanks Cassie for standing up…"

Shay was silent on this exchange, but soon word started spreading throughout the Young Republican circuit, open to GOP members under 40. Significantly, Shay then "de-friended" Wallender and Conner-in the world of Facebook, that means cutting off relations-after calling her out, but kept Piker as a "friend" (subsequently, it appears their profiles are no longer linked).

The election for chairman of the Young Republicans is next Saturday, guys. Let's see how many embarrassing and permanently archived examples of electronic racism the candidates can rack up in the coming days.

For a while now we've been mildly fascinated by Meghan McCain. When she first popped up in the public consciousness through her "work" on her father's failed presidential campaign, there was something sort of endearing about her. We wanted to like her. But as we've become more and more exposed to her with the passage of time we've come to find her, well, pretty fucking grating, intolerably insufferable, the complete and total embodiment of everything wrong with a whiny-ass generation of privilege that wants, no expects, everything to just fall right into their precious little laps without having to do shit to earn whatever it is they desire.

So Meghan's out there calling bitches out in her Daily Beast column, painfully attempting to enter into the punditry, signing "high six figure" book deals, dropping F-bombs on Twitter, and acting like a cunt-y diva at gala events, all on the back of her father's name. So what's the deal with Meghan McCain? What is it that she's angling for here. Does she truly hope to become a "voice" for a new generation of progressive Republicans, a genuine agent of change, or is she just another fame-whore high on life in the public eye.

Tonight she was on the Colbert Report droning on and on and on about how much the Republican party needs to change its stance on just about everything, from gay marriage to sex education (Meghan is very, VERY "pro-sex") to how it markets itself to younger voters, but then she turned around and talked about how totally AWESOME the Republican party is, except for, you know, all of the batshit crazy wingnuts who're provided political shelter within it (Speaking of batshit crazy wingnuts, McCain declined to offer any comments on Sarah Palin). All in all McCain was, well, sort of likeable in that "oh you poor, confused little girl" sort of way, definitely stricken by a deeply-rooted identity crisis, and, oh yeah, did we mention that she loves to fuck?! And that's pretty much it.

The interview closed with Colbert landing the line of night, delivered just after McCain had launched into another one of her many "pro-sex" diatribes: "When you say 'pro-sex woman' I think the Republican's numbers go north."

Zing.





Meghan McCain on The Colbert Report [Colbert Nation]

The Conservative Political Action Conference is a yearly convention in DC where thousands of Republicans hear stirring speeches from the party's biggest names, and they all decide what the future of the party looks like. In years past, we've seen such luminaries as Newt Gingrich and Ann Coulter speak to the adoring audience, and this year, who knows, it's probably Newt and Ann again. Palin backed out. Oh, Joe the Plumber's there.

Politico contributor Patrick Gavin wandered around CPAC asking all the hip young Republicans (one of them is a boy with earrings!) how they thought the GOP could be "cool."

Who are the coolest Republicans? Ron Paul, Rush Limbaugh, and, uh, Bobby Jindal are named.

(If you want a better idea of the kind of fun these kids are having, check out the exhibit hall.)

When even the relatively safe haven of the Hot Topics table fails to shelter you from the pointed barbs and open-mouthed guffaws of your daytime sisterhood, we can only imagine what life in the schoolyard was like. It's early-life emotional duress such as that which provides the ideal conditions for the seeds of extreme neo-conservatism to sprout, like a cancer, in the farthest recesses of one's deeply damaged super-ego.

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