One year ago today, we took
our first look at the U.S. House Representative from Georgia’s 3rd District, Lynn Westmoreland, who once passionately campaigned for bills he wrote to recognize the Ten Commandments in all public schools and courtrooms (which isn’t constitutional). He was later interviewed by Stephen Colbert during his “Better Know a District” series, and was asked to name the Ten Commandments he loved so much, and could not. Rep. Westmoreland’s press secretary later claimed that the segment was edited to make him look bad, and said that he actually successfully named SEVEN of the ten. He’s also been known to be controversial on matters of race, having campaigned against the renewal of the Voting Rights Act as far back as 2006, and having referred to the first African-American president and first lady as “
uppity”, only to be shocked when the media informed him that the term was racially charged. He has since had the decency to only refer to Barack Obama as “
our enemy at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue”, which is somehow an improvement in discourse. He’s also lambasted the media for having the nerve to report stories about Hillary Clinton and Benghazi (which he also thinks Obama should be impeached over) that indicate she committed no wrongdoing, and demanded investigations to prove that her top aide, Human Abedin, was not a secret operative for the Muslim Brotherhood.
In the 2014 elections, Lynn Westmoreland defeated Chip Flanagan in the GOP Primary for his district, then ran unopposed in the general election. And when you don't face a challenger to your left, the tendency for a politician is to dive further to the right, as evidenced:
-July 10th, 2014: Rep. Westmoreland votes for House Amendment 1040, to prevent the implementation of the dreaded United Nations Agenda 21 Treaty, that in spite of just being recommended climate change guidelines, have many conspiracy theorists within the extreme right convinced it’s a plot for global domination.
-January 22nd, 2015: An anti-abortion bill, HR 7, was moving through the House, and was halted because even some members of the GOP were put off by the language in the bill regarding its definition of rape. Lynn Westmoreland, however, had no problem with that, and voted for it anyway.
-On February 3rd, 2015: Rep. Westmoreland co-sponsors and votes for the latest Republican attempt at repealing the Affordable Care Act. This in spite of the fact that the law is not just working, but better than experts predicted.
-March 3rd, 2015: Westmoreland votes against funding the Department of Homeland Security as part of a Republican protest of President Obama’s executive orders on immigration.
-May 13th, 2015: Lynn Westmoreland voted for HR 36, a ban on abortion at 20 weeks, which he also co-sponsored.
-July 9th, 2015: In the aftermath of a mass shooting in Charleston, South Carolina, where the shooter was revealed to be a White Supremacist attacking a historic black church who was motivated by Neo-Confederate iconography, discussion ban towards removing the Confederate flag from state grounds and monuments. While most thought this a modest concession, Rep. Westmoreland defended the Confederate flag:
"When you’re putting a flag on someone’s grave, to me it’s a little different from being racist. It’s more of a memorial... You can’t make an excuse for things that happened, but the majority of people that actually died in the Civil War on the Confederate side did not own slaves. These were people that were fighting for their states. I don’t think they had even any thoughts about slavery."
When a reporter asked Westmoreland if he understood the perspective on the matter of Rep. John Lewis, a former Civil Rights protester and a fellow member of Georgia’s Congressional delegation, he fired back, "
I guess the question is, ‘Does he understand where I’m coming from?”
-September 11th, 2015, Westmoreland
votes against the United States' nuclear treaty with Iran.
-September 18th, 2015: Rep. Westmoreland
co-sponsored and voted with most House Republicans to defund Planned Parenthood,
based on highly edited “sting” videos submitted by a Pro-Life advocacy group that have been
repeatedly debunked by investigators.
As of October 8th, Lynn Westmoreland had thrown his hat into the ring to potentially be the next Speaker of the House to follow in the shoes of John Boehner, a move that he even admits is a long shot. It seems unlikely that the GOP would rally behind anyone with such a penchant for making blatantly racist comments, and until he learns to dial it back to the old “dog whistle” level, establishment Republicans seem unlikely to support his effort. The fact that he’s been serving on the House Select Committee on Benghazi that’s wasted millions of taxpayer dollars and has produced nothing more than rumors and innuendo directed at the White House and former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton for their efforts… well, when your resume has a failure like that on it, it’s kind of hard to ask for a promotion. Hopefully, a credible threat comes along to challenge him for his house seat in 2016. As of the time of this article being written, though, Westmoreland looks to be completely unopposed in 2016.