Today “Crazy/Stupid Republican of the Day” presents our 495th original profile, and we’ll be talking about the sitting U.S. House Representative for Wisconsin’s 7th Congressional District, Sean Duffy. Duffy, a former contestant on MTV’s reality show “The Real World” (shown here gyrating in his underwear for his housemates), was yet another beneficiary of the Tea Party Wave, storming into office to replace twenty-one term Congressman Dave Obey back in 2010, and in his most recent election in 2016, he won re-election to a third term with 59% of the vote over Democrat Kelly Westlund.
If you ask Sean Duffy, it’s a real struggle to survive on the measly $174,000 salary he gets as a member of Congress, to which some might advise him that he should have stopped having kids sometime before his eighth. Hypocritically, while refusing a pay cut on his own six figure salary, Duffy would advise other public workers to accept pay cuts.
Of course, with eight children, it comes as little surprise that Sean Duffy is also a die-hard pro-life supporter. In January of 2016, however, he caused an uproar on the floor of the U.S. House after he decided to express that anti-abortion fervor during a discussion about the BlackLivesMatter Movement by presenting inaccurate statistics to chastise the Congressional Black Caucus for not supporting black lives because they allow higher abortion rates racially than whites:
“Here are some stunning facts. The African-American community is 15 percent of the country as a whole, but accounts for 40 percent of the abortions. Fifteen percent of Americans, 40 percent of the abortions. In New York City, the most recent statistics is that African-American women had more abortions than live births. My liberal friends, Congressional Black Caucus members, talk about fighting for the defenseless, the hopeless and the downtrodden. There is no one more hopeless and voiceless than an unborn baby, but their silence is deafening. I can’t hear them. Where are they standing up for their communities, advocating and fighting for their right to life?”
The actual numbers show that Non-Hispanic black women actually accounted for 36 percent of the population that received abortions in the U.S., according to a 2011 report from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, whereas white women accounted for 37 percent — but black women were about three times more likely to receive an abortion… (and they certainly weren’t having more abortions than babies.) The whitesplain/mansplaining earned a great response from Congresswoman Gwen Moore, who said, “It’s painfully obvious that Representative Duffy’s concern for life ends as soon as the umbilical cord is cut.”
But Duffy doesn’t always act like he knows it all, like the time he was asked at a town hall about his position on transvaginal ultrasounds, and he dodged the question by saying, “Well, I haven’t had one.” (You don’t say, Sean…)
Of course, either quote could have been a worse statement… like the time Sean Duffy’s wife, and fellow “Real World” alumni Rachel Campos-Duffy compared abortion to slavery and the Holocaust, as Republicans are frequently in the habit of doing.
In any event, outside of dancing in his underwear and being an ignoramus in regards to women’s reproductive rights, Sean Duffy has had three terms to amass a horrendous voting record:
- January 12th, 2011: Rep. Duffy co-sponsors and votes for the first attempt by Republicans to repeal the Affordable Care Act. He has voted for every attempt to do so since.
- February 18th, 2011: Sean Duffy votes to defund Planned Parenthood, on the very same day his “smaller government principles” compelled him to vote to continue funding taxpayer dollars towards NASCAR sponsorships.
- March 17th, 2011: Duffy votes to defund National Public Radio.
- May 31st, 2011: Sean Duffy votes against raising the Debt Ceiling limit, which if not lifted, economists warn could lead to the collapse of not just the American economy, but the global economy. Worse yet, even the Republicans’ threatening to hold it hostage during this time led to the United States’ having its credit rating decreased by Standard and Poor’s for the first time in its history a few months later.
- September 14th, 2012: Rep. Duffy tries to score partisan points by voting for the “No More Solyndras” Act.
- January 25th, 2013: Duffy votes against disaster relief funding for victims of Hurricane Sandy.
- June 18th, 2013: Duffy votes for the Pain-Capable Unborn Child Protection Act, which would ban abortion at 20 weeks.
- June 19th, 2013: Sean Duffy votes against restoring $20.5 billion to the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program.
- September 30th, 2013: Rep. Duffy voted for the 2013 Government Shutdown.
- February 26th, 2014: Sean Duffy tries making hay of of the faux “IRS Scandal” by voting for the Stop the Targeting of Political Beliefs by the IRS Act (note, the IRS was not found to have actually been doing this).
- July 10th, 2014: Duffy 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. Sean Duffy, however, had no problem with that, and voted for it anyway.
- February 3rd, 2015: Rep. Duffy 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.
- March 3rd, 2015: Duffy 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: Sean Duffy votes for HR 36, a 20 week abortion ban.
- September 11th, 2015: Duffy votes against the United States’ nuclear treaty with Iran.
- September 18th, 2015: Rep. Duffy votes for a bill 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: Duffy 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. Heck, he even gave an interview to defend his vote, and lied and said the SAFE Act was a “bipartisan effort.
- February 2nd, 2016: Sean Duffy 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. Duffy 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.
Wisconsin’s 7th District has only a +2 Republican lean according to the Cook Partisan Voting Index, meaning Duffy’s chances at a fourth term in office could be foiled, and this could be a potential pickup for Democrats in the 2016 elections. Duffy will be challenged by Donald Raihala in the GOP Primary, and on the Democratic side of the ticket, Mary Hoeft, Joel Lewis, and Ethel Quisler are vying for the nod.
Of course, trouble could be brewing even more than a wide field of challengers, as Duffy switched his endorsements in 2016 as candidates dropped out, first for Scott Walker, then for Marco Rubio, before he inevitably was forced into backing the highly unfavorable GOP Presidential nominee, Donald Trump. And, Duffy shot his mouth off in an interview with Breitbart News a couple weeks back, where he tried making the case for Trump, saying that the racist billionaire demagogue “fit the template of the conservative movement” with his border wall and financial background.
To any and all opponents of Sean Duffy, I can recommend but one thing… tie that statement and Trump around Duffy’s neck like an albatross from now until election day, and never let up.
One Year Ago, June 10th, 2015: Jerry O’Neil