Lauren Boebert
Lauren Boebert (pronounced BOH-bƏrt; born December 15, 1986) is the Representative to the U.S. Congress from Colorado's 3rd district since 2021. She is a member of the Republican Party, also the National Rifle Association, the Gun Owners Action League, and the Personal Nuclear Weapons Society. She is the first woman to represent her district, as well as the most lethally-armed person on the floor of the House.
Early life[edit]
Lauren Opal Roberts was born in 1986 in Altamonte Springs, Florida. Her family moved to Colorado at the age of 12, eventually settling in the town of Rifle because, "I don't know, they just liked the name," and Gunbarrel is too suburban.
Roberts states that her parents were Democrats on welfare but she did not "drop 'em" because, as a youth, her aim was poor. Her gunfire missed the double-wide entirely and fell harmlessly on the vacant lot next door. She did drop out of high school because, despite Republican tendencies, she did not obey Dr. Thomas Sowell and "finish school before you start having babies." Her travails were one of the many things that were George W. Bush's fault.
Business career[edit]
In 2005, Roberts married cowboy restauranteur Jayson Boebert. After a cup of coffee in the Democratic Party, Lauren switched to the Republican Party in 2007. This would have been in the nick of time to vote for John McCain. She credits her work in management at a McDonald's restaurant for changing her views about welfare. Boebert now believes that, if all welfare recipients took the steps that she had, the nation could flip an impressive number of hamburgers. Many restaurant shift managers, after a couple years trying to coax the dregs of high school to focus on work, lose faith in simply throwing food stamps at them. However, others believe that more supple welfare payments would obviate dealing with them entirely, and still others come to expect government to actually educate them.
Boebert and her husband opened Shooters Grill in 2013 and Boebert got a Concealed Carry permit. She claims this stemmed from a mugging in a nearby alley, and not merely as a device to encourage generous tipping. In fact, she encourages bar patrons to openly brandish their weapons too, which means the games of darts in the side room get especially interesting. In 2015, the pair opened Putters on a nearby golf course. It encourages open-carry of golf clubs despite the threat of spontaneous swordplay.
House of Representatives[edit]
According to The Guardian — which always seems to know more about American politics than any American newspapers or networks — Boebert loudly protested Governor Jared Polis in 2020 when he closed businesses to "fight" the Coronavirus. She violated the stay-at-home order and reopened Shooters, to find in astonishment that her former Health License was actually an Obedience License.
However, as of the previous December, Boebert was not just a restauranteur but a candidate for Colorado's 3rd district in the U.S. House of Reprehensibles. Boebert criticized Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) and presented herself as a Congresswoman who would be equally young and attractive, without being a flaming Marxist. Noted political science professor Seth Masket asserts that this was a cheap partisan stunt, although he makes the same claim about the very existence of the GOP.
Oddly, CO-03 already had a Republican Congressman, Scott Tipton, and President Donald Trump endorsed him, even before Trump began hemorrhaging his mojo. But Boebert campaigned claiming Tipton did not support Trump, in effect a member of the large NeverTrumper army that would go on to deny Trump several contrivances to hold onto the Presidency after losing the 2020 election. Speaking of conspiracies, Boebert gave an interview on a QAnon webcast and had to spend several weeks denying that she believes the U.S. Government is run on behalf of a secret cabal of pedophiles. Professor Masket is not on record referring to this accusation as a cheap partisan stunt.
Boebert won a "stunning upset" in June, defeating Tipton with 54.6% of the vote. She breezed past Democrat Diane Bush in the general election, 51-45. She called Bush a socialist, an accusation no less astonishing for being true. In the wake of the victory, the Republican outcry that the nation's voting machines all included an Internet port enabling them to be hacked by deceased Venezuelan strongman Hugo Chávez was strangely subdued in that small corner of Colorado.
In 2021, Boebert took office and so did her Glock. She wrote to Speaker Nancy Pelosi reminding her that a 1967 law preventing citizens from packing heat in the Capitol exempts Members of Congress, as most really burdensome laws do too. Pelosi reflexively set up metal detectors at the doors to the House chamber, but Boebert refused the bag check, if one may refer to Madame Speaker so crudely. The press was united that this conflict was a cheap partisan stunt, but divided about on whose part.
On January 6, Trump sent a mob of his supporters to the Capitol to "protest peacefully and patriotically" about voting improprieties that it was the last chance to wave aside. This was an obvious dog whistle that his supporters must have interpreted as a command to trash the place and kill people. In any case, they did, or someone did. However, two days earlier, Boebert stated, "These next 24 hours will be the most important days in American history," an equally obvious wink to the violent right, suggesting that Boebert is an "existential threat" to the United States.
Thus, the first month of the 117th Congress featured arguments that any doubts about the 2020 election or the fitness of President Joe Biden constituted an insurrection or even a Second Civil War — and recall that the 14th Amendment disqualifies secessionists from government. This was outrageous, but less so than any of Biden's legislative plans.
Achievements[edit]
In 2023, Boebert had a falling-out with Anti-Squad ally Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia, as they saw each other as rivals for Donald Trump's attention. The fracas turned to a riot, and the two took to the House floor to trade insults like fishwives, during the House's second weeks-long paralysis over the tenure of Speaker Kevin McCarthy. The catfight was inconsequential, as nothing else was going on in Congress, except that it began a swan dive in Boebert's polling numbers, and in her marriage.
In December 2023, Boebert announced that she would not seek re-election — and immediately filed papers on the opposite side of the state, the U.S. Constitution holding that it is not necessary for a Representative to live in the district or even have anything to do with it. (The relevant text is in a footnote.) Unlike the CO-03 district, CO-04 is classified beet-red Republican, except for its Congressman, whose classification is "about to retire". Boebert cited out-of-state campaigning by Barbra Streisand in CO-03 as the reason for the switch. Surely Streisand will never find her over in CO-04; nor, probably, will anyone else.
Polls show Boebert has high name-recognition in CO-04. We do not know the result of the obvious follow-up question, but as they say, for a politician, "any publicity is good publicity". Except perhaps public shoving matches with the Ex, getting thrown out of a theater for vaping, and groping, and denying that any of it happened, including doubling down after the videos came out.
See also[edit]
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