I’ve known Ken Buck for more than a decade, and I would never call him a liar. But when he insists that he is not trying to, uh, jam up the House GOP in general and Lauren Boebert in particular, I keep looking for the wink.
Because whatever he says, winkingly or otherwise, Buck knows his stunning decision to resign his seat next week — instead of finishing his fifth and already-announced final term — has made the leadership crisis in the barely-GOP-controlled House even more desperate while making Boebert’s frequently unhinged life even less hinged.
And if accomplishing all that doesn’t make Buck happy, it should. He deserves as much.
Because it’s the House Republicans, personified by Boebert as much as by anyone else, who have made his life so miserable. That can happen when you stand up to tell the world your party is wasting everyone’s time by trying to impeach Joe Biden without even a shred of evidence.
You don’t have to believe me. All you have to do is believe Buck, who told CNN’s Dana Bash that this has been “the worst year of the nine years and three months that I’ve been in Congress.”
He didn’t stop there, though. Buck raised the stakes, noting that with all the “bickering and nonsense,” it has probably been the “worst year in 40, 50 years to be in Congress.”
It’s no secret why it has been such a bad year, comparable in Buck’s mind to, say, 50 years ago when Richard Nixon, facing impeachment, was forced to resign.
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Let’s be clear on this. Buck isn’t blaming Democrats, although he is careful to say that voters are unhappy with both Biden and Trump. As a diehard conservative and long a member in good standing of the Freedom Caucus — whose voting record is consistently to the right — Buck is leaving because he can apparently no longer stomach the recklessness of his own caucus.
Buck chose to leave, he has said repeatedly, because of the Republicans who run the House, because of those who won’t give up on the Big Lie, because of those who pursue phony-baloney impeachments/prosecutions, because of those who call the criminals who assaulted the Capitol “patriots,” because of those members who are so in thrall to Donald Trump that they can’t be bothered to legislate.
For House Republicans, Buck’s resignation reduces the margin of error to pass legislation to only two votes, which would be a tough bar for any leader this side of Nancy Pelosi to clear. But it’s obviously far too daunting for Speaker-for-now Mike Johnson, who has spent his brief time in office toggling somewhere between political paralysis and political malfeasance.
And in case the speaker missed the message, Buck didn’t even do Johnson the courtesy of saying goodbye.
It sounds like Buck is holding a grudge. Or maybe Buck was just feeling guilty about his key role in the embarrassing process that led to Johnson’s selection as speaker. I mean, he voted for Johnson in the end.
And as for Boebert, I don’t know if she was a direct target of Buck’s — although my guess is she was — but certainly she was a secondary target or, at minimum, collateral damage. Virtually every complaint Buck has made about House Republicans could apply directly to Boebert.
To review, by resigning now, Buck has forced a special election in the 4th Congressional District to replace him. That election will be on the same ballot as the June 25th Republican primary. And as you may have heard, carpetbagging Boebert has joined the 4th CD primary while abandoning her 3rd CD constituents, who seemed poised to unseat her.
The person who wins the 4th CD special election — the nominees are appointed by a vacancy committee composed of party insiders — would be sworn in by the U.S. House as soon as possible after the vote.
Meanwhile, the person who wins the Republican primary would run against the Democratic nominee in November. Any Republican would be strongly favored to win in the heavily Republican 4th CD.
Do you think voters will be confused as to which race is which and who gets to serve when?
Will voters know that they could vote for the same person for both jobs?
I’m pretty sure if I lived in the 4th CD, which doesn’t seem likely, I would be confused.
But I do know that if Boebert had been nominated in the special election, she would have had to immediately resign her 3rd CD job in order to accept the 4th CD job, thereby necessitating a 3rd CD special election.
I told you it was confusing.
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To no one’s surprise, though, Boebert has tried to simplify matters by calling the whole thing a conspiracy of the so-called “uniparty.” If you’ve never heard of the uniparty — and few people outside of MAGA World have — it is supposedly composed of Republicans who vote with Democrats on such arcane matters as funding the government.
In other words, those are people Boebert likes to call swamp creatures, who, she says, “concocted a swampy backroom deal to try to rig an election I’m winning by 25 points.”
Of course, there would be, uh, rigging involved. I guess, if it’s just a House primary race, then to call it a pre-rigging would be just a Little Lie. By the way, does anyone want to give me 25 points in Boebert’s run against the 4th CD field?
Buck, who says he has stayed out of the race to succeed him, calls Boebert’s charge of election interference “ridiculous,” which is usually a safe bet when Boebert is the one doing the accusing.
But Buck’s explanation for why he’s resigning now is also a little confusing. He says he’s leaving office to pursue a higher purpose — to be in the mix in facilitating better candidates, not only for the presidency, but up and down the ticket. He isn’t saying, however, how he might go about that or if, as rumored, he might join forces with billionaire political reformer Kent Thiry.
What Buck does say, in the same breath, is that he first needs to take some time off to recover from the rigors of office, which doesn’t exactly explain why he is in such a rush to leave Washington.
Still, you can’t blame him for that.
And if he’s someday smiling to himself when he surveys the chaos that will inevitably follow his departure, you couldn’t blame him for that, either.
Mike Littwin has been a columnist for too many years to count. He has covered Dr. J, four presidential inaugurations, six national conventions and countless brain-numbing speeches in the New Hampshire and Iowa snow. Sign up for Mike’s newsletter.
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