Texas Congressman Steve Stockman says he's running for U.S. Senate, but with the exception of one campaign event, he's been missing from the campaign trail and it's not because he's been working: He's also missed two weeks of congressional votes. When people
started talking about his unexplained vanishing act, Stockman initially tried to spin it into a positive:
But now he's following the traditional wingnut playbook —
blaming the media:
Rep. Steve Stockman says he has not been missing in action this month and blasted the media for claiming that no one knew where he was.
The Texas Republican slammed an Associated Press story last week that detailed him missing every vote in Congress since Jan. 9 — 17 in all — and reported that he had been virtually unseen in Texas, where he is mounting a primary campaign from the right against incumbent Sen. John Cornyn.
In fact, Stockman told Breitbart News, he went on a trip with four other members of Congress to Egypt, Israel, England and Russia.
But, Stockman says, that's not why he's been MIA in Congress. Instead:
“I missed votes because I don’t have a zillion dollars like Cornyn and have [to] campaign,” Stockman told Breitbart.
Okay, I'll give him a pass on the whole "I'm not going to do the job I'm being paid to do because I'm campaigning for higher office" thing because that's not exactly unusual in politics.
Well, I'll give him a pass except for the fact that it's bull. If he's too busy campaigning to vote, then why wasn't he too busy to go fly to Egypt? Moreover, he's only had one significant public campaign appearance and he left that event early. Plus, of the 18 votes he's missed, that event only explained four of them. So if he's missing votes because he's campaigning, it's more like he's missing votes because he's campaigning in secret.