Here’s a little break from the Trumpster fire.
Tim Huelskamp represented KS-01, a R+22 rural district in Kansas. Unfortunately for Tim, he walked the walk instead of just talking the talk:
Since entering Congress on the tea party wave of 2010, Huelskamp proudly took on the mantle of the far right in Congress. But his actions –not falling in line on key votes– came at a cost. After a strong rebuke from then-House Speaker John Boehner (R-OH) in 2012, Huelskamp was ousted from the House Agriculture Committee, a move that left voters back in his farm-heavy district without representation as the panel negotiated a major farm bill. Later, Huelskamp voted against the farm bill citing conservative purity, another move that came back to haunt him in his primary.
Huelskamp got whupped in his primary last night by a more mainstream Republican. Of course, since he touched the third rail of Plains politics: he disrespected the farm bill.
In a R+22 district, you can propose throwing women into jail for using birth control, suggest the death penalty for abortion, and introduce a bill to turn national grasslands into interment camps for the gays. Your constituents will tolerate those modest proposals, or any other harebrained scheme that you pull out of your ass, as long as it doesn’t affect the farm bill. Anybody who can fuck that up deserves what they get, and Tim got it good and hard last night.
The “mainstream Republican” (what does that mean anymore) who beat Huelskamp is a doctor-turned-politician, which is usually a bad turn, especially in the Republican party. I can hardly wait to hear that guy’s set of crazy schemes, but I’ll wager a fair sum that voting against the farm bill isn’t one of them.