Ted Cruz’s South Carolina Co-Chair Lee Bright Has A Meltdown During Confederate Flag Debate

Last year, state Senator Lee Bright was the main challenger from the Tea Party against U.S. Senator Lindsey Graham for his seat representing South Carolina. Lee Bright gathered nearly twice the number of votes his nearest competitor Richard Cash did, and still lost to Lindsey Graham by 41 percentage points during the Republican primary.

That’s right, in the deep red state of South Carolina, a right-wing Tea Party conservative state senator ran against a moderately conservative, establishment Republican and lost badly.

Now Lindsey Graham is running for president, and his former primary opponent whose campaign raffled off an AR-15 in response to the Sandy Hook shooting is also the co-chair of his presidential primary opponent’s campaign. South Carolina state Senator Lee Bright isn’t the only right-wing, Tea Party conservative picked by Ted Cruz to run his campaign at the state level either. In Tennessee, Ted Cruz tapped Kevin Kookogey, a notorious anti-Muslim politician who once claimed Republican Gov. Bill Haslem was giving preferential treatment to Sharia law adherents for hiring a Muslim attorney, Samir Ali.

Needless to say, Ted Cruz picked a real gem in state Sen. Lee Bright who weighed in on South Carolina’s Confederate flag debate today by screaming about religious freedom, gays, and the devil.

State Sen. Lee Bright, a Republican from Spartanburg, took to the podium ostensibly to express his feelings in support of the flag. But in an unexpected (though not surprising) twist, he instead used his time to inveigh against same-sex marriage, decrying President Barack Obama’s projection of “the abomination colors” on the White House, asserting that it is “time for the church to rise up” (which was odd, considering that he was in the senate chambers and not in front of his congregation), and defending the right of local clerks not to do their jobs. “If we are not one nation under God, we’ll be one nation gone under,” Bright exclaimed, his voice cracking with emotion. “We can rally together and talk about a flag all we want, but the devil is taking control of this land and we’re not stopping him!” (Source)