United States Congress

[GreyhoundFan]

14 minutes ago, onekidanddone said:

Go away Barbra. Just go!  I wish Loudoun County luck.  I never get how people split their vote when it comes to presidential elections. You mean to tell me people voted against Agent but for this twit?  Really? I just don't understand people.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/virginia-politics/democrats-clamor-to-take-on-rep-comstock-in-northern-virginia/2017/04/05/a67d40da-132e-11e7-9e4f-09aa75d3ec57_story.html?hpid=hp_local-news_vacomstock-650pm%3Ahomepage%2Fstory&utm_term=.f4b31afbaae4

She is a real piece of work. I feel the only reason she won is the Dem who ran against her was pretty pathetic. My mom has moved to her district and been contacting her office several times a week. Most of the time, she gets the 'voice mail full' message, but she keeps trying. She's also sent emails and snail mail, expressing her displeasure at Constock. She did get a single form letter back, but it was completely non-committal. Sadly, that district goes way out into some of the deep red areas, so even though Loudoun has a sizable population, she has a leg up.

 

 

11 minutes ago, VixenToast said:

I guess we need to call our republican senators and ask them to vote NO on nuclear option. But like en masse, similar to the weeks preceding the DeVos confirmation vote.

I would encourage it, but it's not likely that any Repubs will vote against it.

 

 

5 minutes ago, onekidanddone said:

I wonder what Bitch McTurtle  would think when (notice I said when not if) the Democrats take back control of the Senate in two years.

He'll go back to being a whiny bitch in the minority. And I will cheer.

 

 

[onekidanddone]

1 minute ago, GreyhoundFan said:

She is a real piece of work. I feel the only reason she won is the Dem who ran against her was pretty pathetic. My mom has moved to her district and been contacting her office several times a week. Most of the time, she gets the 'voice mail full' message, but she keeps trying. She's also sent emails and snail mail, expressing her displeasure at Constock. She did get a single form letter back, but it was completely non-committal. Sadly, that district goes way out into some of the deep red areas, so even though Loudoun has a sizable population, she has a leg up.

 

 

I would encourage it, but it's not likely that any Repubs will vote against it.

My husband's cousin lives in that county.  He hated Agent so much and didn't like Clinton he said he was going to write in Edward Snowden. After the election I was afraid to ask him what he did.  Sometimes avoiding politics is best in families.

[fraurosena]

The Nation has a scathing, scary, and scorching article on the decidedly undemocratic GOP.

 The GOP Has Declared War on Democracy

Quote

Many in the media are portraying the Republicans move to invoke the nuclear option to confirm Neil Gorsuch as a mere squabble over Senate rules, the latest example of hyper-partisanship in Washington that both parties are equally responsible for.

The “both sides do it” narrative is the worst kind of false equivalence. In fact, the GOP’s use of the nuclear option highlights in stark terms the Republican Party’s unique hostility to democracy, which has come to define the party in recent years through efforts like voter suppression, gerrymandering and a stolen Supreme Court seat. (Not to mention Donald Trump’s attacks on the core pillars of democracy – like a fair election, free press and independent judiciary.) [...]

Through challenging the Voting Rights Act, voter-ID laws, cutbacks to early voting, limits on voter registration drives, closing down polling places, purging the voting rolls and disenfranchising ex-offenders, Republicans attempted to manufacture an electorate that was more advantageous to their party. So far this year, 87 bills to restrict access to voting have been introduced in 29 states.[...]

 The pattern is clear – when Republicans don’t like the legislative rules or an outcome of an election, they change the rules or try to nullify the election. The story isn’t that both sides are to blame for hyper-partisanship in Washington. It’s that one party believes in democracy and the other does not.

 

[GreyhoundFan]

I would love to see Hatch go, but have mixed feelings about this: "McConnell Reaches Out to Romney About Possible Senate Bid"

Quote

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell said Friday he has reached out to former Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney about possibly running for the Senate, if a vacancy opens in Utah.

There has been much speculation about whether seven-term Republican Sen. Orrin Hatch will retire instead of running for re-election next year. The 83-year-old Hatch has fueled some of it, saying on Friday that he suggested that McConnell reach out to Romney, the former governor of Massachusetts.

"I'm planning on running, but if I for some reason withdrew, I'd be thrilled if Mitt Romney would be willing to consider it," Hatch said. "He's a big supporter, he and his whole family."

Hatch has been in office since 1977, making him the most senior Republican in the Senate. He chairs the powerful Senate Finance Committee and, as president pro tem of the Senate, is third in line to succeed the president.

McConnell made it clear that he would support Hatch if he wants to run again. And Romney has said he would only run with Hatch's blessing.

...

n reaching out to Romney, Hatch said he is trying to prevent a divisive Utah primary over his successor. In 2010, Hatch's good friend, the late Utah Sen. Robert Bennett, was ousted by tea party favorite Sen. Mike Lee.

"I wouldn't want that to happen again," Hatch said. "If (Romney) ran, I would hope that everybody would get behind him. He'd be excellent."

If Hatch does retire, Rep. Jason Chaffetz, R-Utah, could be in the mix to replace him. Chaffetz raised Hatch's ire in 2012 when he publicly considered challenging Hatch for his seat. Chaffetz ultimately decided to run for re-election for his House seat.

In promoting Romney, Hatch is making it clear whom he would rather replace him.

...

Okay, well, if it was a choice between Romney and Chappass...I'd choose Romney. The only thing I'd vote for Chappass is to be on a boat going to the uncharted desert isle we discuss here on FJ.

[RoseWilder]

Gorsuch has been confirmed. The Republicans changed the senate rules so they could steal a supreme court seat. 

I feel unexpectedly angry about this. I knew it was coming. I knew the Republicans would do this. And yet, I feel a level of anger about this that I'm kind of shocked by. 

I don't understand why I'm shocked at this point when the Republicans in office behave like the sociopaths that they are. They've been doing this for years now, so it's nothing new. And yet it feels so shocking every time. They're not even trying to hide what absolute sociopaths they are. And they just keep getting away with it. I'm losing faith in the basic goodness of humanity. I'm starting to not feel jaded and angry, and I'm starting to think there's a much higher percentage of horrible people in the world than I realized. 

[Audrey2]

8 hours ago, RoseWilder said:

Gorsuch has been confirmed. The Republicans changed the senate rules so they could steal a supreme court seat. 

 

 

What scares me most is that, now that  the rules have been obliterated, there's no going back. There's no more finding a candidate both parties can tolerate. Now, if the Republicans need to replace another seat, they now have the power to pick the most hard right conservative they can find. They've broken our democracy.

 

We need to send even more happy thoughts, and yes, prayers (if you choose) to Ginsberg, because the candidate the Republicans will dig up to fill her seat will make Scalia look ultraliberal. I'm terrified.

8 hours ago, RoseWilder said:

 

 

 

[RoseWilder]

28 minutes ago, Audrey2 said:

What scares me most is that, now that  the rules have been obliterated, there's no going back. There's no more finding a candidate both parties can tolerate. Now, if the Republicans need to replace another seat, they now have the power to pick the most hard right conservative they can find. They've broken our democracy.

 

We need to send even more happy thoughts, and yes, prayers (if you choose) to Ginsberg, because the candidate the Republicans will dig up to fill her seat will make Scalia look ultraliberal. I'm terrified.

 

Me too. It's even more important now than ever that we get control of the senate back in 2018. I'm going to a local Democratic women's meeting today to see what I can do. I live in a district that could potentially be flippable in 2018. 

[Cartmann99]

12 hours ago, RoseWilder said:

I feel unexpectedly angry about this. I knew it was coming. I knew the Republicans would do this. And yet, I feel a level of anger about this that I'm kind of shocked by. 

I understand. I kept thinking about how Garland didn't get to have a confirmation hearing or a vote. Also, how the low information voters will believe that the Democrats were the bad guys in this, after McConnell and company get through talking to the media.

I just wish more people were closely following politics, so that they would know when the bullshit is being shoveled out. 

[candygirl200413]

So last night I went to see Trevor Noah do a comedy show and he mentioned this idea about being able to contact your representatives and having town halls with them and it still left me in awe because even though I knew that I really don't think people realize how much we take that for granted.

Also I was thinking about the days where I didn't watch cspan at least like 3x a week and just got away with watching the nightly news and seeing breaking news tweets. If only everyone that was able to could do this too.

 

[GreyhoundFan]

On 4/8/2017 at 1:45 AM, RoseWilder said:

Gorsuch has been confirmed. The Republicans changed the senate rules so they could steal a supreme court seat. 

I feel unexpectedly angry about this. I knew it was coming. I knew the Republicans would do this. And yet, I feel a level of anger about this that I'm kind of shocked by. 

I don't understand why I'm shocked at this point when the Republicans in office behave like the sociopaths that they are. They've been doing this for years now, so it's nothing new. And yet it feels so shocking every time. They're not even trying to hide what absolute sociopaths they are. And they just keep getting away with it. I'm losing faith in the basic goodness of humanity. I'm starting to not feel jaded and angry, and I'm starting to think there's a much higher percentage of horrible people in the world than I realized. 

I so agree. You put it so well. Every day I am surprised by my surprise at the Repubs' behavior.

[GreyhoundFan]

Oh please, oh please, oh please! I hope Ossoff can prevail: "Republicans begin to fret about holding on to Tom Price’s Georgia seat"

Quote

ATLANTA — Republicans are becoming increasingly concerned about their ability to hang on to former Republican congressman Tom Price’s seat here in a wealthy, suburban district where restive Democratic energy has been surging since November’s election.

Democratic hopes rest on Jon Ossoff, a 30-year-old former congressional staffer and preternaturally on-message candidate. He has raised a whopping $8.3 million for the special election to replace Price in Georgia’s 6th Congressional District — more than anyone has ever collected to win this seat, which has not been represented by a Democrat for nearly four decades.

Ossoff is a first-time candidate who is leading the field of five Democrats and 11 Republicans in the April 18 special election. If he does not receive more than 50 percent of the vote in that race, the top two vote-getters will move on to a runoff on June 20.

The progressive and anti-Trump groups founded through the nonprofit Indivisible project after November’s election are plunging in to help him, and the liberal blog Daily Kos is channeling donors Ossoff’s way. Most of Ossoff’s money, $7.7 million, came though the progressive donation hub ActBlue. Republicans have tried to toxify him by raising the specter of meddling out-of-state liberals — only 6 percent of the money is from Georgia — but Ossoff points to his volunteers.

“The atmosphere in Georgia is electric right now,” Ossoff said in a short interview at his parents’ home. “Thousands of folks, many of whom have never been engaged in politics before, working together to make the statement that we think the country can only become stronger and more prosperous and more secure if we stick to our core values.”

Republicans, however, are fighting back, unwilling to easily cede a district that Trump won by 1.5 percentage points in 2016 — albeit down from the 23.3-point margin enjoyed by 2012 GOP nominee Mitt Romney.

...

 

[GreyhoundFan]

Check out the charts in this article. "The Senate may be developing an electoral college issue"

Quote

Theoretically, a bill or nomination could pass out of the Senate with the support of senators representing only 16.2 percent of the population. If the two senators from the 25 smallest states agreed to support a bill — and Vice President Pence concurred — the senators from the other 25 states and the 270 million people they represent are out of luck. (Residents of D.C., of course, are always out of luck.)

...

It's sad that things aren't more fair. Of course, life isn't fair, is it?

[GreyhoundFan]

Oh, I so hope Thompson can win: "Republicans undertake unexpected rescue mission in deep red Kansas"

Quote

WICHITA — As James Thompson worked his way through a coffee shop, the Democratic candidate for Congress said something that got people to look up from their laptops.

“We’ve got a lead right now.”

“Really?” said Marla Flentje, a Republican who said she’d voted for him in early balloting.

A trio of Democrats walked over to meet Thompson and tell him they’d vote Tuesday.

“I hope you do, because right now, we’re winning,” said Thompson.

Thompson was not supposed to win — or even come close — in this largely rural 4th District, which picked Donald Trump for president by 27 points. Rep. Mike Pompeo (R) vacated the seat to lead the CIA, and Republicans expected to hold it easily.

But in the final days before Tuesday’s special election, Republicans reacted to weak polling and turnout data by rushing resources to southern Kansas. A GOP super PAC rolled out robo-calls over the weekend from Vice President Pence, and on Monday from President Trump, in support of candidate Ron Estes.

“Ron Estes needs your vote and needs it badly,” Trump said on the call. “Ron is going to be helping us, big league.”

On Monday, Republicans also dispatched Sen. Ted Cruz (Tex.) for a fly-in, where he urged Kansans to vote “if you’re fed up with the stagnation under the Obama economy.”

Late Monday, the national House Democratic campaign arm announced that it was calling 25,000 households to counter the GOP influx. Readers of the liberal Daily Kos donated a total of $149,000 to Thompson over the final weekend.

This — the home town of Koch Industries — is the last place the GOP expected to have to undertake a rescue mission. The Kansas seat is one of the reddest of the five House seats vacated in the Trump era, four of them by Republicans who joined the new administration. If Thompson ends up winning here, the national Democratic Party will claim the victory as a portent of bad things to come for Republicans in the 2018 midterms with Trump in the White House.

...

In Kansas, Thompson, a civil rights lawyer who supported Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) in the 2016 presidential caucuses, flew under the radar for weeks. Meanwhile, Estes, the state treasurer, got bogged down as his party staged an unsuccessful rebellion against deeply unpopular Gov. Sam Brownback (R). Estes rarely mentions Trump, but he did reference “fair trade” at the Cruz rally, smoothing over an issue that divides Kansans.

As the race has tightened, Republicans, who are still favored to win Tuesday, have strained to make the election a referendum on liberalism. Brownback, invisible on the trail, didn’t help matters by vetoing a bipartisan Medicaid expansion bill last month; his most favorable polling puts his job-approval rating below 25 percent, even in the 4th District.

In November, as Republicans were scoring upsets around the country, they lost three state House seats in the Wichita area. Several more-conservative Republicans lost primaries to moderate candidates.

“People here still like Trump,” said Thompson, whose campaign signs identify him not as a Democrat but as an Army veteran. “It’s not been a referendum on him. It’s a referendum on the failed Republican leadership in the state. People don’t want these policies taken to the national level.”

In Wichita, where turnout in early voting has been high, Brownback’s name has the force of an epithet. As she settled in for lunch at the Anchor, a downtown gastropub where Thompson stopped to shake hands, Kayla Marshall said she didn’t vote in the 2016 election. She would, she said, vote for Thompson — and to explain why, she talked about teachers buying pencils with their own money because Brownback had cut the education budget.

...

I know it's a long-shot, but it would be wonderful to have a Democrat take back that seat.

[GreyhoundFan]

I found this interesting: "Senate Democrats are making bank off President Trump right now"

Quote

In the first few months of President Trump's term, Senate Democrats have opposed him on nearly everything. And many of them are being rewarded handsomely for it by their liberal base.

Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Conn.) announced Tuesday that he raised an eye-popping $3 million from January through March. That's, like, unheard of for a candidate to raise in non-election year, especially a candidate not expected to face a competitive general election. (Hillary Clinton won Connecticut in November by 15 points.) Murphy's campaign says 97 percent of those contributions were $100 or less, a decent indicator that most of the money came from small donors rather than large, outside groups.

Murphy has made himself something of a national figure over the past year by launching a filibuster on gun control after the Orlando massacre. (He's even received some 2020 presidential buzz.) But other Senate Democrats up for reelection in 2018 are also reporting record fundraising numbers for this time of year in their states:

• In Virginia, another national figure — Tim Kaine — raised $2.9 million.
• In Pennsylvania, Robert P. Casey Jr. raised $2.7 million.
• In Wisconsin, Tammy Baldwin raised $2.4 million.
• In Florida, Ben Nelson raised $2 million.
• In North Dakota, one of Democrats' most endangered senators, Heidi Heitkamp, raised a state record $1.6 million for the first quarter of an off-year. (Though Heitkamp is walking a thin line in a state Trump won by more than 35 points: She was just one of three Senate Democrats to vote for Trump's Supreme Court nominee, Neil M. Gorsuch, and she was even once floated as a potential member of his administration.)
• In Indiana, a state Trump won by 19 points, Joe Donnelly raised a state record $1.3 million for this quarter.

These fundraising numbers are huge for any candidate to post at this time, when few people are usually paying attention to politics, much less writing a check for a campaign that's not for another year and a half. They're especially politically resonant at this moment. Senate Democrats' big numbers fit into a larger story we've been watching unfold since Trump was elected: Democrats' base is fired up and active, and they are manifesting themselves in some unexpected ways.

...

The chart that shows how much Ossoff has raised in GA is amazing.

[fraurosena]

Hey guys, is there any news on the elections in Kansas yet? Or isn't that being reported on (yet) ?

[candygirl200413]

@fraurosena so The republican won but it was extremely close, 51-49, which is crazy for a highly red district. The resistance journey is incredible!

[fraurosena]

32 minutes ago, candygirl200413 said:

@fraurosena so The republican won but it was extremely close, 51-49, which is crazy for a highly red district. The resistance journey is incredible!

Damn. Twiddling my thumbs and keeping my fingers crossed only served to hurt my hands then... sigh.

(Btw, thumb twiddling is the Dutch equivalent of crossing ones fingers, and not what the expression means in English )

[GreyhoundFan]

8 hours ago, fraurosena said:

Damn. Twiddling my thumbs and keeping my fingers crossed only served to hurt my hands then... sigh.

(Btw, thumb twiddling is the Dutch equivalent of crossing ones fingers, and not what the expression means in English )

Twiddling your thumbs usually means you're bored or idle here in the US. If your thumbs aren't busy working, they have time to twiddle. It's interesting that it means something very different in Dutch! I know have my fingers and toes crossed for next week's election in Georgia. I so hope Ossoff can win.

Here's a good analysis why the Repubs aren't as excited as they would normally be about their win in Kansas.

 

[RoseWilder]

11 hours ago, candygirl200413 said:

@fraurosena so The republican won but it was extremely close, 51-49, which is crazy for a highly red district. The resistance journey is incredible!

From what I understand, the Democrats (The DNC, fellow Democrats in office) didn't help the Democratic candidate at all in this election. If they had helped him, he might have won. I'm pissed off right now that this opportunity was wasted. 

[candygirl200413]

@RoseWilder I originally had a similar thought but the more research I did they didn't think it'd be worth it because it's still such a highly red area and might've hurt Thompson rather than help. If it was an area that could be swung blue than they would have definitely put in more money.

 

[GreyhoundFan]

"Tim Kaine is back at his old Senate job. It’s never seemed more important."

Quote

...

“Sometimes it seems like a dream, like it didn’t really happen,” he says now, talking about the prayer meeting while eating lunch in rural northwestern Virginia. There is wood paneling on the cafe’s walls, and a lunch crowd of men in jeans and T-shirts. The proprietor had recommended the Big Jake burger, so Kaine, 59, has a half-finished one on his plate, and now he starts to laugh. “Sometimes I wake up and think this isn’t happening.”

“This,” of course, is this: Russia, hacking, leaking, tapping, Obamacare repeals that keep rising from the dead like fiscally conservative zombies. A new uproar every week, a new headline every hour, a succession of columnists writing about how it all might signify the end of the world, or of the Republicans, or of a country that, unbeknown to all of us, has actually been held together by duct tape for a good long while.

The week after the Clinton-Kaine ticket fell, Hillary Clinton retreated to Upstate New York, removing herself from public life except for an occasional woodsy sighting by an intrepid hiker. Donald Trump and Mike Pence set about packing for Washington, planning the agenda for an administration almost nobody had predicted would ever exist. But Kaine — Kaine was back in the Senate. Instead of a partner to the first female president, one of a hundred senators.

Old office. Old shirt sleeves. Old routines: the Monday morning drive from Richmond to Washington, and the questions from fans about his harmonica collection. Kaine was back there for all of it, the elected representative of the only purple state Clinton had managed to win, bearing witness as the new order unfurled.

“I’m sorry you’re not vice president, but senator’s still important,” a fourth-grader wrote to Kaine recently. “Can you please stop my classmates from being deported?”

Old job. Different world. Seventy-five thousand pieces of constituent correspondence reaching his office for the month of February, compared with 27,000 for the same period the year before.

“I used to try public housing discrimination cases,” says Kaine, a former civil rights lawyer. “And I’d be at the counsel table, and it would be me and a guy who wasn’t able to pay me, and the other table would be filled with lawyers getting paid a lot, and I would just be there, really praying that the system worked. Like, if they didn’t have me — I’m it. They wouldn’t have anyone. So I prayed the system worked. And usually it did, but not always.” He shakes his head back and forth, weighing the metaphor. “I’m in that mental space again.”

“The Democrats in the Senate are the only emergency brake on the train,” he says a few minutes later. “This might be the most important period. Maybe I’ll be in the Senate for the next 30 years, and the next two to four years — God willing, it’s more than two years for me — are the most important years I’ll ever spend in the Senate.”

He keeps track of the time, afraid of being late for meetings in Augusta County, which is a gateway to Appalachian Virginia. The White House’s recently proposed budget includes the elimination of the Appalachian Regional Commission, which provides funding to the area. The county voted 71 percent for Trump.

“I’m going to work my tail off to get money back to the Appalachian region,” Kaine says, because that’s what it is like to be Tim Kaine now: You could have won, but you didn’t, and there’s nothing to be done about it now, because the country that you tried to warn went and did the opposite thing anyway.

...

“Sometimes I wake up and think this isn’t happening.”...Yeah, that's pretty much how I feel.

[Childless]

1 hour ago, GreyhoundFan said:

"Tim Kaine is back at his old Senate job. It’s never seemed more important."

“Sometimes I wake up and think this isn’t happening.”...Yeah, that's pretty much how I feel.

It's how we all feel.

[onekidanddone]

10 minutes ago, Childless said:

It's how we all feel.

For a while after the election, I'd wake up in the morning and forget.  Then a few moments later I'd remember and the grieving would start all over again.  It was weeks before I could get through the day without crying. I'll admit now some days I still do. I feel like I'm living a 24/7 world of clinical depression and anxiety.  Yet I keep fighting.

[Cartmann99]

4 hours ago, candygirl200413 said:

@RoseWilder I originally had a similar thought but the more research I did they didn't think it'd be worth it because it's still such a highly red area and might've hurt Thompson rather than help. If it was an area that could be swung blue than they would have definitely put in more money.

In areas like mine, even if the candidate is a conservative Democrat who self-identifies as a Christian, they run the risk of being branded as a lazy, Godless, baby-murdering, gun grabbing tool of Satan who will enslave you and your family in a FEMA camp. Having people from outside of the area coming in to campaign, or running ads that tie the local candidate back to the national Democratic party, just adds fuel to this fire. Any help from outsiders, has to be done very, very quietly if you want it to work.

The fact that the Kansas race was so close, shows that some red state people are starting to question the idea that good, decent, hardworking people always vote Republican.  

 

[GreyhoundFan]

"‘You lie!’: Constituents just used Rep. Joe Wilson’s own line against him"

Quote

The original moment came during President Barack Obama’s speech to Congress in 2009 as he was talking about health-care reform.

“There are also those who claim that our reform efforts would insure illegal immigrants. This, too, is false,” he said at the time. “The reforms — the reforms I am proposing would not apply to those who are here illegally.”

“You lie!” someone yelled.

That someone was South Carolina Rep. Joe Wilson — and now, eight years later, an indignant crowd at a town hall has returned the sentiment.

The Republican was speaking about Obamacare on Monday in Graniteville, near Augusta, when the crowd started chanting: “You lie! You lie! You lie!”

Chaotic scenes similar to this one have become a new normal at Republican town hall events across the United States, reminiscent of the tea party movement that intensified following Obama’s election in 2008. But now it’s the Republicans who are enduring “protests, sharp rebukes and emotional questions about what they see as a sharp turn in governance as well as the House and Senate’s willingness to check the White House,” The Washington Post’s Dan Zak and Terence Samuel wrote this year.

In fact, some GOP lawmakers have vowed not to hold town halls at all.

A town hall turned hot last month in Texas when Rep. Joe Barton (R) said he opposed federal legislation protecting women from violence because it is a state issue.

“Violence against women — that’s a national issue!” an attendee shouted. “That is an issue that impacts everyone, everywhere — not only in this country but everywhere.”

That statement then spurred more loud reactions from the group — with one attendee in particular prompting this response from the congressman: “You, sir, shut up.”

...

On Monday, Wilson, the South Carolina congressman, also answered questions on topics including environmental concerns such as climate change and Trump’s military strike against Syria, according to the Post and Courier.

“I was very pleased by the president’s response,” Wilson told reporters before the event, according to the newspapers. “And I would have supported the prior president if he had acted, but he didn’t. Where chemical weapons are used, there should be immediate action. Because if we don’t, sadly it’s an opportunity for chemical weapons to be used around the world and, we know, ultimately, within the United States.”

A spokeswoman for Wilson said that too much emphasis has been placed on one moment at the town hall.

“The clip being circulated of Congressman Wilson’s town hall last night shows less than a minute of a positive event that lasted nearly two hours where the congressman engaged with his constituents both in a town hall format and one-on-one after the official program ended,” spokeswoman Leacy Burke said in a statement to The Washington Post. “The congressman took great questions on a wide range of issues, from national security and North Korea to immigration.”

But when Wilson uttered those two sharp words — “you lie” — in 2009, even Obama’s opponent reprimanded the congressman.

“Totally disrespectful. No place for it, and he should apologize,” Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) said, The Post reported at the time.

Wilson did apologize — but it wasn’t enough to make people forget.

“I moved here from somewhere else,” Dana Phillips, who lives in Aiken, S.C., told the Post and Courier. “If I had known before I moved here that this is the man who stood up in Washington, D.C., and yelled at our former president, I would not have moved here.”