Representative Lauren Boebert (R-CO) is one of the most extreme members of Congress, from either political party.
And that’s saying a lot in the age of extreme polarization in our nation’s politics. Even for most partisans, though, Boebert is simply too much.
Having run in 2020 as a Trump-loving, gun-toting hardcore Right-winger in a rural Colorado district, Boebert was never very popular.
When it came time for her reelection, her mostly conservative district in Colorado barely voted to reelect Boebert.
She won by the narrowest margin—little more than 500 votes—imaginable.
It looked like Boebert might have recognized that she had erred by being so far Right in Congress. After narrowly surviving her last reelection attempt, with her Democratic opponent, Adam Frisch, vowing to return and finish what he started—defeating the ultra-conservative congresswoman—Boebert vowed to “be a good listener, to take a deep breath and help take the temperature down in DC [sic].”
Well, that was eight months ago. Now, it’s all aboard the Crazy Train.
Lauren Boebert: All Aboard the Crazy Train to Nowhere
Almost instantly upon Boebert’s “triumphant” return to Congress, the Colorado Republican set about leading the quixotic challenge to Rep. Kevin McCarthy’s (R-CA) bid to become the new Speaker of the House.
Acknowledging that she had no real plan (other than an “Anyone But McCarthy” platform), confounding even her most ardent supporters in conservative circles, like Fox News’s Sean Hannity, Boebert went about short-circuiting her own party’s plans for an orderly transition of power from the Rep. Nancy Pelosi’s (D-CA) tenure as speaker to McCarthy’s.
Boebert weakened the Republican Party in the eyes of many voters—notably independents—with her thoughtless actions. Further, her bizarre resistance to McCarthy’s ascension to the speakership divided the “MAGA” momentum of the Republican Party, too.
Another Far Right stalwart who had often been lumped in with Boebert, Rep. Marjorie Taylor-Greene (R-GA), surprisingly opposed Boebert’s amateurish (and hopeless) opposition to McCarthy’s selection as Speaker (even after former President Donald J. Trump had personally insisted that Boebert embrace McCarthy as speaker).
The unpopular Colorado Republican found herself on the Far Right of MTG. This is not being a better listener or cooling the temperature in hyper-partisan Washington, D.C.
Born-to-Lose
As noted at the time, the fight over Kevin McCarthy’s rise to Speaker of the House was a presage to the big fight over raising the national debt ceiling. Indeed, many of the same Republicans who opposed McCarthy—led by Boebert—also struggled against raising the debt ceiling.
While many Republican voters cheered this move on, it was another born-to-lose fight.
More importantly, it was a move that, if successful, would have crashed the economy and given the Democrats all the political ammunition they needed to achieve a seamless victory in the pending 2024 Presidential Elections.
Boebert would brook no compromise on this matter, despite being a very small minority. Even more mind-blowing about Boebert’s public opposition to the raising of the debt ceiling was the fact that, after all of her commotion over the debt ceiling, Boebert missed the vote. What’s more, she then lied about why she missed the vote!
Congresswoman Boebert had claimed that she missed the critical vote as a sign of protest because “they” wouldn’t “let her do her job,” it was quickly discovered that she had missed the vote because she was simply late. In the words of one of her opponents back home in Colorado, Rep. Boebert “failed to perform the most basic part of her job.”
She knew she had erred.
Rather than simply cop to that error in public, though, Boebert concocted a web of lies to obstruct the fact that she was simply too careless to show up on time for a vote she had been kvetching about since January.
Thank goodness for the republic, though, that she did miss that vote.
There are plenty of other instances of how Boebert completely undercut her promise to “lower the temperature” in Washington upon her barely winning another congressional term last year.
Losing the Hearts-and-Minds
For example, she infamously distributed pictures of dead fetuses to her colleagues as a means of protesting an extension of the Endangered Species Act. The implication was clearly that animals in America have greater protections than the unborn do.
It isn’t just that Boebert is extremely divisive. We’ve got many elected leaders currently serving in government from both parties who are divisive extremists. The real problem is that Boebert isn’t even effective at being a divisive politician.
Often, the goal of divisiveness in politics is to rally your side under your banner. But with Boebert, her own party refuses to play along with her. Congress is a team sport. Her team hates her and the other side loathes her. Boebert’s own constituents in a fairly conservative rural region of Colorado are sick of her—so much so they’re contemplating electing a Liberal Democrat as her replacement.
Rep. Boebert is a failure. If her tenure in Congress is remembered at all it will be for the stunning degree of systematic failures she imposed upon herself. Too bad because her party has such a narrow majority in Congress that they need to maintain every seat that they currently have (and then add some more to it in 2024). They can’t do that with unelectable and unpopular members, like Boebert.
A 19FortyFive Senior Editor, Brandon J. Weichert is a former Congressional staffer and geopolitical analyst who is a contributor at The Washington Times, as well as at American Greatness and the Asia Times. He is the author of Winning Space: How America Remains a Superpower (Republic Book Publishers), Biohacked: China’s Race to Control Life (Encounter Books), and The Shadow War: Iran’s Quest for Supremacy (July 23). Weichert can be followed via Twitter @WeTheBrandon.
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