The Craziest of the Crazies: The Ten Republicans Who Shut Down the Government

[Emit]

The Ten Republicans Who Shut Down the Government



Over on the New Yorker's website, Ryan Lizza identifies a "suicide caucus" consisting of eighty right-wing Republican representatives whose hard-line position on Obamacare and the budget has given us the government shutdown. But what about the suicide caucus' suicide caucus?

We've picked out ten Republicans whose deep-seated orthodoxy, hardcore conservatism, and general idiocy mark them as the craziest of the crazy. National Review's Robert Costa says "there are 30 to 40 true hardliners," and "another group of maybe 50 to 60 members who are very much pressured by the hardliners." These guys are the hardliners of the hardliners. Unsurprisingly, we've run into many of them before.

Steve King
Represents: Iowa's fourth district
Percentage of home district that voted for Obama: 45.3
You may remember him because: he once asked elementary schoolers where they stood "on the abortion issue."

King (not to be confused with the temporarily more reasonable, if nevertheless still bigoted, John King from New York) is so opposed to Obamacare that he’s one of nine House Republicans who voted against the most recent House continuing resolution—which would have delayed Obamacare for a year—because the resolution didn’t do enough to destroy the health care law. What makes him so sure such an extreme tactic would work? "Because we’re right, simply because we’re right," King told the New York Times. "We can recover from a political squabble, but we can never recover from Obamacare."

Steve Stockman
Represents: Texas' 36th district
Percentage of home district that voted for Obama: 25.7
You may remember him because: he once advocated arming fetuses.

Stockman, a formerly homeless former accountant, spent two wondrous years in congress in the 1990s, hawking conspiracy theories about the FBI's raid in Waco, Texas. On his return to congress earlier this year, Stockman promptly became one of only ten Republicans to not vote for John Boehner as Speaker of the House. He thinks even less of President Obama, whom he called, in a tweet, "President Stompy Feet." "The president’s promise to shut down the government is childish and disrespectful," Stockman wrote in a press release. "Instead of holding his breath and stamping his feet he needs to act like an adult, listen to Americans and agree that ObamaCare won’t work."

~snip~

Mark Meadows

Represents: North Carolina's 11th district
Percentage of home district that voted for Obama: 37.8
You may remember him because: this mess is his fault in the first place.

Meadows, the "architect" of the shutdown, is receiving the most credit for convincing Boehner to adopt his current tactics last month after he sent a letter signed by himself and 79 other House Republicans to the speaker: "James Madison wrote in Federalist No. 58 that the 'power over the purse may, in fact, be regarded as the most complete and effectual weapon … for obtaining a redress of every grievance…' We look forward to collaborating to defund one of the largest grievances in our time and to restore patient-centered healthcare in America."

~snip~

http://gawker.com/the-ten-republicans-who-shut-down-the-government-1440374726?utm_campaign=socialflow_gawker_facebook&utm_source=gawker_facebook&utm_medium=socialflow

[etherealtruth]

1. K and R

[chowder66]

2. Where's Boehner?

He won't even bring the bill up.

[etherealtruth]

3. He is worse than crazy

He is pure evil

The others are driven by deranged ideals ... he is driven by his own political ambition ... I believe he knows full well how detrimental this is for the country, but is unwilling to risk his political fortune ... that's not crazy that's evil.

The others (again) straight up nuts

[gopiscrap]

4. fucking asswipes

[Mnemosyne]

5. What a creepy group, scary cruel, cold eyes. nt

[Nevernose]

6. Who says Freud was wrong?

If Steve Stockman isn't demonstrating classical projection, then I don't know who is.

[Rex]

7. They look creepy and I see they

let ONE woman join then (the craziest and in trouble with the law the mostest) must be traits the morans adore in themselves.