On this day in both 2014, and in 2015, “Crazy/Stupid Republican of the Day posted its first two profiles of Bill Posey, the U.S. House Representative from Florida’s 8th District, the author of HB 1503, aka “The Birther Bill” that would force all presidential candidates to submit their birth certificates. When asked if he believed President Obama was an American citizen in the wake of that, he refused to answer, calling the question “irrelevant”. Posey’s also obsessed with overturning the Affordable Care Act, having participated in every attempt to repeal it, and then voted for the 2013 Government Shutdown to attempt to stop it (also voting against re-opening the government when the time came). His one positive quality is that he wants to fund medical research into autism, but it comes with the caveat that he’s only doing so because he believes it’s possible that vaccines cause autism (but not in climate change). He’s also been a part of GOP efforts to defund Planned Parenthood, and voted to defund the Department of Homeland Security as part of a Republican temper tantrum over President Obama’s executive orders on immigration.
And now, we’ll check back in with Posey’s activities in the past 365 days:
- November 19th, 2015: Posey 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.
- February 2nd, 2016: Bill Posey votes for HR 3762, the 61st attempt by Congressional Republicans to repeal the Affordable Care Act (which is still working better than was predicted).
- May 19th, 2016: Rep. Posey votes against House Amendment 1079, which would have prohibited the use of federal funds for discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity. So if you were wondering, yes, he’s pro-discrimination, apparently.
Florida’s 8th District has a +9 Republican lean in the Cook Partisan Voting Index, so Bill Posey’s challenger, Corry Westbrook, is a former legislative director for the National Wildlife Federation. Hopefully she’ll hit Posey on not just the Birther bill or vaccine trutherism, but contrasting his own stance on women’s issues with her own impressive policy stances. The winds of change are starting to blow in favor of Democrats across the board, now, and this would be a bellwether to measure their overall chances of retaking the House, to say the least.