Andre Bauer Wins BuzzFlash GOP Hypocrite Award For Picking on Hungry Kids When He Himself Received Free Lunches as a Child

Andre Bauer

Welcome back to BuzzFlash's GOP Hypocrite of the Week.

Not that we're experts at running for office, but usually candidates who are looking to burnish their image with voters take up the cause of hungry children, or at least kiss a baby or two.

Not Lt. Gov. Andre Bauer! The man second in line behind Mark Sanford (a fellow GOP Hypocrite alum) in South Carolina politics is trying to move into the disgraced governor's chair by comparing hungry school kids to stray animals.

Last Friday at a town hall meeting, Bauer gave voters a taste of his thoughts on social policy:

My grandmother was not a highly educated woman, but she told me as a small child to quit feeding stray animals. You know why? Because they breed! You're facilitating the problem if you give an animal or a person ample food supply. They will reproduce, especially ones that don't think too much further than that. And so what you've got to do is you've got to curtail that type of behavior. They don't know any better.

As both Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert pointed out on their Comedy Central talk shows, Bauer's apologies made things even worse for him. He protests that he's not tying animals to children, he's just saying that feeding children is like feeding stray animals. He says he has nothing against animals. He says people should be interpreting his remarks as a metaphor (like: "hungry school children are stray animals"?) instead.

Whew. But perhaps the worst part of it all is that we can count little baby Andre among the same group of kids needing a hand-out. According to the Associated Press, Bauer was "a child of divorce who benefited from free lunches himself."

So it seems that, while it may not lead to more breeding (Bauer doesn't have any children we know of), free lunches may allow a student to concentrate enough to make it to school and foster a successful, state-wide political career. What a lucky dog.

Speaking of breeding, like most sanctimonious Republicans, Bauer is vehemently anti-abortion. On his campaign Web site under "Right to Life" issues, it says "he believes every child deserves the chance to explore the world we live in and experience God's creations."

Of course, that doesn't mean that child has the right to "explore the world" with a full belly. And God's creations don't include lunch. That's made by state government, thank you very much! And that's why Andre Bauer is BuzzFlash's GOP Hypocrite of the Week.

Remember our motto: So many Republican hypocrites, so little time.

Catch up with you soon.

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This is Andre Bauer's first GOP Hypocrite of the Week Award. Welcome to the club! You can see a list of all previous nominees here.