On this date in 2015, 2016, 2017, as well as2018, “Crazy/Stupid Republican of the Day posted profiles of profiled the current U.S. House Representative from Arizona’s 4th District, Paul Gosar, who we noted consistently has one of the worst voting records on issues that impact women, and not just on abortion, because Gosar also voted against the renewal of the Violence Against Women Act, but also voted against legislation that would allow female victims of sexual assault within our military to decide who determines their case, a military trial or a civilian one. He also not only voted for the 2013 Government Shutdown, but when the time came to reopen the government, he voted to keep it closed. During the standoff between the Bureau of Land Management and Cliven Bundy in 2014, Gosar actually travelled to Nevada to show support for Bundy, stopping to take photos with him, as well. Gosar’s also a conspiracy theorist, having called for the impeachment of Attorney General Eric Holder over Benghazi, immigration, Fast & Furious, Guantanamo Bay and “violating criminal smuggling laws”. In September 2015, as the nation excitedly awaiting a visit from Pope Francis to come speak before the United States Congress, Paul Gosar, a Catholic in a district full of them, announced that he would be boycotting the pontiff’s speech because he refused to listen to the Holy Father’s talk of climate change, instead insisting writing an op-ed where he said he didn’t want to hear “leftist talking points”, and saying that “climate has been changing since first created in Genesis”.
Now, we want to point out before we get into our update on Paul Gosar’s EXTREMELY conservative voting record, that he’s made news over the past five months for being a complete… well, for lack of a better term, paranoid douche-nozzle. It might be one thing if we could only say he was trying to stir up right-wing conspiracies regarding California Congressman Devin Nunes dud of a memo regarding Carter Page’s FISA warrant, claiming that its contents “constitutes treason” by the FBI like he did back in early 2018.
No, what concerned us far more was how back in October of 2017, Rep. Gosar tried to revise history regarding the terrorist attack carried out by a Neo-Nazi in Charlottesville, Virginia, in August of 2016. Heather Heyer’s death is something Gosar couldn’t have Neo-Nazis left hanging on their spotless record as American protesters, so in the middle of an interview on CNN, he started pushing the conspiracy theory that the entire weekend of terror carried out by White Nationalists was actually orchestrated by George Soros. He wasn’t done slandering Soros, though, as he also claimed while he was fleeing the Nazis in Hungary eight decades ago that he was turning in other Jews to the Nazis. This entire narrative was so insane and bizarre that all six, yes SIX of Gosar’s siblings wrote a letter to publicly distance themselves from him.
Gosar blew them off as “disgruntled Hilary supporters”, and that “Stalin would be proud” of them, and then a few weeks later, blamed Barack Obama on their rejection of him, because he’s a partisan lunatic.
And we can’t underline how explicitly true that is, as he chose to use his time in the House Oversight Committee a few weeks ago during the testimony of Michael Cohen to quite constructively taunt Cohen with the not-at-all-childish rhyme, “LIAR, LIAR, PANTS ON FIRE!” Not being content to simply do it out loud, he had in intern present a giant poster of Cohen’s face with the taunt, as well. Sane pundits, including Republican ones, were embarrassed of their party’s performance that day, as they looked like incompetent flacks for Donald Trump, grasping at straws, who failed to refute any of Cohen’s claims.
Because Arizona’s 4th Congressional District only has a +20 Republican lean according to the Cook Partisan Voting Index, Gosar still won re-election with 68% of the vote, even though he shared anti-Semitic conspiracy theories that made his own family turn their backs on him.
And so, Paul Gosar resumed being downright awful as a legislator:
- January 27th, 2019: Paul Gosar refused to vote for HJR 30, which was meant to express disapproval of Donald Trump not acting against Russian Federation for attacking our democracy. You see, he’s fine with our nation being sublet to Vladimir Putin.
- January 22nd, 2019: Gosar votes against HR 676, which would prevent Donald Trump from doing the unthinkable and walking away from our allies in NATO to appease the Russians.
- January 23rd, 2019: Rep. Gosar passes on voting for HR 648, completely uninterested in ending the longest government shutdown in history.
- February 15th, 2019: Gosar votes against HJR 46, deciding that Donald Trump’s “national emergency” on the U.S. Mexico border is a legitimate threat to the United States, even though border crossings are at their lowest point in decades.
- February 28th, 2018: Paul Gosar votes against HR 1112, a bill which would have required universal background checks on all firearm purchases, and close the gun show loophole.
We can’t decide at this point what Paul Gosar likes more, being a submissive for his Russian daddies, or defending white nationalists and Neo-Nazis. Either should be more than enough reason for him to get a primary challenger.