Maine Republicans Stripped of Committee Assignments for Entering State House Without Masks
Seven state House representatives in Maine have been stripped of their committee assignments and been replaced by Democrats after they chose not to wear anti-science masks when entering the Capitol building earlier this week.
The representatives, six Republicans and one Libertarian, according to WGME-TV, entered the building in Augusta maskless on Monday — the day Democratic Gov. Janet Mills of Maine lifted the state’s mask mandate.
The elected officials were stopped by building security officers who noted that they must cover their faces, or potentially face consequences. Video shared online by Bangor Daily News shows the lawmakers disregarded an ultimatum they were given at a security checkpoint and went on about their business — business the people of Maine sent them there to handle.
Of course, the majority Democratic state House punished them. Twenty-eight-year-old Maine House Speaker Ryan Fecteau pulled the GOP members from their respective assignments and replaced them — not with other Republicans, but with members of his own party.
GOP state Rep. Laurel Libby slammed Fecteau in a Facebook post which rightly accused him of playing pure politics amid the power grab.
“Yesterday my fellow legislators and I followed Governor Mills’ recent Executive Order making the wearing of masks an individual choice, rather than the Legislative Council’s policy that ignores both the federal and Maine CDC guidelines,” the lawmaker wrote on Facebook.
“We attempted to go to work in the People’s House on behalf of our constituents and were impeded from doing so at the direction of Speaker Ryan Fecteau and other Democrat leaders on the Legislative Council. Apparently Speaker Fecteau only wants to ‘follow the science’ when it is politically expedient.
“Speaker Fecteau is not my employer, so he is flexing the only disciplinary muscle he has, outside of calling for my removal. That may well be the next step the Democrat majority attempts, but I have no intention of going anywhere! My district elected me to represent them and bring their voice to Augusta, and I will continue to do my job,” Libby added.
Fecteau, whose Twitter page celebrates the low number of COVID cases in Maine, is more of a bully than a leader for the people of Maine.
Liberals who are obsessed with wearing masks, and also with forcing other people to wear them, continue to flout Centers for Disease Control and Prevention guidance, state recommendations and common sense regarding masks. Fecteau actually had the audacity to accuse people who don’t wear anti-science masks in the building of engaging in “charades,” according to WGME.
“I’m not interested in the charades and the political gamesmanship,” Fecteau said. “We replaced them with Democrats because I’m not going to keep replacing Republicans on committees because they continue to defy the policy.”
According to The Associated Press, Fecteau wrote an open letter to members of the state House, saying, “I simply will not tolerate attempts to devolve our institution into showmanship and political theater.”
Whose policy did the seven lawmakers defy? Fecteau’s, of course. The state speaker didn’t like what the science had to say, so he created his own rules.
“We have hundreds of employees of the State House who aren’t there affiliated with a party or a political cause. They’re there to do the work on behalf of the Maine people,” Fecteau claimed as the rationale for ignoring the CDC and his state’s governor, WGME reported.
Fecteau has apparently decided that the laws of science do not apply to government buildings with which he has some semblance of control.
If you’re entering the people’s house in Maine, you’re under the control of a 28-year-old who believes more in political theatre and virtue signaling than he does facts. He seemingly isn’t ready to let that little bit of power he gained from this year-long public health and common sense nightmare go — at least not yet.
Leftist Democrats, obsessed with controlling the behavior of other people, just can’t quit the coronavirus pandemic.
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