Are conservative women on Capitol Hill victims of identity politics?
It appears that way to Florida Congressman Matt Gaetz, who appeared Sunday on Fox News’ “Real America’s Voice” defending freshman Congresswoman Lauren Boebert, the Colorado restaurateur-turned-lawmaker with a pro-gun reputation.
“Republican women in Congress get it way worse than the men because of the identity politics and they [Democrats] assume that if you’re a mom in regular America, you ought to be with them,” Gaetz observed. “So when they see someone [Boebert] who is a firebrand, who is a spark plug, who is a jolt of energy that we need in the Republican caucus, they come after her specifically.”
Late last month, in a Fox News interview, Boebert said she would not bow to “cancel culture.” She came to Washington, D.C. along with several other conservative Republican women offering a stark contrast to “The Squad,” a group of four far left Democrat women led by New York Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (AOC).
Gaetz offered the impression that Boebert’s presence on Capitol Hill was the reason House Speaker Nancy Pelosi ordered heightened security with metal detectors at each entrance to the House chamber in the wake of the Jan. 6 riot.
"Republican women in Congress get it way worse than the men because of the identity politics and [democrats] assume that if you're a mom in regular America then you ought to be with them."@RepMattGaetz & @laurenboebert discuss democrats' awful treatment of conservative women. pic.twitter.com/slODLtiC3d
— Real America's Voice (RAV) (@RealAmVoice) March 15, 2021
Boebert made a big splash when she came to Congress, declaring she wanted to carry a concealed sidearm for personal safety in the nation’s capital. It immediately made her a target of left-leaning Democrats.
In her February interview, Boebert told Fox News that “cancel culture has always been an issue.”
“This has always been an issue,” she explained, “the ‘I don’t like you, I don’t like what you’re doing, I don’t like the attention that you’re getting, so you shouldn’t be here. You shouldn’t have a voice. You shouldn’t have a movement.’ I am a Christian. I have deep faith… They thought they canceled Jesus, but you can’t cancel God.”
Boebert was something of a national personality prior to running for Congress. As owner of the Shooter’s Grill in Rifle, Colo., her establishment got worldwide attention when she started allowing her employees to carry sidearms on the job. She has repeated a story over the years about a man being beaten to death outside of the restaurant some years ago.
However, CNN reported over the weekend that an attempt to fact-check the story revealed the man apparently died from some drug-related problems, although the liberal news agency did acknowledge, “Boebert did not invent her claim of a beating out of thin air.”
“Though the death was ruled ‘accidental,’ documents provided to CNN by the Rifle Police Department show that it was initially investigated as a potential homicide,” CNN said in its “Fact Check” report. “The documents also say that witnesses told investigating officers that the man who died, who was allegedly found with suspected methamphetamine and drug paraphernalia, had been involved in some sort of physical altercation shortly before he collapsed. The documents say one witness had claimed that the man who died had been ‘beaten up’ and ‘chased’ before running away and falling on his face.”
CNN then stated, “Given the initial existence of a homicide investigation and given the claims from some witnesses about a physical altercation — which we cannot independently corroborate — it’s at least possible that Boebert has had some genuine confusion about why the man died and that the incident did contribute to her decision to carry a gun.”
Boebert is a small woman and she acknowledges she would be no match for a larger, more powerful attacker. Thus, she has carried a pistol for several years.
Conservatives might accuse CNN of bias in its fact-checking, but the network did do a fact check on some things AOC said in the wake of the Jan. 6 demonstration.
