June 23, 2023 01:15 PM UTC

Lauren Boebert's No Good, Very Bad Week

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• by: Colorado Pols

“Thank God it’s Friday” is one of those mindless phrases that has been so overused that it’s almost embarrassing to utter the words anymore. That doesn’t mean it can’t still be an accurate expression, however – especially if your name is Lauren Boebert.

Congresswoman Boebert is no doubt relieved to see this week come to an end after a rough couple of days that further exposed her own idiocy while drawing new attention to the fact that she is quickly losing friends even among her right-wing brethren. Even those who generally subscribe to the adage that “all press is good press” might be rethinking that approach after the damage Boebert did to her own brand over the course of just three days. 

This was the kind of bad week that can reshape perceptions and launch a candidate into an electoral death-spiral. To get us started on a look back at a terrible few days for Boebert and what was generally a ridiculous time for House Republicans in general, take a look at Dana Milbank’s column today in The Washington Post on what he accurately dubs, “The U.S. House of Recriminations”:

A couple of weeks before the midterm elections, Kevin McCarthy assured voters that House Republicans, if given the majority, wouldn’t be so rash as to go on an impeachment binge.

“I think the country doesn’t like impeachment used for political purposes at all,” he told Punchbowl News at the time. “I think the country wants to heal,” he added, and avowed that he didn’t think anybody in the Biden administration merited impeachment proceedings.

The voters gave Republicans a chance, awarded them narrow control of the House.

And now Republicans are starting their impeachment binge.

Thanks, Lauren Boebert!

Putting the ‘P’ in ‘Imeach’

The “impeachment binge” kicked off after the Juneteenth holiday. Boebert had finally learned how to spell “impeach” and was excited to put her words into action, so she rose on the House Floor to seek a parliamentary maneuver to force a vote (within 48 hours) on the question of “Impeaching Joseph R. Biden Jr., president of the United States, for high crimes and misdemeanors.” As Milbank notes, Boebert wanted to skip past all of the discussion and go straight to a vote on her second Biden impeachment effort in as many years:

No impeachment proceedings. No investigation. No evidence. No crimes. Not so much as parking ticket. Just a willy-nilly, snap vote to impeach the president, because Boebert dislikes Biden’s immigration policies. In her mind, “President Biden has intentionally facilitated a complete and total invasion at the southern border,” she charged on the House floor.

As The Hill newspaper later reported, McCarthy himself had asked Boebert NOT to do this on the House Floor and instead present her proposal first in a GOP caucus meeting on Wednesday. Boebert ignored that request, skipping the meeting in favor of yammering about her impeachment attempt on Steve Bannon’s radio show. 

Boebert also took her message to the evangelical YouTube show “Victory Channel.” In explaining why she rebuffed efforts by her colleagues to slow her roll on impeachment, Boebert blamed God for the idea:

Rep. Lauren Boebert claims that she is forcing a House vote on impeaching President Biden because she is “directed and led” by “the spirit of God” in everything she does: “We are doing what is right, what is righteous. History will prove that.” pic.twitter.com/EBoKqYEFif

— Right Wing Watch (@RightWingWatch) June 21, 2023

“I am directed and led by Him,” said Boebert.

In response to Republicans asking her to ease off the gas pedal, Boebert explained:

“I said, you know, I have a ‘peace,’ a ‘still’ in my spirit, and I’m going to be led by peace and not by the pressure from the outside.”

Then Boebert got REALLY excited:

“I’m not being, like, the press secretary and calling myself an historic figure, but history will prove that we were on the right side of the argument. It is all about being led by the spirit of God in everything that you do.”

Um, okay.

Boebert’s more secular argument for impeaching Biden is largely about her belief that the President has intentionally opened up the U.S.-Mexico border so that brown people can invade ‘Merica. It makes no difference to Boebert that the “invasion” she had long predicted failed to materialize in real life. Ironically, the United States Supreme Court ruled this week that Biden’s immigration policies are, in fact, perfectly legal (despite complaints from Republicans in Texas and Louisiana). 

While Boebert was making the right-wing media rounds, the Wednesday meeting that she skipped went forward without her. McCarthy implored his caucus to vote against Boebert’s resolution on a quick impeachment vote. From CNN:

Asked about the strategy to send the resolution to committee, McCarthy told CNN: “I think that’s best for everybody.”

At Wednesday’s closed door meeting, McCarthy argued that Republicans should let committee investigations play out and warning that jumping to impeachment now could threaten their slim majority, the sources said. The speaker noted that House Republicans have taken back the House five times in the last 100 years, and two of those times lost the majority the next cycle.

“What majority do we want to be,” McCarthy asked his conference, according to a source in the room “Give it right back in two years or hold it for a decade and make real change?”…

…McCarthy told reporters on Wednesday he does not support the resolution.

“I think to prematurely bring something up like that, to have no background in it, it undercuts what we’re doing” at the committee level, he said.

Boebert’s efforts to force a House vote on impeachment were ultimately thwarted by Republicans. By a party-line vote of 219-208, the House voted on Thursday to refer Boebert’s impeachment resolution to the Judiciary and Homeland Security Committees.

Boebert again spoke on Thursday about her neutered impeachment attempt, making a silly spin attempt on the House Floor about the historic nature of whatever the hell Republicans are trying to do now.

Republicans Are Not Amused

As outlets such as The Washington Post, The Hill newspaper and Fox News explained, many House Republicans were incensed with Boebert’s antics and were not holding their collective tongues any longer. 

House Speaker Kevin McCarthy:

“I don’t think it’s the right thing to do.”

Montana Rep. Ryan Zinke:

“Doing a privilege motion off the floor is, to me, theater, and smacks of self-service and not service.”

Nebraska Rep. Don Bacon: 

“Doing this is wrong, and I think the majority of the conference feels that way…It’s a person thinking about themselves instead of the team.”

Louisiana Rep. Garret Graves: 

“[Impeachment] is not something you should flippantly exercise in two days. And I think that it actually undermines efforts to hold people accountable in the future.”

Arkansas Rep. French Hill: 

“It’s important for the Republican conference to act together in unison to counter the bad policies of the Biden administration. And therefore, if members want to suggest or bring up the idea of a privileged motion, they ought to come to the conference to discuss that in advance and have a collective discussion of it before they take the decision to do it.”

California Rep. Mike Garcia:

“It’s hard to win. It’s easy to lose. We can lose this majority very easily if we decide to do things recklessly.”

South Carolina Rep. Nancy Mace:

“Something like that would need to be investigated, need to come out of a committee with that investigation, where the person that is being impeached has a chance to defend themselves, etc. And that’s not what’s happening.”

Washington State Rep. Dan Newhouse:

“Just disagreeing with someone on their policy decisions doesn’t meet that [high bar for impeachment].” 

Pennsylvania Rep. Brian Fitzpatrick:

“It’s interesting because privileged motions are typically a tool of the minority, right? When you don’t control the floor, you try to force a vote on something. So I am puzzled as to why it’s being utilized by people in the majority.”

North Dakota Rep. Kelly Armstrong:

“I don’t support the way this is being done at all. My base in North Dakota supports the hell out of it. So if I have to [vote in a way to] protect this institution, I’ve got to go home and explain it to my base.

“I don’t want my job bad enough to be a hypocrite to keep it.”

Even her fellow Colorado Republican, Rep. Ken Buck, was not on board:

“It’s just not what we’re here for. We should be striving to do better.”

These comments are clearly not good for Boebert, but they were all fairly tame compared to what Georgia Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene said to Boebert dkirectly on the House Floor on Wednesday.

I Know You Are, But What Am I?

In an exchange that was captured on video, MTG blasted Boebert:

“I’ve donated to you, I’ve defended you. But you’ve been nothing but a little bitch to me… And you copied my articles of impeachment after I asked you to cosponsor them.”

Greene later reiterated her comments to Semafor:

Asked whether there was any chance the two would reconcile after the confrontation, Greene said: “Absolutely not.”

“She has genuinely been a nasty little bitch to me,” Greene told Semafor. 

Greene also alleged that Boebert’s impeachment attempt was purely for selfish political reasons:

“It’s purely for fundraising,” she told Semafor. “It’s throwing out red meat so that people will donate to her campaign because she’s coming up on the end of the month, and she’s trying to produce good fundraising numbers.”

Greene said that at one point in the fight, parts of which were caught from afar on video, Boebert accused the Georgia lawmaker of accidentally spitting on her lip. Then, toward the end of the exchange, Boebert tried to re-engage her, but she cut the conversation off. “I said ‘you need to shut up because the only person that’s recognized to speak right now is Luna,’” she told Semafor, referring to Rep. Anna Paulina Luna, R-Fla., who was then giving a speech on the floor.

Boebert did not respond to a request for comment.

In an interview with POLITICO, however, Boebert made a ridiculous attempt at taking the high road:

“It’s really unfortunate that somebody communicated the conversation that took place on the floor” between herself and Greene, Boebert added, “because I was willing to walk away [from] people wanting to stir up unnecessary drama.”

She criticized reporters for focusing on “pettiness” rather than her impeachment proposal: “I didn’t leave my four kids and now my grandson to come up here and have cat fights and just to get in squabbles.”

What? Getting in “squabbles” and engaging in silly political theater is really the only thing that Boebert has done since being elected to Congress in 2020.

Look no further than Boebert’s comments on Tuesday in relation to a Republican effort to censure Democratic Rep. Adam Schiff. That motion succeeded in passing, but also in making Schiff into something of a hero for Democrats. 

Boebert: If Adam Schiff has a shred of human decency left he would resign from congress in disgrace. pic.twitter.com/S5ryvJcpVc

— Acyn (@Acyn) June 21, 2023

Boebert’s explanation for why she supported the Schiff censure made about as much sense as anything else she sais this week:

“I told the American people that he had to prove — he, that he had proof, that Trump, the Trump campaign, asking, uh, the Russians for help in a conspiracy.”

Cool story, Lauren. 

Which Way is Down?

We’ve discussed at length about how Boebert is not learning any lessons from her narrow re-election victory in 2022, but her insistence on pursuing political theater above any sort of real governing is not an isolated problem in the Republican caucus. 

Let’s go back to Dana Milbank of The Washington Post:

Boebert’s stunt, along with a general Republican thirst for vengeance after an independent prosecutor secured a 37-count indictment against Donald Trump, has opened the impeachment floodgates. Greene and others can now be expected to play with their new toy, using the privileged-resolution maneuver to force impeachment votes against whatever Biden administration official looks at them crossways on any given day. Greene alone has introduced impeachment articles against Biden, the attorney general, the FBI director, the secretary of Homeland Security and the U.S. attorney in Washington. On Thursday, Greene and GOP conference chair Elise Stefanik (N.Y.) introduced resolutions to “expunge” Trump’s two impeachments…

Exit polls in the midterms showed voters cared most about inflation and abortion, followed by guns, crime and immigration. Yet the House majority just passed a bill to expand access to a common mass-shooting weapon and is now moving tax cuts that would aggravate inflation.

There’s talk that House Republicans next month will take up bills further restricting abortion access — that is, if they can find time between impeachment votes.

Again, none of these actions will help Republicans attract the support of non-MAGA voters in 2024. But they just can’t help themselves, and Boebert’s actions this week will only force the GOP further in the wrong direction as the election season heats up.

As for Boebert, this line from MSNBC on Thursday is an accurate understatement:

The Colorado Republican wasn’t well positioned on Capitol Hill before this week, and given today’s developments, she’s in slightly worse shape now.

When you only win re-election by 546 votes and begin the 2024 election cycle in a dead heat with that same opponent (Democrat Adam Frisch), you really can’t afford to find yourself in any worse shape than you were already. Boebert is slowly, but surely, running out of time to figure this out.