As another example of just who Republicans are running as candidates this year, Clayton Trotter, Tea Party-endorsed candidate for Congress from Texas’ 20th district, is promoting himself as “the Anglo with the Hispanic heart.” Trotter says his polling data indicates that the race is close but pundits expect him to lose—though this year anything could happen.
Father of eleven children (three are adopted from Haiti), he’s done his part to fill his quiver. Trotter is General Counsel of the Justice Foundation where he claims to “have fought for the principles of our Declaration of Independence and Constitution: life, limited government, free enterprise, parental rights, and individual property rights.”
He attaches a very specific meaning to each of those principles: The Constitution is read in the context of the Declaration of Independence in order to include the reference to “the Creator,” which of course is absent in the Constitution itself. He fights for “life” for the unborn, but for Texas prisoners facing the death penalty. . . well, not so much. He advocates “limited government,” as the Tea Party calls for “states rights;” for parental rights — by which he means homeschooling and biblical patriarchy. In fact, the adoption of his Haitian children is celebrated by Vision Forum’s Doug Phillips here.
Trotter also helped to found Pat Robertson’s Regent University Law School, along with Reconstructionist and founding Dean Herb Titus.
Titus claims he is not a Reconstructionist. He just agrees with them and speaks at their conferences.
Trotter says his heart is Hispanic (arguing that his opposition to same-sex marriage and abortion make him more in line with the values of Hispanics than his opponent, Charlie Gonzalez). He is also endorsed by a number of right-to-life groups, Eagle Forum PAC, the Texas Home School Coalition PAC, and the Independence Caucus, whose other endorsements include Joe Miller and Reconstructionist Star Parker.
And given that his entire agenda is aligned, point-by-point, with the far right, the Constitution Party, and Christian Reconstructionists, one has to wonder what else is in that “Hispanic heart.”
