'The Republican Freshman Class Is a Tribute to Our Nation's Notorious Local Bozos
A guide to the GOP's ascendant congressional wing of bullshitters, cranks, zealots, and personal-life disasters.
Every town, midsize city, or urban neighborhood has one, or, perhaps, a family of them: the nuisance litigants, the business owners who address zoning board hearings while visibly intoxicated, the parents who ruin PTA meetings by accusing The Polar Express of encouraging demonry. They are the regulars in the police blotter section of the newspaper, the ones who have been banned from multiple softball leagues for reasons that somehow involve child support. They are America's local ding-dongs and loose cannons. And, increasingly, they represent the Republican Party's interests in Congress.
The demands of politics have always made "popular" figures out of the kinds of people who the average voter would find off-putting in person, and Mr. Psycho Goes to Washington is not a wholly new story. [...] It's not a purely Republican phenomenon, either: onetime Democratic Florida Rep. Alan Grayson was known for both his caustic partisan rhetoric and tendency to appear in headlines like "Grayson Loses $18 Million in Fraud Scheme" and "Grayson Accuses Wife of Bigamy."
[...] With much of politics, and political fundraising, carried out through social media performance, the ability to get attention has become functionally identical to the ability to command influence, and a new herd of public figures has stampeded through the gap where the fence dividing fame from infamy used to stand. Many of them were personally inspired by Donald Trump, who got his own start as the notorious protagonist of bankruptcies and divorces in the New York City area. Area creeps are having their moment, and the Republican freshman congressional class is where they are having it.
Colorado Rep. Lauren Boebert
Grim/colorful backstory: Boebert's biggest moment in Congress thus far was appearing via Zoom for a committee hearing with several rifles piled haphazardly on a bookshelf behind her. [...] her claim to fame as a candidate was Shooters Grill—a restaurant, which she operates with her husband, that employs waitresses who ostentatiously carry guns while working. The restaurant owed almost $20,000 in unpaid state taxes while Boebert was running for office; in 2017, a local health department determined that an unlicensed vending stand it set up at a rodeo caused as many as 80 cases of food poisoning.
Boebert was personally cited in 2010 for failing to properly license her dogs, lost a civil court case over a $1,500 debt in 2012, was arrested for disorderly conduct at a 2015 country music festival, and was arrested again in 2017 for failure to appear in court on "careless driving" charges. Her husband, Jayson, meanwhile, pleaded guilty to public indecency and lewd exposure after a 2004 incident in which he showed his penis to two women waiting in line at a bowling alley. (Lauren Boebert was not yet married to him at the time but was present at the bowling alley during the incident.) Both Boeberts were arrested that year on domestic violence charges involving disputes with each other. (Jayson served time for his; Lauren Boebert was 17 at the time of her arrest, and the relevant court has said it can't release information about the disposition of her case.) Finally, Boebert's mother appears to have left a number of comments on a YouTube video more than a decade ago accusing a former WCW wrestler named Stan Lane of trying to evade responsibility for being Boebert's biological father.
Biggest current legislative priority: Boebert recently introduced a bill that would move the security fencing that currently surrounds the Capitol to the U.S.-Mexico border.
Indicative quote: "Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipisicing elit, sed do eiusmod tempor incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua." —an excerpt from the "Our Story" section of Shooters Grill's website, which appears to have been built using default filler text that no one ever replaced with actual words.
North Carolina Rep. Madison Cawthorn
[...]
Biggest current legislative priority: Despite purportedly prioritizing "comms" (i.e., communications) when hiring his congressional staff, Cawthorn has not posted a statement to his congressional website since Jan. 13. He did trend on Twitter in early March when someone posted an old video of him punching a tree.
[...]
Georgia Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene
Grim/colorful backstory: Ah, Christ. I mean, where to begin.
[...]
[...] She also infamously traveled to D.C. in 2019 to film herself shouting at school shooting survivor-activist David Hogg, who she referred to online as "#LittleHitler." [...]
Biggest current legislative priority: For some reason, Greene moves to adjourn the House every day.'
https://slate.com/ne...ocal-bozos.html