Welcome to the 612th original “Crazy/Stupid Republican of the Day” profile, where we assure, we are going to hurl some insults, because we’ll be discussing the U.S. House Representative from Virginia’s 5th Congressional District Tom Garrett, who in the above photo, is pictured with a group of individuals that include Jason Kessler, the piece of human garbage that organized the Neo-Nazi rally in Charlottesville, Virginia that led to the death of Heather Heyer. And Garrett is such a f***ing scumbag himself that after Heyer’s death, he still had the unimitigated gall to go on that place where every rich white ***hole with a terrible opinion is welcome, Fox Business Channel.0
“I have a child due in a month—we’ve worked since 1776 to erase horrible flaws like slavery and second-class citizenship and to think that my child might be born into a world where we’re regressing is genuinely frightening.”
Nice of Garrett to go on television to wipe away invisible crocodile tears when you f***ing hang out with the people who run the hate rally, normalize and embolden them six months prior, and then pretend you give a s*** about what sorts of hell they might unleash. It’s not like people can’t just check and see how sympathetic Garrett is to the cause of the Neo-Nazis who were there to talk about their precious Confederate monuments, like when he co-sponsored bills as a state legislator to preserve said monuments.
We feel a bit better getting the “this guy pals around with Neo-Nazis” angle out of the way up front. Now, Rep. Garrett rode the Alt-Right hatred stoked by Donald Trump’s presidential campaign into office in 2016, coming out of a five year tenure from the Virginia State Senate where he co-sponsored legislation to criminalize oral and anal sex between teenagers (oddly specific to worry about those kinds, and not the kinds that could result in teen pregnancies), attempts to drug test welfare recipients, voting against efforts to offer LGBT citizens protections against discrimination, votes against equal rights for women, as well as votes for mandatory ultrasounds prior to an abortion that would make Ken Cuccinelli proud, co-sponsoring a Personhood bill, oh, and attempts at voter suppression through unnecessary stricter Voter ID requirements.
All of that was his resume to replace Virginia Congressman and CSGOPOTD Robert Hurt as the Republican representative for Virginia’s 5th Congressional District after being picked at the GOP’s party convention for this seat (which usually results in more conservative candidates in Virginia), and then defeating Jane Dittmar with 58% of the vote in a traditionally conservative seat. We’re hoping his associates with racist terrorists make him a one-term candidate, but really, this mother***er shouldn’t have been given a chance in the first place. At the debate with Dittmar a few weeks prior to the 2016 election, Garrett mentioned that our election was “rigged”, echoing a certain oranged-hued cretin on the presidential ticket, argued vehemently in favor of the 2nd Amendment being unimpeded, claiming that Democrats trying to pass a law to prevent terrorists on the “no fly list” from being able to buy firearms was “racist”, and when presented with a question about presenting gun violence, scoffed, saying ,“the question is fallacious on its face, because homicides and suicides aren’t caused by gun use, they’re caused by people, that’s like saying that home construction is caused by hammer use.” Garrett’s campaign rhetoric, of course, also was stuffed full of as much anti-immigrant bigotry as possible, fanning the flames of xenophobia about immigrants from Central America, as well as Muslim immigrants from Somalia, and going as far as to claim that “Sharia Law” was a threat rising around the globe.
This guy is a gaffe machine, as evidenced as an MSNBC interview where Garrett admitted most of the House GOP hadn’t read the healthcare repeal bill they were about to vote on in Congress, and were just asking their staff to do it for them. Speaking of, his voting record is already quite the barrel of hot garbage:
- February 16th, 2017: Garrett votes for HJR 69, to make it legal for hunters on wildlife reserves to kill several species of hibernating bears or wolves while they’re sleeping. Because… well, the logic really isn’t there as to why, it’s just awful.
- March 16th, 2017: Tom Garrett votes for HR 1181, which would allow veterans deemed mentally incompetent to continue to own firearms, and not have them taken away without a judge's written order. We feel safer already.
- March 28th, 2017: Rep. Garrett votes for SJ Res 34, which allowed internet providers to sell the data information of their customers' internet usage to businesses. Well, so much for privacy.
- May 4th, 2017: Garrett votes for the House GOP's healthcare plan, that would kick roughly 24 million people off their health insurance plans, allow up to 28,000 more people to die a year, give $50,000 in tax breaks to millionaires, and would eliminate coverage for pre-existing conditions which would include such medical conditions as pregnancy (current or past), postpartum depression, or prior sexual assault. Oh, and a provision in the bill would make sure that Garrett would be allowed to keep his healthcare plan as it exists under the ACA, which would be repealed for the rest of the country. He and his Republican compatriots threw themselves a beer bash to celebrate taking away healthcare from millions and then gloated about it with Donald Trump at a White House press conference, as well.
- June 8th, 2017: Tom Garrett votes for HR 10, the GOP’s attempt to repeal Dodd-Frank financial reform, because what the country really needs is to allow the big banks to make the same mistakes that imploded the economy only a decade earlier.
- September 8th, 2017: Rep. Garrett conveniently misses the vote for disaster relief for Hurricane Harvey victims. Remember this if a hurricane should strike his district.
- October 3rd, 2017: Garrett votes for HR 36, the Pain-Capable Unborn Child Protection Act, that would try to create an unconstitutional ban abortion at 20 weeks (even though medical science tells us fetuses do not have the capability to feel pain until 29 weeks).
Tom Garrett has not done a good job of quelling outrage in the two town halls he’s hosted this year. In the first, in May when asked about Trump’s potential collusion with the Russians, Garrett set the bar for the President of the United States about as low as it can get by downplaying complaints about his policies by saying they’re “small potatoes compared to Nazi Germany”, well, you deserve to be ridiculed. And going into 2018, Garrett’s pals from hate groups need to be brought up REPEATEDLY so that voters heading to the polls know that if they don’t want a guy who’s palling around with Nazis about three quarters of a century after they should have all been put in the past, they need to vote for anyone who isn’t him.
One Year Ago, October 23rd, 2016: Tim Huelskamp (KS)… 2016 Update
Two Years Ago, October 23rd, 2015: Tim Huelskamp (KS)… 2015 Update
Three Years Ago, October 23rd, 2014: Tim Huelskamp (KS)… Original Profile