On this date in 2015, 2016, as well as 2017, “Crazy/Stupid Republican of the Day posted profiles of the current U.S. House Representative for Colorado’s 4th District, Ken Buck, who in his original profile, we noted was forced to resign in disgrace from the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Colorado in 2001, and in 2005, while working at the Weld, Colorado District Attorney’s office, he would seize the tax information of five thousand people in a raid on a tax service, getting the office sued by the public for violating their constitutional rights by seizing their personal information. Buck is also noted for being terribly misogynist, not just because he supports Personhood legislation or thinks rape and incest victims should be forced to carry any fetus they might end up pregnant with to term… in a 2010 failed campaign for U.S. Senate he stated his superiority because he didn’t “wear high heels”, and because in 2005, while a prosecutor, he refused to charge a rapist who confessed to forcing himself on his victim while drunk with rape because, as he put it, it was simply “a case of buyer’s remorse” from the victim. Adding to that disgusting moment, Buck also is a Birther conspiracy theorist, a climate change denier, and has compared homosexuality to alcoholism (the latter of which is of course classified as a disease), as well as comparing pregnancy to cancer. Buck has also argued against the United States housing Syrian refugees because, no lie, “BENGHAZI”. Which is remarkable that he’s blaming something that happened in Libya four years ago on people fleeing a country hundreds of miles away for their lives.
Since we last covered Ken Buck, he’s been defending the highly controversial AR-15 assault rifle, justifying its use for killing small animals like “raccoons and foxes” in March of 2018, only days after one was used to commit mass-murder at Parkland High School in Florida. He also literally trying normalizing scenes of carnage like this, saying they “happen all the time”. Classy.
He also has recently claimed that he sees “not a shred of evidence” that the Trump campaign colluded with Russians during the 2016 election, which doesn’t exactly jive with what Robert Mueller has revealed. Buck won re-election by over 30 points in 2016, and here’s Buck’s voting record from the past year he’s spent in office:
- March 16th, 2017: Ken Buck 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. Buck 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: Buck 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 Buck 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: Ken Buck 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. Buck chooses to be one of 90 Republicans in Congress who votes against disaster relief for Hurricane Harvey.
- October 3rd, 2017: Buck 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: Ken Buck 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.
Colorado’s 4th District has a +13 Republican lean, and in most years, that would keep Ken Buck plenty safe. In 2018? Well, he’s probably safe, but considering Conor Lamb just flipped a Pennsylvania district that Donald Trump won by 20 points and the GOP usually wins by even more than that… Well, Ken Buck also has a primary challenger in 2018, three Democrats vying to take him on (and all three are raising more money to campaign with than he is), and considering he has faced down constituents at volatile town halls where he’s been raucously booed and heckled, actually penned an editorial in July of 2017 where he wrote “The Republican Party is dead” because Donald Trump is president, while dodging scheduled interviews with the press, maybe he should consider retirement like so many of his colleagues did. Hell, some prognosticators are already predicting he’ll lose his seat in November, and we’re perfectly fine with that.