I attended a Chat with Brat in April of 2017 at the Titan Tire Store on Hull Street. I asked Dave Brat a question about policy. His response: “If you want your side to win and my side to lose...” Those words have stuck with me for the last year. I thought Dave Brat was on my side? After all I’m a constituent in the 7th District of Virginia and he is my Congressman. I thought he would want to win my vote, but apparently not.
Representative Dave Brat was forced to hold a town hall in Blackstone, VA last February he said that the people standing in line to meet with him were “paid protesters.” (A little history here, Dave Brat originally said he was too busy to hold a town hall in his district. Then it was revealed that Brat would be guest host at a town hall in Arizona with Representative Gosar. Brat then acquiesced and set up a town hall in Blackstone.) Rep. Brat showed up to upset constituents, worried about our health care. Staunch supporters viciously attacked his constituents on social and local media. Brat’s upset constituents continued to oppose him.
In July several of Dave Brat’s constituents wrote him letters asking him to denounce Richard Spencer as publicity grew that Spencer would be sponsoring an August Neo-Nazi and White Supremacist rally in Charlottesville, VA. Brat’s response letter sent prior to the rally “The First Amendment protects the opinions and speech of every American.” He legitimized Richard Spencer by saying he “is the President and Director of the National Policy Institute.” Nowhere in his response did he denounce Spencer’s racist beliefs. On the day of the Charlottesville attacks, Rep. Dave Brat was interviewed live on CNN and Fox News. He said “everyone needs to get out from behind their keyboards” and instead, “the women at the women’s march are the alt-left.”
In November 2017 the Richmond Times Dispatch exposed the fact that Dave Brat was paying a woman that lives in Texas $130,000 to argue with his constituents on social media. Not only a paid protestor but was also someone that lives outside the district. Rep. Brat has yet to apologize to his constituents for this or acknowledge the fact that he has quietly replaced her with a new representative.
At the time that this news broke on the front page of the RTD, many of Dave Brat’s supporters made threatening comments to constituents that oppose him. One such example “I’d like to meet you in a dark ally” said by a Dave Brat supporter to another constituent on the Congressman’s own social media page. The congressman did not acknowledge this post or ask his supporters to dial down the rhetoric. The threat was reported to Dave Brat’s office and to social media with no action taken.
Now there are numerous Twitter handles popping up that are going directly after Dave Brat’s constituents. Are these handles paid by the congressman either directly, like Sara James was, or indirectly through some type of dark money channel? We will probably never know.
What is obvious is that Brat’s supporters cannot make an argument that the congressman has been successful, hence the need to attack those that disagree with him. Rep. Brat has not passed any legislation that he ran on. His policies have only caused health insurance premiums to increase. There has been no comprehensive immigration legislation passed. He has voted to increase the debt by 1 trillion dollars. He skipped a continuing resolution vote so he could stand next to Trump while he signed an executive order. His “small business” constituents stand to see their taxes increased, as the tax bill Dave Brat voted for is aimed at the 1%. Church budgets could be decimated now that a majority of individual taxpayers no longer have an incentive to make charitable donations through itemizing. (Ironic that Dave Brat asked supporters to turn over their church directories to him so he could target his marketing directly towards church parishioners at the Hanover Tea Room - January 2017.)
Dave Brat is an elected representative. It’s fair for his constituents to ask him questions, to push back when they disagree, to lobby him to their side. It is not fair for his paid or unpaid supporters to go after the private citizens of the 7th district of Virginia. In the end, this strategy will fail. To Dave Brat’s supporters: If you want to support the congressman try to build him up rather than spend time tearing down your neighbors in the 7th. Try to convince us why we should support him, after all we are voters too.