RedState's Erick Erickson Defends Controversial Twitter Posts On 'Colbert Report' (VIDEO)

Last night, RedState's Erick Erickson defended most of his controversial Twitter posts and explained his opposition to a GOP purity test during an appearance on "The Colbert Report".

Erickson described his transformation from practicing attorney to running the "day-to-day operations" of the conservative group-blog. Along the way, he discussed how the site approaches the issue of criticizing Republican politicians for their fealty to conservative principles -- he opposes the planned "purity test" on the grounds that it's too "establishment" and that it simply allows people to take party money for checking off boxes, rather than as an honest evaluation of their actions. As Erickson notes, it's a traditional role that political blogs take on, paralleled on the progressive side of the blogosphere as well.

Discussion soon turned to some of the more interesting ideas that Erickson has put out there on Twitter, such as calling former Supreme Court Justice David Souter a "goat-fucking child molester," comparing Linda Douglass to Joseph Goebbels and referring to President Barack Obama's Nobel win as an "affirmative action quota" pick. When asked if he'd be willing to "repeat any of [those tweets] with his face on camera," Erickson replied: "The last two, yeah. The first one was not my finest moment." Apparently, the distinction was that he did not, at the time, understand that Twitter was something beyond "talking to my friends... being with my friends online," but actually a public forum where thoughts are shared with the entire universe.

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