In 2016, 2017, 2018, as well as 2019, “Crazy/Stupid Republican of the Day” presented profiles of the sitting U.S. House Representative from Texas’ 36th Congressional District, Brian Babin, a dentist by trade who made his first run for Congress two decades ago, failing to be elected in 1996, and making news for being caught in a campaign finance scandal, where he was found to have tried circumventing the rules for maximum donations from one donor by having intermediaries deliver the large sums in smaller pieces. He was caught, and fined $20,000 by the normally toothless FEC.
Two years later, in 1998, that scandal may not have been what stood in the way of a Babin victory, as much as the story of his campaign manager simultaneously coming out of the closet, and resigning, saying that Babin had said numerous disparaging things about homosexuals in private meetings. Babin denied this, but the tabloid-like nature of the story, combined with his earlier scandal was enough to sink his chances again.
Well, Texas’ 36th District has never been shy about taking on controversial candidates, considering they elected Rep. Steve Stockman back in 2012, nearly two decades after he crazied his way out of office. By 2014, Rep. Stockman had shown he hadn’t changed much, so the district elected Babin, another embarrassing throwback to two decades earlier. During the 2014 election season, Brian Babin revealed a variety of mind-numbingly stupid ideas, like his belief that the Affordable Care Act would bankrupt America, his desire to do away with the Department of Education, the Department of Energy, and the Department of Homeland Security, and of course, his desire to build a border wall along the U.S./Mexico border (beating Donald Trump to the punch on this stupid, stupid idea).
Since hitting Washington, D.C. in his late sixties, he has followed up on his campaign platform, showing outrage whenever possible. Perhaps the best example is his response to the Supreme Court’s King vs. Burwell ruling, where he introduced legislation that would force all nine of the Supreme Court Justices to enroll in healthcare through the Affordable Care Act (rather than the insurance plans they already have) to show them what they were relegating the American people to. Seriously, this was his patronizing quote:
“As the Supreme Court continues to ignore the letter of the law, it’s important that these nine individuals understand the full impact of their decisions on the American people. By eliminating their exemption from Obamacare, they will see firsthand what the American people are forced to live with!”
A few months later, his xenophobia hit a fever pitch. While most Republicans freaked out about the Syrian refugee program AFTER the terror attacks in Paris by ISIS sympathizers from France and Belgium (i.e. not carried out by any Syrian refugees), On September 17th, 2015, Brian Babin went on Facebook to call for a complete suspension of the entire Refugee Resettlement Program, writing:
”We are crazy to be inviting the problems of the Middle East into the United States. It’s time to suspend the refugee resettlement program until we are able to obtain factual information, assess the federal, state and local costs and determine the national security risks. It’s been on auto-pilot for far too long.”
Two months later in November of 2015, Babin took to Breitbart Radio to be interviewed by Steve Bannon himself, and talk about legislation he filed to defund the Refugee resettlement program. While Babin acknowledged that Mary, Joseph, and the baby Jesus were refugee, this was different because, “Jesus and Mary didn’t have suicide bomb vests strapped on them.”
Babin also has tried squaring his overall Islamophobic stance because he believes that "No-Go Zones” set up by Muslim communities are actually a thing happening in Michigan and Tennessee, and we should stop bringing in Muslims before more of them pop up. Hint for sane people: These “no-go zones” are not happening. All the way up into the last weeks of the Obama administration, Babin was fear-mongering about the refugee resettlement program, claiming it was a “Trojan Horse” to allow terrorists into the country. Once Donald Trump took office and instituted his unconstitutional Muslim ban, it was Rep. Babin who sent out an e-mail to his constituents, with a survey asking if they supported the measure or not, and within it, claimed several Muslim countries as “terrorism hot spots” that have not produced a terrorist attacker in Europe or the United States within this century.
Now, as you might expect with his hate of Muslim refugees, and a desire to build a border wall, Brian Babin ended up firmly in the corner of Donald Trump in the fall of 2016. So much so, in fact, that he defended Trump for calling Hillary Clinton a “nasty woman” during one of the presidential debates as she handed Trump his ass. Babin’s logic? “I think sometimes a lady needs to be told when she’s being nasty. I do.”
Now, Texas’ 36th is one of the reddest of red districts in all the country, with a +26 Republican lean in the Cook Partisan Voting Index, which in 2018, helped Babin to coast to a third term in office with 72% of the vote. Back in Washington, Brian Babin’s stupidity continues:
- January 23rd, 2019: Rep. Babin voted against HR 648, because he was gleefully enjoying the longest government shutdown in history.
- January 27th, 2019: Brian Babin voted against HJR 30, which was meant to express disapproval of Donald Trump not acting against Russian Federation for attacking our democracy. You see, he’s fine with our nation being sublet to Vladimir Putin.
- February 28th, 2019: Brian Babin votes against HR 1112, a bill which would have required universal background checks on all firearm purchases, and close the gun show loophole.
- March 14th, 2019: Rep. Babin votes against HJR 46, which sane members of Congress voted for to reject Donald Trump’s “national emergency” regarding the U.S. border and his attempts to reallocate funds for a border wall without Congressional approval.
- June 4th, 2019: Babin votes against the Dreamers Act, because he’s too xenophobic and partisan to care about immigration reform.
- July 16th, 2019: Brian Babin votes against a resolution to condemn Donald Trump for his racist statements that four people of color in Congress should “go back where they came from”.
- October 17th, 2019: Rep. Babin is one of 60 Republicans who vote against HJ Res 77, which opposed Donald Trump’s disastrous decision to abandon Syrian Kurdish forces in Northeast Syria to the mercies of a Turkish invasion.
- October 23rd, 2019: Babin is one of 41 Republicans who, while staring down the possibility of Donald Trump being impeached, stage a ridiculous publicity stunt in response by crashing a classified impeachment inquiry hearing for a “protest”.
- December 18th, 2019: Rep. Babin ignores his Congressional duty to hold a president who has been proven to commit high crimes and misdemeanors accountable and votes against the impeachment of Donald Trump.
Brian Babin took the news of the GOP’s defeat in the 2018 elections about as well as most Republicans, which is not well. He’s still been hosted by the “alt right” (i.e. white nationalist) Breitbart News for interviews to claim that Democrats want “open borders” and otherwise fearmonger about immigrants in November of 2018, and only weeks into the new session of the House with Democrats in control, tried to block Palestinian-American Congresswoman Rashida Tlaib from leading a delegation to the West Bank, because of reasons that amount to trying to stir up Islamphobia. Even as recently as a few days ago, he was pandering to xenophobes by taking a visit down to the U.S/Mexico border in Arizona for photo-ops with border patrol agents, while claiming that the border wall was near completion and one of Trump’s “promises made, promises kept”. (Someone’s living in a fantasy world.)
Babin’s opponent in November is Rashad Lewis, a former Jasper, Texas City Councilman hoping for a big upset… especially given the extreme conservative lean of the District. We’re hoping there’s something unexpected to happen in this match-up between now and November, because Babin’s accomplished nothing but partisan d***ery over the past six years.
One Year Ago, June 28th, 2019: Brian Babin (TX)… 2019 Update
One Year Ago, June 28th, 2018: Brian Babin (TX)… 2018 Update
Two Years Ago, June 28th, 2017: Brian Babin (TX)… 2017 Update
Three Years Ago, June 28th, 2016: Brian Babin (TX)… Original Profile
Four Years Ago, June 28th, 2015: David Schultheis (CO)