Pick Your Favorite Dick Armey Quote

by Stuart Shapiro

The former Majority Leader of the House has been on a roll lately (h/t Open Left).  First he defends Glenn Beck’s scholarly creds:

One of the things that we see as we look at Glenn Beck’s work that’s been fascinating to me, is we see a more true and accurate history of the United States, and we see it documented at levels of rigor that, in fact, one would expect out of Ph.D. dissertations — it is serious, scholarly work….[Liberal critics] don’t have to argue with Glenn Beck. They have to argue with his documentation and they can’t match that level of rigor.

This one is so bizarre that my drink came through my nose when I read it.  I guess the anti-elite thing had gotten old so now Armey is arguing that Beck is more scholarly than the liberal elite?  Glenn Beck is many things but a “serious scholar” is not one of them.

Then he comes up with the figure that 3 percent of Democratic voters are dead people.

Armey bashed Barack Obama and Democrats even harder – the former economics professor said the president was “economically ignorant” and accusing Democrats of widespread voter fraud, saying it bad votes accounted for 3 percent of elections.

“I’m tired of people being Republican all their lives and then changing parties when they die,” quipped Armey, 70.

Assuming that there are any dead voters out there (which is a reach), I’m not sure where he comes up with such a precise figure.  Maybe he had a “serious scholar” like Glenn Beck do some research into the subject.

By: Stuart Shapiro

Stuart is a professor and the Director of the Public Policy
program at the Bloustein School of Planning and Public Policy at Rutgers
University. He teaches economics and cost-benefit analysis and studies
regulation in the United States at both the federal and state levels.
Prior to coming to Rutgers, Stuart worked for five years at the Office
of Management and Budget in Washington under Presidents Clinton and
George W. Bush.