Lauren Boebert has a genius for alienating everybody second only to Mike Pence’s. And she may find herself going the way of Pence, and other dinosaurs that have come before. Her political remains will be found in the GOP tar pits along with Scott Walker, Eric Cantor and other famous flame outs.
The Beetlejuice debacle at the Buell Theatre in Denver was quite the scandal. It dominated the news cycle for about a week, which is phenomenal in this day and age, when Donald Trump’s legal problems and the machinations around the House Speaker suck all the air out of the room and have since Kevin McCarthy took, and lost, the gavel, all in nine months.
Beetlejuice was the capstone of a career of high profile misbehavior since Boebert has been in Congress. And it will be instrumental in her losing her seat in 2024. But it’s far and away not the only thing that has hung her out to dry with other House Republicans and Republicans generally.
Boebert used to be besties with Freedom Caucus king Matt Gaetz. But then she turned on him, inexplicably, and decided to vote to retain Gaetz’s mortal enemy Kevin McCarthy. That’s when Boebert went over the side of the Gaetz ship. And that’s bad for her. She’s been expelled from the extreme right and Nancy Mace has filled the vacuum left by her ouster. And don’t forget her public dust up with Marge Greene, who called her a “little bitch.” But what is really damning is that the loss of her seat could cost the GOP the House. And for that, all the Republicans have turned against her. Insider:
While freshman lawmakers generally keep a lower profile as they have fewer committee responsibilities, Boebert routinely made herself a frequent topic of conversation on Capitol Hill during her first term by live-tweeting President Joe Biden’s first State of the Union, making Islamophobic comments about her colleagues, and more.
Her antics didn’t seem especially popular with her constituents.
In 2022, two years after Boebert won her congressional seat by more than 26,500 votes, the Republican legislator narrowly retained her seat against Democratic challenger Adam Frisch by fewer than 600 total votes.
Despite barely winning her reelection campaign, Boebert started her second term in office in largely the same manner she did in her first. She heckled Biden during the State of the Union as he discussed his dead son, got into a heated exchange with Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene on the House floor leading to Boebert getting called a “little bitch,” and said she was “tired” of the separation between church and state.
All of this nutty rhetoric was putting her seat in jeopardy, slowly but surely, and that’s why she won reelection by the thinnest of margins, less than 600 votes. But Beetlejuice and redistricting are now going to put the nails in Boebert’s political coffin.
Republicans only hold ten more seats in the House than Democrats, but after recently court-mandated redistricting in states like Alabama and New York, that slim majority is in peril this upcoming presidential election season.
With this in mind, Boebert’s earnest apology could be seen as damage control to not only save her own seat but prevent her entire party from losing control of the House.
She’s contrite the same way a thief that is caught is contrite. The thief doesn’t regret stealing, but oh does she regret getting caught. Boebert was acting out so blatantly because she was too stupid to know she was being recorded on a security camera. She lied to cover her tracks and only came clean when she had no choice. All the Beetlejuice debacle did was underscore her complete lack of veracity and dearth of character.
Meanwhile, Adam Frisch’s campaign reported bringing in $1.75 million more than Boebert’s in July, and she’s got no track record to run on, other than being a professional MAGA troll. That’s not going to cut it, if her slim margin of victory in 2022 is any indication.
In all truth, the GOP is actively working to lose the House in 2025 right now as we speak with Jim Jordan’s doomed run for Speaker. That will solidify the loss of the House if anything will. But it will be interesting to see how things play out Election Night 2024. Boebert may not be the linchpin for the House changing parties, I think history will award that annotation to Jim Jordan. But she will absolutely be part of the country making known the fact that it’s fed up with MAGA.
That’s been the message of the past three elections in a row, 2018, 2020, and 2022. This is why I believe that the GOP can’t keep going with MAGA madness. The sane Republicans have got to band together, or they will keep losing until they do. It seems to be getting that black and white. Again, I see this as the fall of the Republican party that formed after the Whig party collapsed. I see a new party forming from the ashes.
Here’s to her losing her seat in ’24. Thing is, her constituents put her in office in ’22 after her first two years of asininity. Makes you wonder if her constituents have the sense generally seen in stupider waterfowl.
But the bigggg difference is that in 2020 she handily won the seat. In 2022 she scraped through by 546 votes. That’s quite a difference. And she’s in a solid red district. She is like Cawthorn. If she just kept her act together and her mouth shut and voted, she’d be okay. But like Cawthorn, she has to go berserk.
I’m sure you remember his speeding tickets, carrying guns in airports, and then the coup de grace, talking about the cocaine orgies. Finally, people have enough.
Two Republicans are set to primary Bobo and she may not survive that. If she does, Frisch may finish her off. He’s doing very well in fundraising and he may just take home the prize this time out.
It’s small minded, petty and even mean-spirited of me but I LOVE the dilemma House GOPers find themselves in. Bobo is a goner next fall. But they need her now so they are stuck with her. As for next year, sure they can primary her but what would happen then? Clearly the district isn’t going to send anyone with a hint of MAGA in them to fill that seat. But a MAGA other than Boebert is all they’ll get and if anything that person will come off worse than she does.
Hence the dilemma. They COULD run a mainstream, old-school (but still hard core conservative) Republican who would openly repudiate Trump and MAGA. That’s assuming they could get such a person (somehow) through a primary. However that primary would be an epic shit-show and the Democrat would win in a walk with so much ready made campaign fodder from it to use. They don’t have anything to entice her with to get her to step aside either. Hence their fury. She needs to have five years in Congress to qualify for the pension and lifetime health care and she’s not giving up on a shot at that. But there’s no chance in hell of he winning so that seat is lost to the GOP.
So I find the whole thing funny as hell. The GOP decided to sleep in the MAGA dog house and has gotten an increasing number of Bobo’s that will cost them their narrow majority. In fact, it will cost them maybe forty or fifty seats. And Bobo will be one of the poster children all Democrats can use next year.
I have zero sympathy for her. She’s been on a total joy ride since she got elected. She’s misspent campaign funds, asked for insane amounts of mileage reimbursement, and all she does is tweet. That’s the job in her view. Maybe she did get direction of some sort from Ted Cruz, because he tweets and does podcasts and doesn’t work. Cruz at least has a good education.
I hope Boebert follows Cawthorn to the ashbin of history. They are both a cautionary tale in what happens when people get a tremendous advantage which they have done nothing to earn. Cawthorn was literally answering phones in Mark Meadows’ office and probably screwing that up, when Meadows answered the siren call of MAGA and went off to serve Trump and Cawthorn ran for his seat. Bobo was slinging pitchers of beer when she got recruited into MAGA politics. This is a game to them, like it is to Trump. I have zero respect for either one of them and they both can end up panhandling for all that i give a shit.
Your “… She’s been on a total joy ride since she got elected…” Makes one wonder if it’s a parasitic or symbiotic attachment and joyride. Either way, it’s not a sterile coexistence she’s fostered, during her somehow diminished and diminishing disruptive bum-plant in the House of GOP, or whatever it identifies itself as. She’ll get winkled out like an unloved burl from the trunk she has attached herself to. Can’t wait for when it happens.
“Cruz at least has a good education.”
I believe the GQP has dropped this recommendation (and I don’t think it ever was a requirement) to join their flaming rolling dumpster of a party. The MAGA Coalition is proving this in spades.