Republicans Try To Compare Recchia To Hollywood’s Worst Villains

The election victory of Barack Obama over Mitt Romney was a wake up call for Republicans everywhere. They learned that they were uncool, not hip and out-of-touch with today’s Buzzfeed-culture obsessed world of neo-hipsters. Looking to tap into the rich vein of nerdy references that cause geeks everywhere to squeal with delight, Republicans have experimented with this style of gorilla internet campaigning with spectacularly lazy results. According to a report by Politicker, the National Republican Congressional Committee (NRCC) has put out a list that compares Councilman Domenic Recchia (D) to a slew of generic movie villains.

Recchia, who is challenging Republican Michael Grimm for his seat in Congress, has been accused of abusing his position as finance chairman. Recchia has doled out millions of dollars in “member items” spending to Staten Island based charities, schools and hospitals. The spending is outside of Recchia’s domain as councilman but inside Grimm’s domain as congressman. Recchia took some heat for the maneuver, which critics initially painted as a purely political to raise his profile in the district as he seeks to unseat Grimm.

Republicans have stepped up their criticism a notch by comparing Recchia’s actions to those of the worst movie villains Hollywood has come up with, including Emperor Palpatine from Star Wars, Biff Tannen from Back to the Future and Lex Luthor from Superman.

The incredibly silly list, which you can read by clicking here, is just sad. It isn’t sad because it represents another tasteless example of political mudslinging at its worst, though it does, but because of how incredibly lazy and dumb it is.

Are Republicans seriously comparing the questionable, though technically legitimate expenditures on Superstorm Sandy affected hospitals in Staten Island to the guy who built the Death Star? Are Recchia’s actions as terrible as Lex Luthor, who fired hijacked nuclear missiles at California and New Jersey? Because if they thought this through, they might have been able to come up with a list of lesser known, though otherwise corrupt politicians from actual history rather than resorting to ridiculous cartoon villains from movies. Instead of unfairly comparing Recchia to Mr. Potter from It’s a Wonderful Life, why not unfairly compare him to State Senator John Sampson or Carl Kruger?

Besides, everyone knows that if Recchia – or almost any local pol, really – were to be compared to a super-villain, it would have to be Chairface Chippendale, from The Tick, who has a chair for a head. Chippendale, like Recchia, and, again, any other local pol, tries repeatedly to gain infamy by vandalizing public objects with his image.

Stick to what you are good at Congressional Republicans, whatever that is, and leave the pop-culture wisecracks to people smart enough to understand them in the first place.