On this date one year ago today, “Crazy/Stupid Republican of the Day” published its first profile of the U.S. House Representative from Indiana’s 3rd Congressional District, Jim Banks, who was first elected back in 2016, when we entered the darkest timeline. Prior to that, he entered the political arena in the Tea Party Wave back in 2010, served six years in the Indiana State Senate, and in his time in Hoosier State politics, he voted against the Medicaid Expansion, co-sponsored a bill to drug test welfare recipients, another bill to defund Planned Parenthood in Indiana, and helped pass an anti-choice bill extreme enough that it required women to bury or cremate fetal remains that was quickly overturned by the courts. He is also a tool of ALEC, having been their errand boy to bring forth right-to-work legislation.
Indiana’s 3rd Congressional District has a +18 Republican lean in the Cook Partisan Voting Index, tied for the most conservative district in what is a decidedly red state. That helped Jim Banks coast to victory in the 2020 elections with 68% of the vote. He has continued to prove himself an extremist in votes for the past two years:
- December 18th, 2019: Banks ignores his Congressional duty to hold a president who has been proven to commit high crimes and misdemeanors accountable and votes against the first impeachment of Donald Trump.
- January 10th, 2020: Shortly after Congresswoman Ilhan Omar mentions in an interview that she still has PTSD from her time as a child refugee from Somalia… Jim Banks comes along to minimize her suffering, and try to pretend that she’s not being honest about her condition, and that her remarks were “offensive to our nation’s veterans”.
- May 15th, 2020: Banks votes against the HEROES Act, to further support the healthcare industry and citizens affected by the Covid-19 pandemic.
- December 10th, 2020: Banks signs his name to an amicus brief to the Supreme Court, begging them to overturn the results of the 2020 election. The same election that he won re-election in.
- January 6th, 2021: Jim Banks votes for the objection to the electoral college’s votes in the 2020 election, a failure to send any sort of message that he wasn’t intimidated or sympathetic to those who attacked the Capitol to attempt a violent coup.
- January 13th, 2021: Rep. Banks votes against the second impeachment of Donald Trump, because the Republican Party no longer feels like they should be accountable for anything, including failed coups that result in the deaths of both their participants and police officers.
- February 4th, 2021: Jim Banks votes to keep Marjorie Taylor Greene’s committee assignments, because he wouldn’t want her to be accountable for all the bigoted reJims and conspiracy theories she’s spread online (probably because she’s a kindred spirit).
- February 25th, 2021: Banks votes against HR 5, the latest version of the Equality Act, that would provide workplace protections for LGBTQ Americans.
- March 3rd, 2021: Rep. Banks votes against HR 1, a bill created to prevent the corruption of money in politics, and protect voter access to the ballot box.
- March 3rd, 2021: Jim Banks votes against the George Floyd Justice in Policing Act of 2021.
- March 10th, 2021: Banks votes against the American Rescue Plan Act of 2021, because he feels people deserve to die in poverty during a pandemic.
- March 17th, 2021: Rep. Banks votes against the re-authorization of the Violence Against Women Act, likely because they feel the 2nd Amendment remaining absolute is more important than preventing people with a history of domestic abuse from owning a firearm (which statistics show, makes them more likely to use those firearms against women in their lives).
- May 19th, 2021: Jim Banks votes against HR 3233, the creation of a commission to investigate the Capitol Attack.
- May 20th, 2021: Banks is one of 63 Republicans who vote against the Covid-19 Hate Crimes Act.
As late as May 9th, Jim Banks was still on Fox News and questioning whether or not Joe Biden legitimately won the 2020 election (BIDEN F***ING DID) and defending his decision to vote against certifying the election results. That probably had a lot to do with why House Minority Leader and craven s***heel Kevin McCarthy appointed Banks to be on the commission to investigate the January 6th attack on the Capitol that is equivalent to naming the Riddler to be on a select panel to investigate rising crime rates in Gotham City, and why he was summarily rejected by Nancy Pelosi like Giannis Antetokounmpo swatting away a layup.
Jim Banks is still licking his wounds over that, and will likely be fundraising on his “victimhood” that he’s not allowed so sabotage any investigation into 1/6 from within as he goes on conservative media venues to try and claim that somehow, the lack of security was Pelosi’s fault (even through the Capitol Police are not under her command).