Just when you think they can go no lower, be no stupider, a Tea Party nitwit will say something like this. It really makes you wonder how they even manage to function in modern society.

Texas Eagle Forum President and former Chairman of the Texas Republican Party, Cathie Adams, has some interesting ideas about Muslims and jihad. Unfortunately, they are nothing more than hysterical, paranoid fantasies. The weirdest one (a relative term, to be sure) is her idea that anti-tax guru Grover Norquist is a “secret Muslim.” Why?

“(He is)… Trouble with a capital T… As you see, he has a beard. He’s married a Muslim woman. But he denies that he has converted himself. He denies that. He and Karl Rove are very good friends. I don’t like Karl Rove, and I certainly don’t like Grover Norquist.” (Source)

He has a BEARD?! Well, gosh, I had no idea that chin fur was a definitive sign of one’s Muslim-ness. If that’s the case, we have thousands of stealth Muslims in this country! Oh noes! Some of our most popular celebrities have beards, those secret salaamers! This conspiracy obviously is very deep and wide. I mean, Robert DeNiro? Adrien Brody? Tobey Maguire? George Clooney?! Say it ain’t so! What about Amish, Sikh and Hasidic men? And not all Muslim men have beards, either. That ought to blow her mind.

Apparently, Ms. Adams is also ignorant of all the famous Americans throughout our history who wore beards, including Abraham Lincoln, Frederick Douglass and Robert E. Lee. Heck, in Texas history, beards are ubiquitous. But when someone who is this paranoid starts down a road of conspiracy like she has, logic and facts are anathema. So much so in Ms. Adams’ case that she also believes CIA Director John Brennan to be a secret Muslim, too. No, really.

Her lunacy doesn’t stop there – nor does her inability to do something so simple as use the Google – as she outlines her theories of a “stealth jihad” to the Far North Dallas Tea Party. She claims that she singlehandedly prevented Iranian-American Republican Amir Omar from becoming a Texas congressman in 2006. She believes that this secret jihad has infiltrated the Republican Party and that it started years ago. She is suspicious of former Bush administration official Suhail Khan, wondering where he came from (Colorado) and that he may have “overstayed a visa” (he was born in Colorado). As we can see, facts have nothing to do with this lady’s theories.

Yes, we’re having a good laugh about this and obviously this woman is so terrified of Islam that she has created boogeymen out of whole cloth. But there are many people who agree with her, many people who think she knows what she is talking about. It’s kind of sad, really. I feel sorry for people who are so controlled by their fear. But that doesn’t mean we can’t throw her “stealth jihad” nonsense in the pile along with the Sandy Hook and Oklahoma tornado conspiracy theories. And when someone thanks God for Ted Cruz’s presence in the Senate, that – along with the rest – pretty much tells us all we need to know about this poor, deluded woman.

Here’s the video (Part 1 is 50+ minutes long – that’s one long-winded wingnut!):