In the great pantheon of American "gangsters, serial killers, mass murderers, incompetent and crooked politicians, spies, traitors, and ultra left-wing kooks," no one is worse than ... Jimmy Carter.
So says a survey carried out by Right Wing News, which sampled 43 mostly conservative bloggers as to whom they see as being the worst baddies in American history.
Some of them were indeed baddies -- Oklahoma City bomber Timothy McVeigh clocks in at number nine, while Abraham Lincoln's assassin, John Wilkes Booth, flies in at number 11.
So who's worse than Booth and McVeigh? Ted Kennedy (number seven), Franklin D. Roosevelt (third) and Barack Obama (second), to name a few.
The worst of them all? Jimmy Carter, undisputed champion at first place.
"Out of all the gangsters, serial killers, mass murderers, incompetent & crooked politicians, spies, traitors, and ultra left-wing kooks in all of American history -- have you ever wondered who the worst of the worst was?" writes John Hawkins at RWN. "Well, we here at RWN wondered about that, too, and that's why we decided to email more than a hundred bloggers to get their opinions."
Forty-three of those bloggers responded. Some on the list are surprises, simply because they belonged to the right wing side of the political debate (Richard Nixon ranks 13th), or because bloggers thought of them at all (the Rosenbergs clock in at number four).
Even other conservatives don't seem too happy with the survey's results.
"I cant believe conservative bloggers put a bunch of garden-variety Democratic politicians so high," writes Jim Geraghty at the National Review. "No Al Capone? No Machine Gun Kelly or the Lindbergh baby kidnappers? ... No Jefferson Davis or anyone else associated with the Confederacy beyond John Wilkes Booth? Speaking of presidential assassins, no Lee Harvey Oswald?"
Jeff Neuman at Gawker notes that "one surprising omission is John Hinckley, Jr., the man who shot The Greatest Conservative of All Time, Ronald Reagan."
Here's the list, as it appeared at RWN (number in brackets indicates number of bloggers who nominated the individual):
23) Saul Alinsky (7)
23) Bill Clinton (7)
23) Hillary Clinton (7)
19) Michael Moore (7)
19) George Soros (8)
19) Alger Hiss (8)
19) Al Sharpton (8)
13) Al Gore (9)
13) Noam Chomsky (9)
13) Richard Nixon (9)
13) Jane Fonda (9)
13) Harry Reid (9)
13) Nancy Pelosi (9)
11) John Wilkes Booth (10)
11) Margaret Sanger (10)
9) Aldrich Ames (11)
9) Timothy McVeigh (11)
7) Ted Kennedy (14)
7) Lyndon Johnson (14)
5) Benedict Arnold (17)
5) Woodrow Wilson (17)
4) The Rosenbergs (19)
3) Franklin Delano Roosevelt (21)
2) Barack Obama (23)
1) Jimmy Carter (25)
Poster Comment:

'THEY'RE ALL GONNA LAUGH AT YOU!'