Welcome to the 671st original “Crazy/Stupid Republican of the Day” profile, where today, we are going to chat about Missouri House of Representatives member Bill Lant, who eight years ago, was another one of those whackjobs thrust into office in a state legislature by the 2010 Tea Party Wave. After his initial election in that year over two challengers in the GOP Primary, he was re-elected three more times, only having to face one GOP Primary challenge in 2012, and never, not once, faced off against a Democrat in a general election.
Now, there’s a lot of levels which Bill Lant has managed to make himself noteworthy through the past years. We’ll start back in 2014, where he wrote an opinion editorial that featured a 68 year old Lant discussing his high school reunion, and one of his favorite parts was how all the pretty cheerleaders he had the hots for but couldn’t woo back in the day didn’t show up because they “didn’t want us to see how old they looked.” That might seem a little misogynist, but then when you read the whole story, where Lant discusses a woman who DID show up who he remembered for filling out a tight sweater five decades ago, but as he remarked, “Time has not been kind to that girl! What was stretching the cardigan 50 years ago is now bumping the belt.”
We know, a Republican who only seems to regard women as sexual things. Shocking.
Fast forward a few months, and Lant was sponsoring right-to-work legislation in Missouri, not that he wrote it, of course. He was handed the bill by the conservative organization ALEC, which finds schmucks like Lant to push forward whatever idiot ideas they come up with in state legislatures around the country. Now,some Republicans might argue somehow gives “freedom” to workers… but Bill Lant’s too much of a dumbass to lie to the people of Missouri. He actually boasted about how right-to-work laws had lowered average hourly wages in states where it had passed, and laughed about how the reward workers got was… “less wages, more work”. (Again, why no one seriously ever challenged this ***hat for his seat…)
And our third gaffe from Bill Lant? Well, that came during his fourth term in office last year, when at in a hearing in the Missouri House of Representatives regarding discrimination law, he silenced a witness, Ron Chapel, called from the NAACP called to give his expertise, choosing to instead berate and whitesplain how discrimination works to him. He then refused to allow Democrats to continue questioning Chapel during their own time with the witness. Missouri’s Democratic House Minority Leader summed it up quite nicely, saying, “A white man abused his power to stop a black man from expressing a contrary view, and on legislation that seeks to turn back the clock on Missouri’s anti-discrimination laws, no less. This situation is simply dripping in irony.”
Not that we need to add much more, but here’s a quick look at the most insane low lights from Lant’s eight years in office:
- January 5th, 2011: Bill Lant leads off his legislative career by sponsoring HB 73, an attempt by Missouri Republicans to start the failed conservative policy o drug testing welfare recipients in the Show-Me-State.
- February 9th, 2012: Lant votes for HB 1104, a Voter ID bill aimed at suppressing the vote in Missouri in favor of Republicans.
- March 29th, 2012: Lant votes for HB 1046, Missouri’s “Birther Bill” to force presidential candidates to show their birth certificates forged in racism against President Obama.
- April 19th, 2012: Bill Lant votes for HB 1534, the Missouri GOP’s fruitless effort to nullify the Affordable Care Act.
- May 16th, 2012: Lant votes for SB 749, a bill written to allow employers to deny female employees contraceptive coverage on their insurance plans.
- April 18th, 2013: Bill Lant votes for HB 436, an attempt to nullify federal firearm laws in Missouri.
- May 8th, 2013: On the same day, Lant votes for SB 265, a law to prevent the implementation of the United Nations’ Agenda 21 treaty based on the paranoid fears of hard-right conspiracy theorists, and while he’ at it, he appeals to Islamophobes with his vote for SB 267, an unnecessary bill to prevent “foreign laws” in the United States based in paranoia over Sharia Law being implemented in the United States (that no one has suggested).
- April 24th, 2014: Bill Lant responds to the events in Ferguson, Missouri, that led to the death of Michael Brown by voting for HB 2126, instead, expand the use of lethal force by law enforcement.
- April 2nd, 2016: Lant votes for HB 499, a bill which would require public school children to not just recite the Pledge of Allegiance in class, but to insist they do it in ENGLISH, making it doubly unconstitutional.
- April 14th, 2016: Bill Lant responds to the Center for Medical Progress’ bogus “sting” video against Planned Parenthood by voting for a bill to ban the donation of fetal tissue.
- March 9th, 2017: Lant votes for HB 1194, a bill written to block the minimum wage from being raised by local municipalities. This would be during one of the worst periods of income inequality in our nation in at least a century.
We are relieved to report that Bill Lant faces term limits for his seat in the Missouri House of Representatives in 2018, and at the age of 72, does not seem to be up t the task of running for statewide office, or a spot in the Missouri State Legislature. We look forward to being able to discuss him in the future with a simple, “Good riddance”.
One Year Ago, April 26th, 2017: Tim Jones (MO)
Two Years Ago. April 26th, 2016: JoAnn Windholz (CO)
Three Years Ago: April 26th, 2015: Kurt Schaefer (MO)