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Republican State Sen. Phil Jensen of South Dakota thinks companies should have the right to refuse service to people based on sexual orientation, race, and religion.

Jensen took bigotry a step beyond the Republican norm of discriminating against gay people.

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According to the Rapid City Journal:

Jensen goes so far as to say that businesses should have the right to deny service based on a customer’s race or religion – whether that’s right or wrong, he says, can be fairly addressed by the free market, not the government. “If someone was a member of the Ku Klux Klan, and they were running a little bakery for instance, the majority of us would find it detestable that they refuse to serve blacks, and guess what? In a matter of weeks or so that business would shut down because no one is going to patronize them,” he said.

The free market has an awful record when it comes to ending discrimination. The free market didn’t end slavery. The free market didn’t end Jim Crow. The free market is where women get paid seventy-seven cents for every dollar that a man makes.

The free market is not the cure all that conservatives like to claim it is, because the free market has no motivation other than making profit. The left has learned how to use their free market power as consumers to boycott right-wing hosts like Glenn Beck and Rush Limbaugh, and groups like ALEC, but the market itself is not concerned with issues like racism, bigotry, and discrimination.

Phil Jensen considers allowing business owners to discriminate a form of “real conservatism,” which sounds a whole lot code for racism and bigotry. Somewhere along the way for many members of the Republican Party conservatism became a synonym for racism.

As long as the Republican Party contains elected officials such as Phil Jensen, their attempt at outreach to minorities are destined to fail. Laws that prohibit racial discrimination shouldn’t be considered big government interference.

Anyone who believes that companies should be allowed to discriminate (Rand Paul) shouldn’t be holding office. They are disguising racism with conservatism. The goal isn’t to take the country back, but to this country back to a much more intolerant time.