The re-election of President Obama last week was just too much for some conservatives to handle. Although the doomsday pronouncements of the past four years have yet to materialize, some Americans couldn’t help themselves from freaking out over the news that the president will be here for one more term.
TPM has compiled the six most bizarre reactions to Obama’s victory.
1. Obama’s Hired, But You’re Fired
Some of the nation’s CEOs took their frustration out on their employees. Robert Murray, CEO of the coal company Murray Energy, responded to the election by reading a prayer to his employees and then laying off 50 of them. Papa John’s pizza CEO John Schnatter, a donor to Republican loser Mitt Romney, announced that franchise owners will likely have to cut hours for employees in order to pay for the president’s health care law. And Zane Tankel, a New York-based Applebee’s franchisee, said he would halt plans to expand his 40-restaurant empire because the health care law would cost him too much.
2. Burying Gold On The Ranch
Over the weekend, Reuters reported on an emerging job description for a number of financial advisers throughout the country: talking their wealthiest clients off the ledge in the wake of Obama’s win. John Burke, a New Jersey-based financial strategist, described some of the small business owners he works with as “inconsolable.” Houston-based adviser Scott Tiras said a client wanted to turn his assets into gold before the election and bury it in multiple places on his ranch. Tiras managed to talk him out of it, but after the election the client was evidently “too upset to talk about it.”
3. Riots And Racial Slurs
Election Day turned ugly by nightfall at a pair of southern universities. Hundreds of students gathered at the University of Mississippi to riot after the race was called for Obama. Some students hurled racial slurs and burned Obama campaign signs. Eventually local police got involved. There was a similar scene at Hampden-Sydney College in Virginia where threats of violence and epithets from about 40 students followed Obama’s win. The chancellor at Ole Miss promised a full investigation, and the next day the more dovish segment of its student body staged a candlelight vigil in response to the election night protestors.
4. Four More Years: S.O.S
A Florida man (pictured above) said he started to display the American flag upside down the day after the election because he believes “this country is in distress.” Meanwhile, a man in Texas did the same. Both are veterans, but people in their towns have responded to the gestures with anger. The presentation is never permitted under U.S. Flag Code “except as a signal of dire distress in instances of extreme danger to life or property.”
5. Are You There, God? It’s WND.
A post-election screed from attorney Larry Klayman was deep in the fringe, even by conservative website WorldNetDaily’s standards. Under the blaring headline “GOD HAS A BIGGER PLAN!,” Klayman searched for divine interpretation of a second Obama term. A Romney victory, he wrote, would have deceptively led the Republican Party to the conclusion that “a Moses had appeared to deliver us out of the Egyptian-like bondage we find ourselves in – thanks to our ‘Mullah in Chief’ and his growing voter hoards of socialists, communists, anti-Semites, anti-Christians, atheists, radical gays and lesbians, feminists, illegal immigrants, Muslims, anti-Anglo whites and others who last Tuesday cemented his destructive hold on the White House and our country.”
6. Lamest Secession Attempt Ever
A GOP official in Texas last week called on his state to separate from the rest of the country and the “maggots” who helped secure a second term for Obama. Meanwhile, semi-anonymous petitions began circulating online for 19 states to secede. But two prominent conservatives, Texas Gov. Rick Perry (R) and RedState founder Erick Erickson, called on the wannabe secessionists to end their struggle. “We here at RedState are American citizens. We have no plans to secede from the union,” Erickson wrote on the website. “If you do, good luck with that, but this is not the place for you.”
Ed. note: TPM decided not to include incidents where mental illness may have been a factor.
