Ohio Republicans are calling on an unhinged local politician to resign after she embarrassed her party by blaming mass shootings on gay activists and drag queens. Despite nationwide derision and mockery, the candidate says she has no plans to drop out.
State Representative and state senate candidate Candice Keller posted a list of people to blame for mass shootings on Facebook this weekend. While other Republicans have been blaming violent video games for the shootings, Keller apparently took the blame-everything-but-guns game too far.
“Transgender, homosexual marriage, and drag queen advocates” made the list, citing the “breakdown of the traditional American family” as the reason. She also blamed “the culture, which totally ignores the importance of God and the church.”
“While our nation was in utter shock over the acts of violence in El Paso and Dayton, Republican State Representative Candice Keller took to social media to state why she thought these acts were happening,” said Ohio Republican Party leader Jane Timken in a statement.
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“Candice Keller’s Facebook post was shocking and utterly unjustifiable. Our nation is reeling from these senseless acts of violence and public servants should be working to bring our communities together, not promoting divisiveness.”
This is the first time Timkin has called on a Republican to resign since she became the leader of the Ohio Republican Party.
Keller responded to Timkin by calling her an “establishment moderate.”
“As the only conservative in this race, I will be taking my Senate campaign to the voters to decide,” she said.
The rest of the post inexplicably named many conservative issues as the causes of mass shootings, including Colin Kaepernick kneeling at football games and “open borders,” even though one of the shooters this weekend was a white supremacist who hated Hispanic people.
Notably absent from the list was the availability of guns.
Keller is no stranger to controversy. She is the executive director of a Christian crisis pregnancy center, a type of organization that frequently uses misinformation to pressure girls and women out of abortions. She has made headlines for comparing Planned Parenthood to Nazis.
In 2017, she also appeared on a white supremacist radio show hosted by Sonny Thomas, who has said, “We must secure the existence of our race and a future for white children” and “‘Diversity’ is a code word for white genocide.”
