What possible reason would those two fuckwits have for voting against it, I wonder? This Rawstory article has collected some choice twitter comments which slam them and basically say they did it just for the trolling attention. Either that, or it possibly goes against some BS conspiracy theory they subscribe to. Fuck them and fuck their stupidity.
Personal anecdote: when I was in my 20s a girl I was dating knew someone with leukemia, and we were part of a large group of friends and family who submitted to a DNA test to get on the National Registry (the way it works, the chance of a match is so rare it was practically zero that our group would be a direct match for the person with leukemia we were doing it for, so gathering ‘X’ number of potential donors to volunteer to get on the Registry was a requirement for the person with leukemia to be eligible for a Registry match). Unfortunately it did not save his life, but I’m sure it’s saved or extended many many lives of leukemia patients.
5 or so years ago, some 20+ years later, I was contacted as a possible match (it was so long ago they only tested for 5 areas of DNA then, and they needed to test for a 6th, so they mailed me several cheek swabs and I mailed them back). I unfortunately turned out to not be a perfect match.
Being the deciding vote that stops something important is relevant. Being one of a handful of holdouts on an obviously good idea is totally meaningless and we should ignore it. Don’t feed the trolls.
From Newsweek: "In a statement, Rep. Greene’s spokesman Nick Dyer said: “Nothing in this bill prevents the funding of aborted fetal tissue by taxpayers. It opens the door for the NIH to use this bill to research the remains of babies who were murdered in the womb.”
I’d expect Greene to vote against comprehensive highway funding legislation too, since there apparently will be nothing in the bill prohibiting money from going to finance research using aborted fetal tissue.
[Bolding mine] Yes, I agree completely regarding ordinary trolls, and I do ignore trolls on the SDMB (perhaps I should be ignoring this ).
But when the trolls are MEMBERS OF CONGRESS I think it’s worthwhile to point out their malice, incompetence and idiocy, and bring it out into the light of day as much as possible. Ignoring the actions of people in positions of power tacitly condones them.
There’s also the fact that there is no way in which ignoring them here would have the desired effect of getting them to stop. Hence the main reason for DNFTT does not apply.
And, to go along with what you said: In the congressional context, it makes sense to keep track of their bad votes so you can then use it against them politically. Obviously we won’t be able to do much here, but this sort of thing does need to be noted.
Pointing out these two voted against cancer treatment—particularly cancer treatments that is common for children—is a pretty strong argument against them, even among those who don’t care much about other people.
Yeah, I don’t understand how these two thought any publicity would outweigh the negative backlash. They tried to pull a Jeannette Rankin so to speak.
They may get primaried next time, as the GOP seeks to preempt and prevent a Democrat from getting to use those talking points against them in a general election.
I hope it bites them, hard. They have got to have at least a few powerful constituents for whom this is an extremely important and personal issue, right?
I was willing to put money on those two being too dense to understand what the bill was actually about, but geez. So at least one of them really is a fetal fetishist? Never mind how many already-born lives can be saved through the donor program, if it’s not protecting the precious little unborn babies then it’s not really pro-life.
There’s a link in the OP to a news article about them. How many people who opened this thread followed it and gave the reporting website incentives to run more stories about these representatives, which gets them trending on twitter and gets extra news cycles, and so on.
I’d be surprised if either one of them faced a serious primary challenge. Sure, in theory “Main Street” Republicans and party leaders could come together to push a more conventional candidate that would have a better chance in the general election. But that’s just not the way Republican primaries work anymore. The crazies have seized control of local and state parties and couldn’t care less what party “elites” think.
Honestly, they’re probably at more risk from a candidate who’s even more batshit insane than they are from one who’s more moderate.
I expect them to do it to every single bill that may conceivably touch upon medical research or procedures, and does not include a fetal idolatry clause. Just because. Regardless of whether the subject matter does or does not involve any fetal cell line.
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