On this date in 2015, “Fanatical Republican Extremist of the Day” profiled Randy Brogdon, a conservative extremist who actually once challenged Oklahoma Governor Mary Fallin by trying to run to her right, based on his record of voting for things like allowing medical staff to refuse to treat a patient seeking an abortion for any reason, even if their life is in danger, based on their spiritual beliefs, supporting stricter Voter ID laws to combat the statistically non-existent problem of in-person voter fraud, pushing for “Stand Your Ground” firearms laws, and trying to take the unconstitutional step of making English the official language of the Sooner State. All of that seems to get overlooked because of the fact that Brogdon was also a complete loon who would attend events based around nullifying federal law, and that he believed in conspiracy theories like NAFTA leading to an eventual North American Union. Before he faded from relevance, Brogdon also began to call for Oklahoma to form its own state militia to protect its sovereignity from the federal government, and in a terribly racist moment later, asked the Black Caucus of the Oklahoma state legislature if the Affordable Care Act would also cover the cost of meals of fried chicken they might eat. He never apologized for that. Brogdon challenged Mary Fallin for the second time in the 2014 elections, and failed to crack even 5% of the vote. He has not run for office since.
It was in 2016, 2017, 2018, 2019, 2020, and in 2021, that “Fanatical Republican Extremist of the Day” profiled the sitting U.S. House Representative for Georgia’s 11th Congressional District, Barry Loudermilk, who after serving in the Georgia state legislature for about eight years, defeated a clown car full of several Republicans in the primary for his seat in the 2014 elections to replace Congressman Phil Gingrey. Before Loudermilk was even sworn in to serve in the House, he was hanging out with the Family Research Council on their program as well, being interviewed by the running joke about hypocrisy that is Josh Duggar, where Loudermilk lamented the suffering he and his fellow Christians have had to endure as “the left in America have so badly damaged the holiday of Christmas”.Loudermilk was quickly hot-shotted to be the GOP’s new head of the House Science, Space, and Technology Committee after being sworn in. and became the latest in a list of Republicans who seemed like they were given the job ironically when at his first town hall, Rep. Loudermilk was asked by a constituent if vaccines are linked to autism and he began boasting that he hadn’t vaccinated his children. After this unprecedented gaffe, there were even Republican strategists calling for Loudermilk’s resignation. This was in his SECOND MONTH on the job.
The crazy part, though, is that isn’t even the weirdest exchange from the town hall. Oh, no. Because for whatever reason, Loudermilk started discussing immigration with another constituent, who suggested the United States should “learn something from Afghanistan and start putting IUDs in the ground”. Now, that’s a weird idea for two reasons… the first being that she probably didn’t mean IUDs, which are a form of birth control, but probably meant IEDs, or “improvised explosive devices”. That seemed to be how Loudermilk interpreted her suggestion, to which he only objected because AMERICANS might get hurt. Any Mexican children that might find one of these rigged charges? Serves ‘em right for sniffing a chunk of real estate in the land of the free, man! But in that disastrous town hall, Loudermilk clearly wasn’t misspeaking when he voiced his fears that the Muslim Brotherhood has infiltrated the American government enough that they have gained access to the White House. He went on to elaborate and say that the Republican caucus of the House looked at ways to arrest Attorney General Eric Holder, before insinuating that the Council on American-Islamic Relations was a Muslim Brotherhood offshoot.
In March 2016, right on the heels of the terror attacks in Brussels, Loudermilk spoke before the House and explained what the real problem in winning the war on terror was… “political correctness”, which he felt was somehow the cause of the deaths of Americans, because we are too afraid to hurt the feelings of terrorists. At Loudermilk’s next town hall in July of 2015, he responded to the news of the massacre at the Emanuel AME Church, and how as a result, the South Carolina state legislature had voted to take down the Confederate flag in their state capitol. Well, apparently David Barton’s tendency to re-write false histories is contagious, and Barry Loudermilk has also caught that disease. You see, as Loudermilk explained, he thought the shooting was motivated by anti-Christian hate (and not racism, like Dylann Roof actually was). Instead, Loudermilk pivoted the talk to being about gay marriage, comparing it to slavery by saying, “Hey, it was the Supreme Court’s opinion that Dred Scott and slavery was okay, did they get that right?” While his voting record might not stretch on that long, Loudermilk has already voted to defund the Department of Homeland Security over President Obama’s delayed deportation orders on immigration, voted to try and defund Planned Parenthood based on the “sting” videos provided by the Center for Medical Progress, voted to try and block Syrian refugees from being resettled in the United States by supporting the SAFE Act and enjoys hanging out with anti-Islamic lunatic Frank Gaffney on his radio show to fearmonger about Muslim refugees.
Only days before Christmas of 2019, Lourdermilk claimed that the treatment Democrats were giving Donald Trump during his first impeachment trial was worse than Pontius Pilate treated Jesus. Last time we checked, nobody sized up the dumbass-in-chief for any crowns of thorns or anything, so this would be not just inappropriate, but very ill-timed hyperbole.
But he was in the tank for Donald Trump enough that even as late in the administration as December of 2020, he was shouting it out to the mountains that he wanted Evangelical "historian" David Barton to chair Trump’s “1776 Commission” that was their white nationalist response to the 1619 Project. Because why not put a proven liar and fraud out there to whitewash history in the most racist sense of the term?