May 31, 2023 09:56 PM UTC

And After All of That...Lauren Boebert Didn't Even Bother to Vote

• 16 Comments
• by: Colorado Pols

THURSDAY UPDATE: You can count Sen. John Hickenlooper (D-Denver) among those who are not pleased with Boebert’s performative failures:

We were elected to bring people together and get stuff done, not play hooky when our economy is on the line. https://t.co/tRfRRKJ6tg

— Senator John Hickenlooper (@SenatorHick) June 1, 2023

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We wrote on Tuesday that Congressperson Lauren Boebert (R-ifle) had backed herself into a no-win situation on the debt ceiling debate.

Boebert had already voted in favor of the first debt bill from House Speaker Kevin McCarthy, but she promised to vote against the second bill because it wasn’t heavy enough on spending cuts. If the new debt ceiling deal failed, Boebert and her Freedom Caucus buddies would be blamed for what would likely lead to a global recession; if the deal passed despite her opposition, it would prove the weakness of her position within the caucus. 

Boebert had a 100% chance of getting a bad answer when the votes were taken on Wednesday evening, but against all odds, she found a way to do the only thing that would have actually been worse.

She. Didn’t. Vote.

For the sake of argument, let’s say you are a professional basketball player for the Miami Heat. Your team is playing against the Denver Nuggets in the NBA Finals beginning on Thursday at Ball Arena in Denver.

For days, you have talked about playing in the NBA Finals and how you are going to be at the top of your game to defeat the Nuggets. You are cocky and confident in media interviews. You talk smack to the Nuggets when both teams take the court for warmups. You preen arrogantly in front of the Denver fans, riling them up by boasting of the big victory to come. When the starting lineups are introduced, you flex and shout at the hometown fans.

At last, it is finally time to play – to do the thing that you were chosen to do by the front office and coaches of the Miami Heat. It’s time to back up all of your trash talking and the days and days of bullshit that you repeated to media outlets from across the country. 

The coach looks down at you on the bench and says something inspiring. Your teammates cheer and slap you on the back. But you don’t get up. You don’t walk back onto the court. You don’t tell the coach ‘no,’ but you don’t make any movement toward getting in the game, either. You don’t, in fact, do anything. You don’t do the one thing that is the most important part of your job. 

The game goes on without you. Your teammates battle hard, and so does your opponent. The Nuggets win (of course they win), and you quietly follow your team back to the locker room. None of your teammates will make eye contact. Your coach stands in front of you, turns around, and addresses the team without including you in any of the remarks.

As the rest of the players shower (you don’t need to shower since you didn’t break a sweat), you pick up your phone and start Tweeting about how you’re going to score 50 points against the Nuggets in Game Two…

.@RepBoebert talk is cheap, leadership requires showing up https://t.co/AvtIrTtF0O

— Jason Crow (@JasonCrowCO) June 1, 2023

Congressperson Lauren Boebert (R-ifle) may well be the most useless politician in Colorado — even worse than Rep. Doug Lamborn (R-Colorado Springs), which is really saying something. In fact, she might even be the most useless politician in Congress. That would almost be impressive if it weren’t so pathetic. 

For weeks, Boebert has barked about the debt ceiling and the importance of cutting spending in order to increase the debt limit (which doesn’t even make sense, since the debt limit is about paying for things that Congress has already purchased). She has written a small novel on social media channels and attended numerous grievance shoutings press conferences to complain about mean old Joe Biden and the Democrats…but also mean old Kevin McCarthy and the Republicans who won’t let the MAGA morons and Freedom Caucus clowns do whatever they want. Boebert has ranted and raved on Fox News and Fox and Friends and basically any show with the word “Fox” in the title. 

Just last night, there was Boebert on Newsmax TV (which apparently still exists), telling something called Eric Bolling that the debt limit deal reached by McCarthy and Biden was “just a huge fail on our part.” To the best of our knowledge, the debt ceiling negotiations did NOT involve Boebert. She probably didn’t even learn about the details before tens of thousands of people all over the country had already read about it online.

Anyway, Boebert has been screaming about raising the debt ceiling for weeks. She voted for McCarthy’s original plan, the one that was DOA in the Senate, but this week she said there was no way she could vote for the new deal that eventually passed on Wednesday evening. It is technically true that Boebert didn’t vote for the deal that passed by a margin of 314-117 (with 165 Democrats saving everyone’s ass). 

However, sharp-eyed readers will note that 314 + 117 does NOT equal 435. That’s because Boebert was one of just four Members of Congress who ended up not voting. Like, at all.

After weeks of arguing and tossing insults about debt ceiling negotiations, and after pledging to vote ‘NO’ on the latest deal, Congressperson Lauren Boebert didn’t vote. Boebert didn’t do the ONE THING that is the single most important part of her job. She finally got her chance to make a decision about the financial future of this country, and she…punted. 

We explained in detail about why this is such a problem in an earlier post. The short version is that recent polling has shown that voters in CO-03 of all political persuasions believe that Boebert focuses too much attention on Twitter and/or defending Donald Trump than she does in representing the interests of her constituents. Voters already think she has the wrong priorities, and tonight she just doubled-down for everyone to see!

Boebert also might have even alienated her MAGA base with this no-vote. If you can’t even count on Boebert to vote ‘NO’ along with the rest of the Congressional MAGAbots, then what is the point of supporting her for re-election in 2024? It’s not like there is a shortage of MAGA Republicans who already don’t do anything other than yell loudly and Tweet regularly.

If there was ever a moment in which Boebert should have buckled down and made sure to cast an important vote, this was that time.

Alas, she is just not that person.