On this date in 2014, 2015, 2016, as well as 2017, “Crazy/Stupid Republican of the Day” published profiles of the U.S. House Representative from Florida’s 8th Congressional District, 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.
Posey was re-elected with 63% of the vote in the 2016 elections, and shuffled back to Washington to start his fifth term in the House. It has gone much as you would expect:
- February 16th, 2017: Posey 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: Bill Posey 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. Posey 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: Posey 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), post-partum depression, or prior sexual assault. Oh, and a provision in the bill would make sure that Posey 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: Bill Posey 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.
- October 3rd, 2017: Posey 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).
- December 19th, 2017: Rep. Posey votes for HR 1, the GOP’s $1.7 trillion tax cut to benefit the wealthiest Americans and corporations permanently that coincidentally also removes the Affordable Care Act’s individual mandate and kicks 13 million people off their health insurance.
- February 18th, 2018: Posey and his fellow Republicans decide that poor big businesses are suffering too much at the hands of the Americans with Disabilities Act too much, and vote for HR 620, which would strip most of the civil rights protections guaranteed by it.
- May 22nd, 2018: Posey, a long time proponent of guns and recipient of campaign donations from the NRA, refuses to comment when asked about the mass shooting in Parkland, Florida.
- July 18th, 2018: After Donald Trump gives a bizarre joint press conference with Vladimir Putin in Helsinki, where he denied Russians interfered in the 2016 election, effectively siding with the Russian dictator’s denials over his own intelligence community, Bill Posey offers his support to the president, arguing that maybe that interference isn’t so bad, because “America has done it to other countries for the past 50 years”.
Bill Posey dodged hosting a town hall since re-election, and instead, opted to call his constituents to let them know he was having a telephone town hall… WHILE IT WAS ALREADY UNDER WAY. He was apparently still distressed that upon learning this, ten thousand of his voters bombarded him with complaints, not only about his availability, but how the GOP was planning on exercising control of both Congress and the White House, and defended the move because “Gabby Giffords got shot at a town hall”. His constituents then further berated him, because Giffords herself called on all members of Congress to hold town halls, as their duty remains to the people.
Florida’s 8th Congressional District has a +11 lean in the Cook Partisan Voting Index, leaving Bill Posey’s Democratic challenger next month, Sanjay Patel, at a disadvantage that currently looks to be right within a stone’s throw of the advantage Democrats are going to have due to the Blue Wave. Patel, a Brevard County Democratic State Committeeman,is making Rep. Posey pretty nervous, what with the fact that he’s currently bringing in more donations in fundraising than the Republican incumbent, and that might be why Posey lost it and took it upon himself to say you can identify Patel’s supporters of “having the dumpiest damn house in the neighborhood.” Which, GOP class warfare and all that, looking down their nose at those with lower real estate worth.
Whether or not this reflects in the vote in 22 days, we’ll have to see.