The Magical World of Virginia Foxx

Prominently in the GOP mid-term hall of shame is Virginia Foxx, of North Carolina.

Foxx gained notoriety in December 2009 when she proclaimed from the House floor that "we have more to fear" from the healthcare bill passing "than we do from any terrorist right now in any country."

A November 2009 profile in the Winston-Salem Journal highlighted several other statements that gained her national negative attention:

  • In April 2009 Foxx referred to the Democratic proposal to ban bonuses for executives of corporations that took government bailout money as a "tar baby" — an expression that, as the Washington Post noted "has a literary and cultural history," but "over time .. has come to be seen as a racial epithet."
  • Later the same month, during debate on the Local Law Enforcement Hate Crimes Prevention Act, she declared that the death of Matthew Shepard was not a hate crime. "It's really a hoax that that continues to be used as an excuse for passing [hate crimes] bills," She said. (Shepard was beaten to death in 1998 in Colorado by two men, one of whom taunted him, saying "It's Gay Awareness Week.")
  • In July 2009 Foxx implied that the health care bill would "put seniors in a position of being put to death by their government."
  • In November 2009 Foxx claimed that Republicans were responsible for the Civil Rights Act. "... [W]e were the people who passed the civil rights bills back in the ’60s without very much help from our colleagues across the aisle,” she said, adding with double irony, "They love to engage in revisionist history."
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