Rep. Chris Jacobs (R-NY), a career politician but newcomer to Congress (see profile here), looks like a smart guy. Scion of a wealthy Buffalo family that made a fortune in food service, he has undergraduate, master’s, and law degrees.
After the mass murder at a Buffalo grocery story by an 18-year-old racist armed with an AR-15, Rep. Jacobs said he’d vote for banning assault weapons.
His political career is done.
Jacobs is abandoning his reelection bid “after intense backlash from his own party, including from local party leaders who pulled their support,” Huffington Post reported on Friday, June 3, 2022 (read story here).
The Republican Party categorically opposes any gun regulation whatsoever, no matter how many innocent people get slaughtered as a result of easy access to lethal weapons designed for war. You can’t vote for a single gun bill and survive in Republican politics, as Jacobs just found out, which puts smart people who get elected as Republicans in the position of having to cast stupid and sometimes downright awful votes.
Pretty much the same was true of certifying the 2020 election and impeaching Trump. Privately, many Republican members of Congress deplore Trump and his followers. But the vast majority of them voted against certifying the election, and most voted against impeaching him for inciting insurrection, because they’re scared of his voters (Jacobs was among them, see article here).
They’re in the position of having to choose between their careers or voting as the mob dictates. The cowards survive, the brave get driven out.
Jacobs, who previously had the NRA’s endorsement, said, “Being a father and having young children and visualizing what those parents are going through and, I guess, being able to feel it more personally” changed his views. It hasn’t changed the GOP’s stance.
Just another reason why you can’t vote for Republicans. Even those with impressive credentials, and who may mean well, are captive to the collective stupidity and venality of the Republican mobs. Nothing good can come from them, because if they try to do good, they’re toast in their own party.
Photo above: Rep. Chris Jacobs, chastized victim of trying to be a Republican with sense