In both 2016, as well as 2017, “Crazy/Stupid Republican of the Day” presented profiles of the sitting U.S. House Representative from Pennsylvania’s 12th Congressional District, Keith Rothfus, who not only voted for the 2013 Government Shutdown, and then when the time came to reopen the government, he voted to keep it closed. He voted against disaster relief for victims of Hurricane Sandy, and against the latest version of the Violence Against Women Act. Rothfus is a climate change denier who adamantly opposes same sex marriage, wants to privatize Social Security, and wants to restrict women’s reproductive ways in as many ways as can be thought of.
That latter point, and his love for Government Shutdowns crossed paths during the faux-outrage over Planned Parenthood in 2015, as Rep. Rothfus was actually one of 28 Republican men who threatened to shut down the government, again, over their inability to defund an organization who only uses about 3% of their budget on abortions, none of which comes from whatever government funding they do receive (that all goes towards women’s health). Keith Rothfus then continued to participate in the GOP’s smear campaign against Planned Parenthood, where he described “crushing baby parts” and how “ghoulish” the organization was… (y’know, the sort of rhetoric that served as a stochastic terror trigger to inspire Robert Lewis Dear to go and shoot up a Planned Parenthood clinic in Colorado Springs. After investigations into Planned Parenthoods turned up nothing, and the Center for Medical Progress actually ended up having two of their leaders indicted for tampering with government records… Rothfus still insists that Planned Parenthood admitted to wrongdoing, and was caught selling human body parts.
Rothfus took to the floor of the House in May of 2016 to whine about how his “religious freedom” was being threatened in today’s America. And while you might not see Keith Rothfus on cable news all the time, where you do see him comment is in press releases whenever the Supreme Court makes a major ruling, and as a former corporate lawyer, Rothfus always chides them for making rulings that as a conservative, he just doesn’t like, like when he released an amicus brief after the Supreme Court ruled 5-3 against the state of Texas in Whole Women’s Health v. Hellerstedt, where he was still trying to keep up the illusion (the lie) that “safety” was the motivation behind the undue and unnecessary restrictions placed upon abortion clinics in Texas to shut them down violated a woman’s constitutional right to find access to the procedure.
Rothfus won re-election in 2016 with 62% of the vote, and has returned to DC to continue being a partisan dumbass.
- February 16th, 2017: Rothfus 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: Keith Rothfus 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. Rothfus votes for SJ Res 34, which allowed internet providers to sell the data information of their customers’ internet usage to businesses.
- May 4th, 2017: Rothfus votes for the GOP’s healthcare plan, that would allow 24,000 more people to die a year, give $50,000 in tax breaks to millionaires, would eliminate coverage for pre-existing conditions, and would treat pregnancy, postpartum depression, and sexual assault as “pre-existing conditions”. Oh, and a provision in the Keith would make sure that Rothfus 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: Keith Rothfus 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. Rothfus chooses to be one of 90 Republicans in Congress who votes against disaster relief for Hurricane Harvey.
- October 3rd, 2017: Rothfus 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: Patrick Rothfus 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: Rothfus 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 votes for HR 620, which would strip most of the civil rights protections guaranteed by it.
As it stands, Keith Rothfus is currently dodging his constituents in his home district, failing to attend scheduled town halls with them. Maybe if he was there, he would have heard how upset they were about a proposed repeal of the Affordable Care Act. The one that Rothfus not only voted for, in spite of only 17% of the country supporting it, but that he actually took to the floor of the House to talk about, giddy with anticipation to vote for. Pennsylvania’s 12th was restructured by a court-order to undo a Republican-engineered gerrymander, and that has the whole Keystone State GOP in panic mode.
Worse yet for Rothfus, of all the opponents that could have been shunted into his district to face him, he had the misfortune after all that shuffling of ending up in the same district as the charismatic Conor Lamb, who pulled an even bigger upset in a far-more Republican-leaning district only a few months ago. Thus, the GOP have called in the big guns, sending Vice President Pence to campaign on Rothfus’ behalf, Donald Trump has gone to the usual effort of mailing it in and s***-talking Lamb on Twitter, and they’re hoping that it will be enough to prevent Lamb from going two for two on flipping seats blue.
Frankly, we rather like the idea of the legend of Conor Lamb growing, and seeing him twice survive having Trump support his opponents only to fail.
One Year Ago, July 4th, 2017: Keith Rothfus (PA)… 2017 Update
Two Year Ago, July 4th, 2016: Keith Rothfus (PA)… Original Profile
Three Years Ago, July 4th, 2015: Richard K. Jones (OH)