In thankfully what should be a rare occurrence for Oklahoma City, the community’s overall IQ level dropped significantly last Saturday but then returned to normal by Sunday afternoon. Conversely, the rest of Oklahoma experienced just the opposite effect; that is, an increase in intellect on Saturday “out there” but reverted to pre-Saturday levels by around church time Sunday.

After extensive research on what caused this phenomena I have been able to come to only one conclusion and sadly it is this: Several hundred Republican Party activists convened for the OKGOP Biennial State Convention in OKC on April 10, also the Saturday of the downward, slide into nonsense.

Now admittedly, at first and just on the outside, these patriots mostly looked like a bunch of middle to upper middle aged white folks, maybe in town for a one day gabfest, perhaps a luncheon with a motivation speaker, followed by a drawing for the ever popular weekend stay in Branson, then a little shopping in Bricktown, exchange a few addresses, emails, pictures and pleasantries with fellow conventioneers and return home.

So far, so good.

But before driving off in their 10-year-old Lincolns, Cadillacs, oversized F-150s or even brand new Keystone Hideout Travel Trailers, as a group they did one other thing that triggered the seismic slide in IQ computations never seen in any previous group of visitors to the OKC Convention Center, including the National Karen Comic Book Collectors.

Our elephant enthusiasts elected – on the first ballot – former state Rep. John Bennett, R-Sallisaw, as the new chairman of their party for at least the next two years.

Chairman Bennett is a former Marine with three combat tours to his credit, a gun aficionado, a member of the clergy and preacher at the Lee Creek Assembly of God in Muldrow. Perhaps all good, even courageous, but the delegates must have quit reading his vita at this point because he’s done quite a few other things as well.

For examples, he created the “counter-terrorism legislative caucus” for which he received the “National Defender of Freedom” award by the Center for Security Policy in 2016, a Southern Poverty Law Center-designated hate group; referred to Islam as “a cancer in our nation that needs to be cut out;” claimed he had read the Quran and says it is 90% violence; introduced legislation to ban the Council on American-Islamic Relations; identified all mosques in Oklahoma City as “jihad training grounds;” declared he would like all mosques to be demolished; and, probably just for fun, called for Hillary Clinton to be executed by firing squad but later just revised it to imprisonment; then in a pique suggested state agencies are also terrorists and extortionists. The agency he specifically mentioned provides services to disabled individuals.

This is the fellow who is now the face and voice of Oklahoma’s Republican Party. Well, at least, face because, since his election as chairman, he has declined to speak to the media, declaring them, of course, fake.

And naturally, as Dave Barry would say, I’m not making this up.