As the Wonk Room reported in June, the Montana GOP adopted an anti-gay platform that referenced the Constitution at least 10 times to herald the preeminence of it as the sole source of law. While much of the media has discussed the Montana GOP’s anti-gay platform, few have noted the inherent contradiction within the document itself on its beliefs about the Constitution.

In their platform, Montana Republicans declared that the Constitution “be upheld in all of its entirety” and that all state and federal policies be “Constitutional in their effects, laws and practices.” But while they “adamantly oppose any attempts, whether direct or indirect, to destroy and/or undermine the Constitution,” the Montana Republicans criminalize homosexuality and call for more drastic “policies” and “practices” that directly conflict with the Constitution:

– We support the clear will of the people of Montana expressed by legislation to keep homosexual acts illegal.

– We support the repeal of the 16th amendment of the U.S. Constitution which authorizes a national income tax.

– We agree with Thomas Jefferson and James Madison, who stated that the U.S. Supreme Court does not have the sole authority to judge the constitutionality of federal laws. We hold with these men that the States not only have the right, but also the duty to nullify unconstitutional laws in order to protect their citizens.

As the Wonk Room’s Igor Volsky noted, both the Montana Supreme Court and the U.S. Supreme Court found such a law unconstitutional as it violates the State’s constitutional right to privacy and the Constitution’s Due Process clause. But in calling to repeal the 16th amendment, the GOP flouts Article VI of the Constitution stating that Acts of Congress “shall be the supreme law of the land…anything in the Constitution or laws of any State to the contrary notwithstanding,” thus expressly establishing that states do not have a veto power over federal laws. Article III and the Marbury v. Madison decision of 1803 established that the independent judiciary has “the last word on the law and the Constitution.”

The Montana GOP is not alone in its constitutional hypocrisy. As the GOP shifts further to the right, many state GOP platforms are redefining Constitutional authority to validate more extreme agendas. While the Texas GOP similarly sought to outlaw homosexuality, the Iowa GOP platform sought to reintroduce and ratify the “original 13th Amendment” to strip President Obama’s citizenship because he won the Nobel Peace Prize. In May, the Maine GOP adopted a “Tea Party” platform asserting “10th amendment sovereignty rights over unconstitutional government intrusions” like health care reform. And in Washington, GOP candidates who view the platform, which calls to reject health care reform and the United Nations, as “incredibly intrusive” and hostile to “moderate stances” risk losing the GOP’s endorsement.

Despite having a lesbian sister, Delaware GOP Senate nominee Christine O’Donnell has long history of taking hateful and ignorant positions against gay people, as ThinkProgress has noted in our report on the former anti-sex activist. For example, O’Donnell has said she “cannot understand” why gay people are offended by homosexuality being called a “deviant sexual orientation,” and has claimed that gay people are “attacking the very center of what is America — freedom to have different views.” But in a 2006 quote uncovered by the Washington Post’s Greg Sargent, O’Donnell took an even harsher stance, calling homosexuality an “identity disorder:”

“People are created in God’s image. Homosexuality is an identity adopted through societal factors. It’s an identity disorder.”

As Sargent writes, “O’Donnell’s suggestion that gays suffer from a psychological disorder is far worse than other comments about gays that have already gotten media attention.” Indeed, until 1973 the American Psychiatric Association considered homosexuality to be a disease, causing tremendous problems for gay men and women who were labeled mentally ill. Now, the APA states firmly that “homosexuality is not an illness, a mental disorder, or an emotional problem,” and that “human beings cannot choose to be either gay or straight.” O’Donnell has claimed that her views have “matured” since she was in her 20s, but the recency of this homophobic remark raises serious questions about how much her extremist beliefs have actually evolved.

Wisconsin GOP Senate candidate Ron Johnson has made opposition to the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, commonly referred to as the stimulus, a cornerstone of his campaign. On his campaign website, the candidate brags that he “opposed…the $862 billion stimulus bill. Ron does not believe the federal government is capable of picking ‘winners and losers’ and should not remove capital from the private sector to create more government programs and jobs, which are unsustainable.” He even complained to Politico that “we spent $1 trillion dollars and we got nothing for it.”

Now, the Northwestern has discovered that, in March 2009, Johnson himself sought stimulus dollars for an opera house. While serving as president of the board of the Grand Opera House, Johnson sent an e-mail to Oshkosh Area Community Foundation CEO Eileen Connolly-Keesler to “ask about the availability of stimulus dollars to help fund the $1.8 million repair project“:

Ron Johnson, the Republican Senate candidate who has been harshly critical of the Democrat-backed stimulus bill, sought stimulus funds for renovations to the Grand Opera House when he was president of the Grand’s board in March 2009.

In an e-mail obtained by the Northwestern, Johnson called Oshkosh Area Community Foundation CEO Eileen Connolly-Keesler to ask about the availability of stimulus dollars to help fund the $1.8 million repair project. Connolly-Keesler sent an e-mail to state Rep. Gordon Hintz, D-Oshkosh, to see what funds might be available for the project.

“I just got a call from Ron Johnson about the Grand and stimulus money,” Connolly-Keesler wrote in a March 25, 2009, e-mail. “I can’t imagine it will pay for non-profit buildings but I am willing to make some calls if you think it would work.”

It now appears that Johnson does believe that the “government is capable of picking ‘winners and losers’” — so long as the opera house he was in charge of was got to be a winner. Unfortunately, he did not end up recieving any stimulus funding for his project. As ThinkProgress has previously noted, Johnson’s hypocrisy on government spending runs deep. Despite railing against government subsidies, the candidate received a “$2.5 million industrial revenue bond” that helped him build his company in the 1980′s.

This Sunday, Gov. Jan Brewer (R-AZ) appeared on Univision’s Al Punto with Jorge Ramos to talk about immigration and Arizona’s new immigration law, SB-1070. In the interview, Brewer insisted she was not a racist and proclaimed that she loves Latinos. “I love them from the bottom of my heart,” Brewer told Ramos:

RAMOS: I remember having an interview with him [Arpaio] and he told me that some people call him racist. Are you concerned that some people might think the same thing of you?

BREWER: Not only am I concerned, it’s really disappointing to me. I’ve lived in the southwest my whole life. I’ve got many friends, of many cultures and certainly a great deal of them are Hispanics, and I love them from the bottom of my heart. I love everybody Jorge, from the bottom of my heart.

RAMOS: Do you feel rejected by the Hispanic community?

BREWER: I feel that I’m somewhat hurt that they would think that I would be a racist, you know. And I was… and a bigot and that I would stand by and allow any kind of racial profiling or anything like that to take place.

Watch it [in Spanish]:

However, Brewer stood by many of the comments that have most offended the Latino community, describing the controversy surrounding her erroneous claim that illegal immigration has led to beheadings in the Arizona desert as a simple “misunderstanding.” Brewer told Ramos she has “no idea” what to do about the 11 million undocumented immigrants in the U.S. and has “not a clue of what an undocumented, anybody looks like.” According to Brewer, racial profiling “is illegal in Arizona,” so therefore “Senate Bill 1070 didn’t have anything to do with that.” Wonk Room has more on Brewer’s defense of statements she’s made connecting illegal immigration to violence and criminality.