Lauren Boebert between Matt Gaetz (left) and Andy Harris during the 15th round of speaker voting on January 7, 2023
Image: Reuters
Lauren Boebert has become the icon of Trump supporters who opposed McCarthy’s election as Speaker of the House of Representatives. Even if her CV shows oblique misconduct. Or just for this? A guest post.
zAmong the insurgents particularly hardline in their opposition to the election of Kevin McCarthy as Republican speaker of the House of Representatives is Lauren Boebert, who has represented Colorado’s 3rd district in Washington since 2021. The official congressional photo shows the 36-year-old with loose hair and the dazzling smile of a good businesswoman who wants to make something happen. Elsewhere, the far-right poster girl likes to be photographed with a holstered pistol and heavy weapons.
In the latest act of self-abolition of US democracy, Boebert brought the revolt that Boebert had staged during his election campaigns and as an ardent supporter of Donald Trump right to the center of the House of Representatives, which has always been described as “venerable”. He viciously insulted the candidate for speaker, from whom he doesn’t differ much ideologically – except that he takes Trump’s promise to drain Washington’s “swamp” seriously and wants to send the establishment, including McCarthy, into the trash heap of history. Here a revolution that began in the mid-1990s with protagonists such as Newt Gingrich, Pat Buchanan and the “tax thief” Grover Norquist is eating its children; the storming of the Capitol in January 2021 and the rebellion moved to the Vault exactly two years later suggest that he may be an American Thermidor.
