Roots and Ribs: Why Louie Gohmert Wants to Head Conservative Caucus
Melissa Quinn /
Louie Gohmert has Texas running through his veins.
Born in Pittsburg — that’s Pittsburg, Texas — he wears cowboy boots on the House floor. (He even offered them to Sen. Rand Paul during the Kentucky Republican’s 2013 filibuster.)
He is known for his legendary ribs. Covering the walls of his Capitol Hill office are odes to the Lone Star State: a poster for the Texas Blueberry Festival, an Aggies flag — from his alma mater — and banners of schools in his northeast Texas district.
Gohmert, 61, has spent more than 30 years in public service. And now, he hopes to be elected by his colleagues as chairman of the Republican Study Committee, which formed four decades ago to advance a conservative agenda in the U.S. House of Representatives.
“I can preside judiciously and my experience is unique in that area,” Gohmert says in an interview with The Daily Signal. “I’d like the opportunity to help guide the RSC and have more focus on assisting our members of the RSC in reaching the heights of which they’re capable.”
Also: Elect him to the chairmanship, Gohmert pledges, and members will enjoy those ribs every three months.
But the staunch conservative faces a pair of serious competitors for the chair: fellow Texan Bill Flores and South Carolinian Mick Mulvaney, the presumed frontrunner.
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Serving Texas
Gohmert boasts an extensive history of public service, beginning with his career in the Army Judge Advocate General’s Corps until 1982.
Voters then elected him as a district judge in Smith County, where he “gained national and international attention for some of his innovative rulings.”
One of Gohmert’s earlier brushes with the national spotlight came in 1996, four years after he was elected to the bench. In an effort to protect the community, he ordered a convicted car thief who was diagnosed HIV positive to seek written consent from future sexual partners. Gohmert gave the man an official form to carry out the probation requirement.
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Gohmert had served 10 years as a district judge when Texas Gov. Rick Perry appointed him to a term as chief justice of the 12th Circuit Court of Appeals.
After he completed that term in 2003, he was elected to the House from the 1st Congressional District with 61 percent of the vote. He won re-election to a sixth term Nov. 4.
Gohmert, a Southern Baptist, is widely popular with voters in his district, who see him as a staunch advocate for them in Washington and aren’t turned off by what some might consider headline-grabbing antics.
“In Tyler, Texas, he fits right in,” supporter Jim Arnold told the Texas Tribune in 2012. “I don’t look at him as being controversial. I look at some of these other people as being brain-dead. I wish we had more people like Louie.”
Rep. Louie Gohmert visits with World War II veterans at the U.S. Capitol. (Photo: Louie Gohmert/Facebook)
Paying Attention to Detail
Gohmert pays enormous attention to detail. He says it’s a trait that sets him apart from colleagues who take a “we have to pass the bill so that you can find out what is in it” approach to legislating.
When a bill addressing the flood of unaccompanied minors across the southern border was making its way through the House this summer, Gohmert was one of the few to read the draft legislation. Up until the wee hours, Gohmert says, he read the bill from beginning to end, digested it a bit and picked it back up to see if it was “as bad as I thought.”
It was, he notes.
Gohmert pointed out “dramatic flaws” of the draft bill, including “de facto amnesty” for illegal immigrants. He then spearheaded the successful effort to pass legislation from Rep. Marsha Blackburn, R-Tenn., before the House left for the August recess.
“That would’ve gotten our party crucified in August and I think would’ve dramatically harmed our election results in November,” Gohmert says of the original bill. “If I were not there leading that charge, then I think things wouldn’t have turned out so well in November.”
Gohmert, along with Flores, opposes any path to citizenship for the estimated 11 million in the country unlawfully. Mulvaney is open to reforms that offer legal status to illegal immigrants.
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Gohmert is consistently outspoken on illegal immigration and same-sex marriage, isn’t seen as straying from his conservative values and doesn’t shy away from taking on House leadership.
He has vocally opposed Speaker John Boehner and abstained from voting in Thursday’s Republican leadership election, which saw current leaders returned. During the 2013 leadership election, Gohmert voted for Allen West, the Florida Republican who lost his House seat the year before.
That spirit of holding leadership accountable, Gohmert says, could bring the Republican Study Committee back to its origins.
Rep. Louie Gohmert grabs a photo with visitors from the Texas Children’s Miracle Network. (Photo: Louie Gohmert/Facebook)
Back to the RSC’s Roots
The RSC, founded in 1973, was meant to be a vehicle to advance conservative policies. But in recent years, critics argue, the 170-member group has drifted from that founding intent.
Gohmert says:
It seems we’ve moved into an area where [House] leadership helps choose the RSC leadership, and … when you owe somebody for your position, it makes it a little tougher to stand up to them when push comes to shove.
Instead, when acting for the RSC, Gohmert pledges to remain beholden only to the interests of the committee, a reflection of his career in the judicial system.
“I have experience in following the law,” he says. “That’s why I ran for Congress — to make it better. I think with the judicial experience I have in the past that I will be a real asset to the RSC as its leader.”
Although Gohmert frequents conservative talk radio shows and appears often on Fox News — he took host Sean Hannity to this year’s State of the Union address — he hopes to shine some of the national spotlight on colleagues.
“I come back again to the vision of making our RSC members become even more national figures than they ever would’ve been without being in the RSC and my being chair,” he says.
If Gohmert beats Flores and Mulvaney to head the committee, he plans to lead an effort to dig into the federal budget with the aim of reducing waste, fraud and abuse as well as the massive bureaucracy. He says:
You can’t ever get the government down to a more manageable level unless you know how many different programs are charged with doing the same thing. And since the goal of the government is not to get bigger as this administration has tried, but rather the goal of the government should be to serve the people of the United States. We’ve kind of gotten that backward in the last several years.
Gohmert even hopes to tackle the cost of belonging to the Republican Study Committee.
Each new lawmaker pays $2,500 during his or her freshman year. Returning members fork over $5,000 a year. Because RSC membership has grown over the years, the Texas conservative believes its dues should be cut.
Why?
“You show the government how to do it.”
