One year ago on this date, CSGOPOTD ran its original profile of the U.S. House Representative for Kentucky’s 4th District, Thomas Massie, who you would expect to be reasonably intelligent, what with a successful tech company with two dozen patents to his credit and a Master’s Degree from MIT. Sadly, though, Massie at some point became a disciple of Ron Paul, even apparently trying to emulate Rand Paul’s awful hairstyle so he can blend in as a member of the family. Massie’s dedication to libertarian smaller government to an extent that you wonder if he’s doing it in the hopes that it’s some sort of magic ritual to get Ayn Rand to rise from the grave. But three weeks after the Newtown shootings, and as the new session of Congress began after it, Massie had the unmitigated gall to submit a bill to allow guns in school zones, by repealing a law passed by the first Bush administration and supported by the NRA at its passage. He has voted against the new version of the Violence Against Women Act, Hurricane Sandy Relief, and is one of only 3 people in Congress to have voted against the Stolen Valor Act, all because he thinks the government should instead do NOTHING. And he’s unafraid of being the one lone vote against any and all legislation, like when he was the lone vote against naming Israel as a strategic partner of the United States. He voted for the 2013 Government Shutdown and called the compromise over the fiscal cliff as “a really big turd sandwich without the bread”. But on top over everything else, we noted Massie has the quality of his hero Ron Paul where he hitches his caboose onto anti-government conspiracy theories, including falsely claiming the military gave a “stand down” order during the attack on the U.S. embassy in Benghazi and alluding to “knowing the truth” about 9/11 that would change everything Americans know about that dark day, and wanting the 28 page report about it declassified completely.
So Massie easily won re-election in 2014. And somehow, no one has given him a wedgie and locked him in a locker like when he was in junior high (honestly, he still looks like junior high bullies could successfully do that to him), and he’s been able to continue his campaign of complete obstructionism.
- On 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. Thomas Massie, however, had no problem with that, and voted for it anyway.
- On February 3rd, 2015, Rep. Massie votes for the 60th 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.
- On March 3rd, 2015, Massie 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, Rep. Massie votes for HR 36, a ban on abortion at 20 weeks.
- July 27th, 2015: Thomas Massie, on a conservative talk radio show, says the Emanual AME Church in Charleston, South Carolina experienced a gun massacre because they “disallowed guns”.
“This particular church disallowed any guns coming into the church, another gun-free zone, which makes people less safe. I think that’s why this time they wanted to have the debate on a flag instead of a gun because they realize that a gun would have been the only way to stop this. I talked about these before, I call these weapons of mass distraction. When something this small gets blown up to this level and consumes all the news cycles and all of our time on the floor of the House of Representatives, watch out because they are doing something else in the other hand that you can’t see.”
- On September 18th, 2015, Rep. Massie co-sponsors and votes 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.
- October 23rd, 2015: Massie votes for HR 3762, the 61st attempt by Congressional Republicans to repeal the Affordable Care Act (which is still working better than was predicted).
- November 19th, 2015: Thomas Massie votes for the American Security Against Foreign Enemies Act, reacting to the terror attacks in Paris by jihadists from France and Belgium by trying to create greater restrictions to keep out Syrian refugees, of whom exactly zero were involved in those attacks. One terrorist had a fake passport of a member of Assad’s army, apparently to create a false trail to help in their escape, or hoping that the attacks would be blamed on Syrian refugees, and the governments of nations like France and the United States would fall for it and not allow refugees to escape ISIS abroad. And… the Congressman fell for it.
Thomas Massie has been regarded as a pain in the caucus by the GOP establishment since arriving in Washington, D.C., and is a member of the “House Freedom Caucus” of staunch, hard right conservatives who railed for the resignation of Speaker John Boehner a few months ago. While at this time, no one else has announced themselves as a candidate to challenge Massie in Kentucky’s 4th District, don’t be surprised if he gets an establishment Republican to run to his left in his primary. His district has a +15 R lean in the Cook Partisan Voting Index, so it will be a very tall order for a Democrat to swing this state blue, even in a presidential election year.