What a Week for Women in Politics!
Politics
It’s only Wednesday, but it’s already been a banner week for Republican women, especially those who love QAnon, guns, and hitting Black Lives Matter activists with their cars!
On Tuesday night, yet another Congressional candidate endorsed by Donald Trump lost their bid to a toothy far-right political newcomer—this time, it was five-term Colorado Representative Scott Tipton, who lost his primary to political newbie Lauren Boebert, a big fan of what’s quickly becoming the Republican holy trifecta of QAnon, guns, and freedom.
Boebert is a resident (of course) of Rifle, Colorado, where she owns a restaurant called Shooters Grill. To drive her not-so-subtle point about the glory of guns home even further, Boebert proudly has all of her staff at her restaurant carry guns during their shifts. As the website for Shooters Grill states, “We’re armed and ready to feed you.”
Here’s her message to voters, via her website:
PRO-FREEDOM, PRO-GUNS, PRO-CONSTITUTION, PRO-ENERGY, PRO-LIFE, PRO-COLORADO, PRO-AMERICA. HEADING TO CONGRESS TO DRAIN THE SWAMP, STAND UP FOR OUR RIGHTS, AND TELL ALL THE LEFT-WING LUNATICS WE DON’T WANT MORE GOVERNMENT CONTROL, WE WANT OUR FREEDOM!
As the owner of Shooters Grill, Boebert made headlines recently when she bucked her county’s covid-19 shutdown order and kept her restaurant open. “I will not back down!” she wrote in a tweet. Unfortunately, Boebert was forced to back down after her restaurant’s license was suspended. (It has now been reinstated after Boebert agreed to follow county guidelines.)
But it’s her praise of QAnon that has raised the most eyebrows. In an interview with the far-right conspiracy theorist Ann Vandersteel, who once claimed to be on Donald Trump’s advisory board, Boebert had only positive things to say about QAnon.
When Vandersteel asked if she knew of the “Q movement,” Boebert replied, “That’s more my mom’s thing, she’s a little fringe. I just try to keep things on track and positive. I’m very familiar with it though.”
But, she said, “I hope that this is real, because it only means America is getting stronger and better and people are returning to conservative values.” QAnon, she added, “is only motivating and encouraging and bringing people together, stronger, and if this is real, then it could be really great for our country.”
Boebert isn’t the only Republican woman running for Congress who’s a big fan of QAnon—there’s Marjorie Taylor Greene, who has a good chance of winning her runoff election in August for a House seat in Georgia, and Jo Rae Perkins of Oregon, who won the state’s Republican Senate primary in May. Is something in the water? Q is taking over!
Also on Tuesday, a car transporting Iowa’s Republican Governor Kim Reynolds hit a Black Lives Matter protester, a move that the protester, Jaylen Cavil, believes was intentional. Cavil was part of a group of activists protesting Reynolds’s inaction on restoring voting rights to people convicted of felonies in the state. Iowa, it should be noted, is the only state that continues to ban people with felony convictions from voting for life.
More context, from the Des Moines Register:
A group of about two dozen Des Moines Black Lives Matter activists showed up to Reynolds’ public events in Steamboat Rock and Ackley, each about 90 miles from Des Moines, on Tuesday to urge her to immediately sign an executive order restoring voting rights to people with felony convictions who have completed their sentences. Reynolds has said she will sign the order but not immediately.
The activists were not allowed into Reynolds’ events, which were held on private property, so a group of them stood in the driveway of Family Traditions Meat in Ackley to block Reynolds from driving away.
Cavil said he stood in the driveway because he wanted to speak with Reynolds. “The SUV that Gov. Reynolds was driving in drove right up to me. I was standing right in front of the car and I just stood there. I was like, ‘I’m going to stand here. Surely the driver of the governor is not going to hit me with her car. This is the governor, my governor, who’s supposed to be representing me,” Cavil told the Des Moines Register. “I’m sure that her car is not going to intentionally hit me. I was wrong.”
According to Cavil, the car, which was being driven by a member of the Iowa State Patrol, “stopped in front of him for a second and then accelerated. “I 100 percent think they intentionally hit me,” he said to the Register. “There’s no way that this driver could not see me right in front of his car.” As he recounted, he wasn’t injured, but “it was shocking when the vehicle hit him” and “the impact spun him around and lifted him slightly onto the hood of the vehicle.”
Cavil also promised that he and other activists will continue to birddog Reynolds, so this may not be the last time the governor and her driver decide to use their vehicle to bulldoze their way out of a conversation Reynolds is too chickenshit to have.
“We just want answers. That’s why we’re following her around. We want her to know that we are not going to stay silent,” Cavil said.