April 13, 2022
Andrew Clyde
For the first time in the modern era, the coveted Conservative Barf Bag Award is being given to one barf bag for a second time. While the cesspool of candidates is vast and deep, Andrew Clyde, Republican Representative to the national house, floated to the top with distinction achieving new levels of barf-bagginess. Recall Clyde characterize the Republican rioters on January 6 as “a normal tourist visit.” (See the picture below of him preparing to greet the tourists
From the NY Times:
In a bitterly divided Congress, it was a rare measure that had been expected to sail through without a fight. A bill to name a federal courthouse in Tallahassee, Fla., after Justice Joseph W. Hatchett, the first Black man to serve on the Florida Supreme Court — sponsored by the state's two Republican senators and backed unanimously by its 27 House members — was set to pass the House last month and become law with broad bipartisan support.
But in a last-minute flurry, Republicans abruptly pulled their backing with no explanation and ultimately killed the measure, leaving its fate unclear, many of its champions livid and some of its newfound opponents professing ignorance about what had happened.
Asked what made him vote against a measure that he had co-sponsored, Rep. Vern Buchanan, R-Fla., was brief and blunt.
"I don't know," he said.
The real answer is as much an allegory about the state of House Republicans in 2022 as it is about a federal building in Florida. With little notice and nothing more than a 23-year-old news clipping, a rightwing, first-term congressman mounted an 11th-hour effort on the House floor to convince his colleagues that Hatchett, a trailblazing judge who broke barriers as the first Black State Supreme Court justice south of the Mason-Dixon Line, was undeserving of being honored.
(That congressman is Andrew Clyde and the clipping reported Hatchett prohibiting school led prayers.)
[Clyde] voted against a resolution to give the Congressional Gold Medal to police officers who responded that day. He also opposed the Emmett Till Anti-Lynching Act, which made lynching a federal hate crime and explicitly outlawed an act that was symbolic of the country's history of racial violence. Clyde also voted against recognizing Juneteenth as a federal holiday.
The naming of federal buildings is among the more mundane tasks that Congress undertakes, and it is usually a consensus matter. But Clyde's late objection turned the routine ritual into a conservative litmus test for Republicans, who quickly joined him in turning against Hatchett.
The bill failed on a 238-187 vote, falling short of the two-thirds threshold, with 89% of Republicans opposed.
End quote
Here is a picture of Rep. Clyde (left) on January 6 anticipating the arrival of normal tourists:
Never ever underestimate the malignance of conservatives.