Prior to his putting his political foot in his mouth, Rep. Ryan Winkler was just an obnoxious liberal who thought of himself as a rising star in the DFL. Yesterday morning, Rep. Winkler put his foot into his mouth bigtime. This tweet touched off a firestorm:

Instead of quitting while he was behind, Rep. Winkler thought it’d be best to issue this non-apology apology:

“I did not understand ‘Uncle Tom’ as a racist term, and there seems to be some debate about it. I do apologize for it, however,” he said.

That’s BS. Rep. Winkler graduated with a B.A. in history from Harvard University in 1998. If Rep. Winkler thinks that we’ll buy the fact that he didn’t learn about Uncle Tom’s Cabin, Harriet Beecher Stowe’s classic from 1852, he’d better think again. Allan West, the former congressman from Florida, isn’t buying Rep. Winkler’s BS:

Former Rep. Allen West, a prominent black Republican, poured scorn on Mr. Winkler’s explanation and said the lawmaker should resign, noting the precedent of cooking-show host Paula Deen being fired and losing endorsement deals for admitting long-ago use of racial epithets.

“If Paula Deen must resign so should MN Rep Winkler. Didn’t know Uncle Tom is a racist slur? I’m sick of liberal hypocrisy,” he said on his Twitter account.

I don’t think Winkler is a racist. That said, Rep. Winkler has a reputation of speaking first, thinking later. He’s earned the reputation of being a loose cannon who says lippy things that he thinks fires up the DFL base. Saying that he isn’t particularly well-respected on policy issues is understatement.

Prior to Tuesday morning, Rep. Winkler had been thinking about running for Minnesota Secretary of State. Those plans died abruptly in less than 140 characters.

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