The debate over Rick Snyder’s New International Trade Crossing proposal for new bridge between Detroit and Windsor has officially veered off into the crazy.

The

released an

suggesting the NITC project is really a big giveaway to China because Chinese companies can bid on the concessionaire’s agreement to construct and operate the proposed bridge.

Technically, any firm with the requisite experience and wherewithal to build and operate a bridge of this scale could bid on the NITC. If such a thing existed and wasn’t subject to a U.S. or Canadian trade embargo, a Martian consortium could compete for the NITC. It’s a free market, after all.

If a Chinese firm or domestic firm or European firm were to win the bidding process, they would have to build and operate the thing, you know, here—under U.S./Canadian regulations. It’s not as though one can outsource a Detroit/Windsor border crossing to Shanghai. Or even Winnipeg.

But what evidence does the Willow Run Tea Party have to suggest China is behind the NITC push? Well, aside from the open bidding process, they’ve noticed Chinese firms working on other infrastructure projects. Pavement is a Chinese plot! Let’s return to dirt roads and mule carts like our Founding Fathers intended.

Also, Gateway Computers did business in China when Snyder was that company’s CEO. It’s all so clear now.

Except that it isn’t—even in the mind of Willow Run Tea Party founder Dennis Moore.

Hmmmm…is it possible that Dennis Moore is really using this NITC/China canard to deflect attention from the fact that he might be the mysterious 1970s skyjacker

? I have no evidence that Moore is D.B. Cooper. In fact, I have no idea if he is even old enough to have committed Cooper’s infamous 1971 hijacking. Dennis Moore probably isn’t D.B. Cooper, although he’s never denied it. That’s awfully suspicious, if you ask me.

More seriously, though, what Moore and company are engaging in something William F. Buckley famously called the John Birch Fallacy.

It’s the same mania here. A Chinese company could theoretically bid on the NITC, therefore, as the Willow Run Tea Party’s thinking goes, the Governor of the state of Michigan supports the NITC to enrich the Chinese.

There is one major difference between the John Birch Society/Buckley example and the Willow Run Tea Party/NITC situation.

Back in the 1960s, everyone from

to

rightly dismissed the Birchers as nutters. Today, we pretend the Willow Run Tea Party isn’t completely full of it.