Republican State Senator Vicki Marble is the latest legislator to join what might be kindly dubbed the “legislative moron caucus” after an ignorant and offensive soliloquy about race and diet.

She’s not the first state legislator to opine on a sensitive issue and come across as an embarrassing excuse for an elected official.

Before Marble’s moronic comments about black people and chicken, Democratic State Representative Joe Salazar opined ignorantly about college women’s inability to recognize rapists, basically saying they couldn’t be trusted with a gun and should rely on rape whistles instead for self defense.

Then Democratic State Senator Evie Hudak condescendingly told a rape victim to her face a gun wouldn’t have helped protect her, citing made up statistics about guns and self-defense.

Stupidity is not the sole purview of either party, it seems.

That’s not to excuse Marble’s comments by any stretch of the imagination. While what she said wasn’t meant to be malicious, it did expose a stunning ignorance and small mindedness.

We’re a conservative blog, not a Republican one, and as such we feel no obligation to defend stupid GOP politicians. Marble is about to face a national onslaught of mockery and condemnation. She made her bed and now she’ll have to lie in it.

But beware the partisans who will try to make this about more than just the idiotic ramblings of a single politician. It is Marble who should suffer the consequences of her actions, but Democrats will try to smear every elected Republican in the state with it.

Democrats have been quick to ride the race card lately, with Rep. Rhonda Fields even trying to tie the Missouri rodeo clown to the KKK. Clearly, hyperbole like that doesn’t do our public debate any good. And neither do the inane and thoughtless remarks from Senator Marble.

What we think this controversy underscores is how low the intelligence quotient has become at the State Capitol. The phrase “room temperature IQ” comes to mind.

Surely we can do better than the current crop of cretins representing our great state under the Gold Dome.