The Oklahoma Republican Party is in hot water again, this time for comparing food stamp recipients to animals.

A post that appeared Monday on the party’s Facebook page reasoned that food stamp recipients, like animals, “will grow dependent on handouts and will not learn to take care of themselves”:



The post, which was deleted early Tuesday afternoon, didn’t exactly get its facts right. This year is not seeing the “greatest amount of free meals and food stamps ever,” as more than 47.6 million people received food stamps in the 2013 fiscal year, according to data from the U.S. Department of Agriculture.

But the factual error presumably wasn’t why the post was deleted. Party Chairman Randy Brogdon wrote Tuesday that the comparison had been “misinterpreted.”

“This post was supposed to be an analogy that compared two situations illustrating the cycle of government dependency in America, not humans as animals,” he wrote.

“I offer my apologies for those who were offended – that was not my intention,” he added.

This is the second time in as many months that the state party has made unflattering headlines. Brogdon late last month finally accepted the resignation of top staffer Clint “T.C.” Ryan after weeks of party infighting over Ryan’s domestic violence conviction.