Today, we hit our 463rd original worthy candidate for a “Crazy/Stupid Republican of the Day” profile, and we’re going to talk about the sitting U.S. House Representative for Georgia’s 11th Congressional District, Barry Loudermilk, serving his freshman term in that role after serving in the Georgia state legislature for about eight years. Loudermilk defeated a clown car full of several Republicans in the primary for his seat in the 2014 elections to replace Phil Gingrey (who ran for U.S. Senate, instead) and after winning was allowed to run for Congress without an opponent in the general election.
And in that primary, some interesting personality quirks began to emerge about Barry Loudermilk that make him not just another member of the Republican Party. Loudermilk choosing to join the particularly unpredictable and kooky House Freedom Caucus upon hitting Washington, D.C. is but the tip of the iceberg. The real red flag that popped up was the fact that he was strongly endorsed by Republican National Committee member David Barton, whose “knowledge of history” is better defined as “whatever can be made up to justify a conservative, Fundamentalist agenda”. Like for example, the misguided idea that our Founding Fathers intended America to specifically be a Christian nation, served be a government that pushed those ideals (as opposed to a secular government, like they actually did). Loudermilk has actually appeared on television to parrot Barton’s ridiculous version of history, almost verbatim, citing scriptures he believes influenced Adams, Jefferson, and Washington to create a separation of powers in our government.
Hell, before Loudermilk was even sworn in to serve in the House, he was hanging out with the Family Research Council on their program as well, being interviewed by the running joke about hypocrisy that is Josh Duggar, where he lamented the suffering he and his fellow Christians have had to endure as the left in America have so badly damaged the holiday of Christmas:
Loudermilk was quickly hot-shotted to be the GOP’s new head of the House Science, Space, and Technology Committee after being sworn in. Over the past several years, that role has been held by embarrassing Republicans who seemed like they were given the job ironically, perhaps none more so that Loudermilk’s fellow Georgia Republican Paul Broun, who a few years back said that evolution and the big bang theory were “lies straight from the pit of Hell”. So all Loudermilk had to do was not come off as any dumber than Broun. Shouldn’t be too hard, right? Well…
At his first town hall, Rep. Loudermilk was asked by a constituent if vaccines are linked to autism (Hint, they’re not. All studies that claim they are can provide no scientific link, and most were perpetrated by noted fraud Dr. Andrew Wakefield). Well, rather than assure her that there’s nothing to fear from getting your children immunized… Loudermilk started boasting that he hadn’t vaccinated his children.
“I believe it’s the parents’ decision whether to immunize or not… Most of our children, we didn’t immunize. They’re healthy.”
After this unprecedented gaffe, there were even Republican strategists calling for Loudermilk’s resignation. This was in his SECOND MONTH on the job. The crazy part, though, is that isn’t even the weirdest exchange from the town hall. Oh, no. Because for whatever reason, Loudermilk started discussing immigration with another constituent, who suggested the United States should “learn something from Afghanistan and start putting IUDs in the ground”. Now, that’s a weird idea for two reasons… the first being that she probably didn’t mean IUDs, which are a form of birth control, but probably meant IEDs, or “improvised explosive devices”. Which, seemed to be how Loudermilk interpreted her suggestion, to which he only objected because AMERICANS might get hurt. Any Mexican children that might find one of these rigged charges? Serves ‘em right for sniffing a chunk of real estate in the land of the free, man!
But in that disastrous town hall, Loudermilk clearly wasn’t misspeaking when he voiced his fears that the Muslim Brotherhood has infiltrated the American government enough that they have gained access to the White House. He went on to elaborate and say that the Republican caucus of the House looked at ways to arrest Attorney General Eric Holder, before insinuating that the Council on American-Islamic Relations was a Muslim Brotherhood offshoot.
Say what you will, a Barry Loudermilk town hall is definitely must-see television at this point. Especially after his next one in July of 2015, where he responded to the news of the massacre at the Emanuel AME Church, and how as a result, the South Carolina state legislature had voted to take down the Confederate flag in there state capitol. Well, apparently David Barton’s tendency to re-write false histories is contagious, and Barry Loudermilk has also caught that disease. You see, as Loudermilk explained, the shooting was actually motivated by anti-Christian hate (and not racism, like Dylann Roof actually was). Instead, Loudermilk pivoted the talk to being about gay marriage, which he then decided to reference the Dred Scott decision, and compare same sex marriage to slavery:
“Hey, it was the Supreme Court’s opinion that Dred Scott and slavery was okay, did they get that right?”
So just based on all of what we’ve discussed so far, we’ve got a full-on five-alarm nutter in Rep. Loudermilk. But we haven’t even glanced at his Congressional voting record or speeches yet:
- 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. Barry Loudermilk, however, had no problem with that, and voted for it anyway.
- On February 3rd, 2015, Rep. Loudermilk co-sponsors and 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, Barry Loudermilk 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. Loudermilk co-sponsors and votes for HR 36, a ban on abortion at 20 weeks.
- On September 11th, 2015, Loudermilk votes against the United States’ nuclear treaty with Iran.
- On September 18th, 2015, Rep. Loudermilk 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.
- November 19th, 2015: Loudermilk co-sponsors and 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.
- February 2nd, 2016: Barry Loudermilk votes for HR 3762, the 61st attempt by Congressional Republicans to repeal the Affordable Care Act (which is still working better than was predicted).
- March 24th, 2016: Last week, right on the heels of the terror attacks in Brussels, Loudermilk spoke before the House and explained what the real problem in winning the war on terror was… “political correctness”, which he felt was actually killing Americans, because we are too afraid to hurt the feelings of terrorists.
Now, while it seems unlikely that Barry Loudermilk will face any threat from a Democrat in the 2016 elections, because Georgia’s 11th District has a stout +19 Republican lean in the Cook Partisan Voting Index, his bid for re-election is far from a sure thing. Loudermilk has no less than four challengers in the Republican Primary for the seat to represent Georgia’s 11th, some of whom are more establishment Republicans who are running to his left, and some are Tea Party Republicans running to his right, upset that he was willing to compromise and allow Paul Ryan to settle in as House Speaker after he and the House Freedom Caucus orchestrated the downfall of former House Speaker John Boehner. That’s right, there are actually Tea Party folks out there who think of Barry Loudermilk as having sold them out, and are looking to boot him, already, after but one term in office. In theory, if that GOP Primary becomes a bloodbath, it could leave the lone Democrat challenging in the general election, Don Wilson, undamaged and ready to upset whoever comes out of that primary fight, however mangled their reputation might be.
One Year Ago, March 31st, 2015: Randy Brogdon (OK)