Ken Buck's Last Day In Congress Is Next Friday— Something No One Expected

House Freedom Caucus Loses A Serious Old School Conservative

No love lost

There are two theories why Colorado Congressman— and former Colorado Republican Party chairman— suddenly announced Tuesday that he’s leaving Congress next week (March 22). One is that by forcing a special election that Boebert can’t participate in— she’s already a member of Congress representing a district on the other end of the state— she will be up against a Republican incumbent. The problem with this theory is that the primary is June 25 and Gov. Polis won’t be able to call a special election to replace Buck before then. In fact, he’s likely to call the election on the same day.

Bess Levin has a more reasonable theory: “his GOP colleagues have become so intolerable that he’s decided he can’t waste another second of his life in Washington and is getting out of there just as soon as he can pack up his office.

She noted that while Buck “kept things cordial in his official statement, he let it be known how he really feels in interviews with reporters. Speaking to CNN’s Dana Bash about dysfunction on Capitol Hill, Buck said, ‘It is the worst year of the nine years and three months that I’ve been in Congress and having talked to former members, it’s the worst year in 40, 50 years to be in Congress.… This place has just devolved into this bickering and nonsense and not really doing the job for the American people.’ Specifically referring to his fellow Republicans, Buck said, ‘We’ve taken impeachment, and we’ve made it a social media issue as opposed to a constitutional concept— this place keeps going downhill, and I don't need to spend more time here.’”

Buck has long criticized the House GOP for attempting to impeach Joe Biden and Homeland Security secretary Alejandro Mayorkas— the latter of whom they just barely impeached last month— saying his colleagues had no legitimate basis for doing so. In a video announcing his retirement in November, he lambasted his colleagues for spreading the lie that the 2020 election was stolen and that January 6 wasn’t a shameful day in this country’s history, saying, “Too many Republican leaders are lying to America, claiming that the 2020 election was stolen, describing January 6 as an unguided tour of the Capitol, and asserting that the ensuing prosecutions are a weaponization of our justice system.”

Buck’s departure will leave the GOP with a razor-thin majority in the House. Given that he decided to flame Republicans on the way out the door, you might have expected him to give GOP House leader Mike Johnson a heads-up about his plans. And he did! It was just a very, very small heads-up:

And this is how Trump responded to Buck’s original announcement that he won’t be running for reelection. Something tells me Buck would very much like to fuck with Trump in any way he can. Don’t expect an endorsement.