On this date in 2014, 2015, as well as 2016, “Crazy/Stupid Republican of the Day” published profiles of the U.S. House Representative from North Dakota’s At-Large District, Kevin Cramer, currently in his third term in office. Among Rep. Cramer’s finer quotes are insisting climate change is trending in the opposite direction and that CO2 emissions have nothing to do with any warming phenomenon (he was the adviser of the Trump campaign’s energy policies, go figure), as well as the time he talked about how Native American tribal elders and said he’d like to “wring the necks and slam their heads against the wall” for being upset about his vote against the version of the Violence Against Women Act that would have provided protections to Native American women. Rounding out this classy individual’s resume, he denies LGBT discrimination in the workplace even EXISTS, and insisted he was keeping his paycheck during the 2013 Government Shutdown because “he earned it” while also trying to throw people off of food stamps based on quotes he read of Christian scripture on the floor of the House (because Jesus was TOTALLY against feeding the poor.) Our last update also indicated that Cramer had been widely criticized during his first run for office for filming campaign advertisements in a veterans’ cemetery as well as the North Dakota Patriot Guard in one of their motorcycle rallies, and had jeopardized the funding for both, by making them involved in a political campaign without their permission. Cramer did not apologize to either group, justified it by saying “there was nothing illegal about it” and in interviews, refused to even say if he would continue to film ads in veterans’ cemeteries without permission.
Now, in 2016, Cramer won re-election by a large margin, earning 69% of the vote, but that was against Chase Iron Eyes, who had events from his past like nude photos of himself and a report that over a decade prior, he stole a car (his explanation for the latter was that he was “blankout drunk”). So… yeah, a candidate to get passionate about, but he came with a couple flaws, to say the least.
After Rep. Cramer’s re-election, he remains a thorough ***hole. In March of 2017, after several Democratic Congresswomen dressed for an address by Donald Trump to Congress by wearing white pantsuits, which was a nod to the Suffragette movement that got women the right to vote about a century ago. But that nuance is missed by Kevin Cramer, who responded to it by saying that these women had a “disease”, insulting how they looked, and were obsessed with Hillary Clinton’s election loss:
“But by the way, did you notice how poorly several of them were dressed as well?” he asked. “It is a syndrome. There is no question, there is a disease associated with the notion that a bunch of women would wear bad-looking white pantsuits in solidarity with Hillary Clinton to celebrate her loss. You cannot get that weird.”
Now, things can get even more embarrassing than that. In April of 2017, White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer gave a bizarre statement at the podium, where he tried comparing Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad to Adolf Hitler by assessing “even Hitler never gassed his own people”. (News flash: He totally ordered that done in concentration camps.) Now, nobody in their right mind would, or could defend those remarks. But Kevin Cramer, you see, it not in his right mind, as he exhibited in an interview with a North Dakota conservative talk radio host, saying that Spicer’s Holocaust denial “had some validity”.
“The media is so gullible, they fall for these things because they think it’s really hot stuff and the public just can’t wait to stick it to Sean Spicer – who 99% of the people wouldn’t have the foggiest idea who he is and it distracts them from other things. I can’t even believe that anybody in the media, much less all of the major networks, led with this story. A spokesperson, who by the way made a poor illustration, but it’s not completely, it’s not without some validity.”
A few weeks later in May of 2017, House Republicans were floating the AHCA as a method of repealing the Affordable Care Act, that would throw 24 million people off their health insurance, cause tens of thousands of more deaths a year, and all for the “benefit” of getting the richest Americans tax breaks. And Kevin Cramer faced down a hostile town hall as this vote approached, and was directly asked about that tax break for the wealthy, and lied in the faces of the people he represents, denying that it existed. The man asking Rep. Cramer the question responded by angrily stuffing a handful of money down his collar, a direct way of accusing that Cramer can be bought so easily.
And, big surprise, Cramer voted for the ACHA, along with a lot of other terrible legislation:
- February 16th, 2017: Cramer 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: Kevin Cramer 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. Cramer 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: Cramer 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 Cramer 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: Kevin Cramer 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.
Now, there are far more Democratic Senate seats up than Republican ones in the 2018 mid-terms. And while the GOP currently have a majority, they’re nervously looking at races in Arizona, Nevada, and Texas, where Jeff Flake, Dean Heller, and Ted Cruz all look like they could be in trouble, what with them being really, really unpopular in approval polls. So they’re hoping that maybe they can flip a few blue seats red, in states that lean conservative. One of them, of course, being North Dakota, where in 2012, Heidi Heitkamp pulled what was considered a big upset. That seat is a target for the GOP in 2018, but of all the people to be determined to make the jump to the Senate, it’s Kevin Cramer, who is getting all hacked off that GOP leaders would rather have a North Dakota State Senator take a crack at it, because of all the stupid and offensive things he has shown himself saying and doing.
When people are referring to you in the same breath as Todd Akin, you might need to be self-aware enough to realize you’ll hurt your own party’s chances.Whether or not Cramer listens to his pals and opts to just run for re-election to his House seat, or tries his hand at making it to the upper chamber is still up in the air. All we know is, Heidi Heitkamp has to like her chances against this misanthropic, ill-tempered twit more than most members of the GOP, and it would be nice to he hubris getting the best of Cramer.