Editor's Note: Gibbons embarrasses Nevada

Rep. Jim Gibbons is a right-wing nutjob. In recent weeks, the seemingly mild-mannered Reno congressman has revealed himself to be a bumbling kook, regularly jamming his loafered foot into his gabbling mouth.

And by the way, he's the front-runner to become Nevada's next governor.

It would be funny if it weren't truly disturbing.

Gibbons is in his fourth term representing Nevada's 2nd Congressional District, which encompasses most of Nevada outside the urban core of Las Vegas. Until recently, the Gulf War vet led a fairly quiet political existence, lounging in the back seat as more serious and experienced individuals drove Nevada's congressional efforts.

But then Gibbons, a go-along, get-along trooper for the Bush administration, was passed over for a key post: chairman of the House Intelligence Committee. This disappointment prompted Gibbons to turn his attention to running for governor, and lately he's delivered a bizarre spate of comments that have many people wondering what the hell Gibbons is thinking.

Two blunders stand out.

In January, Gibbons, speaking to NBC News, objected to protests against public financing of the inauguration, saying that "anybody who is against that obviously is a communist."

Wha? Who, in the 21st friggin' century, is going around accusing Americans of being communists? Joseph McCarthy has been dead for a good while now, and one figured his ruinous red-baiting rhetoric of the early 1950s had been buried with him. Alas, now we find that Jim Gibbons sees the world through the same warped lens: There are two kinds of people: flag-waving, God-fearing, abortion-opposing Americans and communists.

Gibbons apologized for the "communist" remark, but the damage had been done. Gibbons had embarrassed Nevada on a national stage.

What's more, Gibbons' apology wasn't genuine, as a speech he made last week in Elko made clear. At a Lincoln Day Dinner, Gibbons delivered a cliché-clogged tirade, castigating everybody who doesn't walk in lockstep with the neoconservative agenda.

For example, Gibbons ranted against "Hollywood liberals": "I say we tell those liberal, tree-hugging, Birkenstock-wearing, hippie, tie-dyed liberals to go make their movies and music and whine somewhere else."

Gibbons went on to identify liberals with those individuals who wanted to go to Iraq to serve as human shields. "I say, it's just too damn bad we didn't buy them a ticket," he told the Elko faithful.

These comments are ridiculous enough, but it turns out there was something more sinister at work: Gibbons copied much of his Elko speech from a 2003 address by an Alabama politician named Beth Chapman. Chapman's support-the-troops speech made the rounds of the Internet, Gibbons got a hold of it, liked the nasty things she had to say about half the American electorate and decided to claim it as his own.

This is called plagiarism. It's a dishonest, lazy move that says a lot more about Gibbons than his blowhard rhetoric. Gibbons' flack says he had received the speech in an e-mail and didn't know it was Chapman's copyrighted work. This, of course, raises a troubling question: Is it common, acceptable practice for Gibbons to craft speeches based on spam? What's next for this veteran public official, an impassioned pitch for Viagra? A naughty come-on to meet a neglected housewife?

Seriously, though, one has to wonder where Gibbons goes from here. He has embraced Limbaugh Nation, which practices an easy-to-understand ideology in which whatever the Democrats believe is wrong, whatever President Bush believes is right and whatever the news media report is biased. Gibbons believes he is leading a revolution against the evils of the New Deal and the decadent '60s. He wants to turn back the clock to the era before "communists" ruined the American way of life.

In this context, should Nevada be a little worried? I mean, what's next, a campaign to outlaw gambling? After all, there are sinners in our midst, 37 million of them a year flocking to Las Vegas! What happens here must be exposed here! We must root out these evildoers who throw away their money on the devil's machines!

It's hard to believe that Nevada's resort industry--fiscally conservative, but pragmatic to the core--would back such an ideologue. Gibbons makes current Gov. Kenny Guinn, a wimp and an equivocator, look good.

Nevada has been edging to the right in recent years, reflecting a national trend. Despite his obvious hatred for Nevada (Yucca Mountain, Harry Reid, land auction funds), Bush won twice here after two Clinton victories. But Gibbons is a different story. He clearly does not represent the to-each-his-own conservatism that has been Nevada's hallmark.

Silver State conservatives should do themselves a favor and send Gibbons packing early in next year's governor's race. Lt. Gov. Lorraine Hunt, who also plans to run, is a better choice for the Republican nomination. Commenting on Gibbons' plagiarized Elko speech, Hunt cleverly noted that when she spoke at that same Lincoln Day event, she talked about Abraham Lincoln. Now there's an idea.

--GEOFF SCHUMACHER