The Triplets

Against stupidity the very gods
Themselves contend in vain.
Johann Christoph Friedrich von Schiller, The Maid of Orleans

The women set a high bar but their colleague Jim Jordan can meet it.

At first blush it would seem that Marjorie Taylor Greene and Lauren Boebert have an insurmountable lead if recent actions by those two women are the measuring stick. They both serve in the United States House of Representatives and seem to be engaged in a competition to see which of them can come up with the most effective way to demonstrate their stupidity. Their records, of course, set a low bar.

Prior to entering the House, Rep. Greene had a legacy that some might have believed gave her an insurmountable lead. Commenting on the Las Vegas mass shooting in which 58 people were killed she said the event might have been staged in order to help those in favor of anti-gun legislation. Describing the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting that resulted in the death of 20 children, she called it a hoax. She said the killing of 14 students at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School was staged. In February 2019 she said that two of her House Colleagues who were sworn in without their hands on the Bible were not "really official" members of congress. They are both Muslim and Rep. Greene said: "They really should go back to the Middle East." Those comments standing alone should have given her the clear lead over any of her colleagues. It was not to be. Lauren Boebert entered the fray.

Though at something of a disadvantage when competing with Rep. Greene given Greene's long prominence on the national stage, Rep. Boebert is, making her mark when it comes to bizarre behavior and postings while in Congress. In addition to insisting on her right to be armed while wandering the halls of the capital, she refused to open her bag when trying to enter the House chambers when she set off a metal detector alarm. Prior to the beginning of the January 6 insurrection and as the crowd was mobilizing in the square a few blocks from the Capitol, she tweeted that "Today is 1776." In another tweet she said the Democratic National Committee had rigged elections.

The two women found common ground in their opposition to the National Marrow Donor Program. The National Marrow Donor Program matches bone marrow donors and cord blood units with patients who have leukemia and other diseases. Rep Greene said her opposition to the bill was because "Nothing in this bill prevents the funding of aborted fetal tissue by taxpayers." Using that as the governing criterion, Rep. Greene can justify every negative vote she casts in the House since that could be said of almost every bill ever considered by the House. Rep. Boebert explained her negative vote by saying: This bill added hundreds of millions of dollars to the national debt, while not receiving a CBO score or going through the committee process." The bill passed the House in a 415-2 vote. The foregoing notwithstanding, the two women do not occupy the crazy space alone. Their male colleague in the House, Jim Jordan, is good company for them.

Jim has been in the House since 2007 and that has given him plenty of time to establish his credentials as a nut job and examples are abundant. In an interview with Tony Perkins in 2013 Jordan agreed with the idea that the Obama administration was trying to buy up all the available ammunition in the United States as a way of depriving Americans of their 2d Amendment right to have guns, since guns without ammunition are useless. His attacks on attempts to control the pandemic, however, set a new low bar for hm. He has demonstrated it repeatedly in his repeated attacks on Dr. Anthony Fauci.

In a hearing of the House Select Committee on the Coronavirus in July 2020 he suggested to Dr. Fauci that rules limiting the size of church gatherings were an infringement on the First Amendment Constitutional right to freedom of religion. In a December 2020 tweet he said: "Dr. Fauci says Americans should avoid travel over the holidays. What will he cancel next? Saying 'Merry Christmas'? "

In a hearing before the House Select Coronavirus Subcommittee on April 15, 2021 he addressed Dr. Fauci's written statement to the Subcommittee in which Dr. Fauci said the pandemic still demanded restrictions on what people can do. Demonstrating his keen grasp of things scientific, Rep. Jordan said: "In your written statement you say now is not the time to pull back on masking, physical distancing and avoiding congregate settings. When is the time? When do Americans get their freedom back." Continuing his attack on Dr. Fauci he said that the mandate that the restrictions that had been imposed right after the pandemic began had turned into "a year of lost liberty." Articulating his stupidity so no one would miss it, he asked: "What has to happen before Americans get more freedom." Happy to instruct the errant congressman, Dr. Fauci gave the obvious answer that would occur when the level of infection was so low as to no longer pose a threat. Undaunted, Jordan then said Americans' liberties had been assaulted, and asked Dr. Fauci whether he believed that "the Constitution is suspended during a crisis." It was a rhetorical question.

Jordan, Greene, and Boebert make a good team. The Republicans in the House of Representatives are fortunate to number them among their members. The rest of us less so.