Ultra-wingnut Rep. Steve Stockman walks out halfway through Obama’s State of the Union address

As has been the case with Rep. Stockman's campaign for Senate, the Texan was nowhere to be found

Published January 29, 2014 3:40PM (EST)

 Rep. Steve Stockman, R-Texas                (Facebook/congressmanstockman)
Rep. Steve Stockman, R-Texas (Facebook/congressmanstockman)

At Tuesday night's State of the Union address, Texas Republican congressman Steve Stockman pulled a move he's almost perfected while campaigning for the U.S. Senate: He disappeared.

Although Stockman attended the beginning and part of the middle of President Obama's address — tweeting all the while — at some point he decided Obama's stated vision for America's future was so abhorrent, it required physical protest.

So he left.

In a statement to the Dallas Morning News, Stockman explained why:

Needless to say, I am deeply disappointed in the tone and content of tonight’s address.

After five years in office Obama refuses to admit his policies have failed. He instead demands we double down on the bitter class warfare that has left Americans jobless and hopeless.

Obama’s plan for higher taxes and more spending is a blueprint for perpetual poverty. The last thing America needs is more of the Democrats’ class warfare that has left our economy a barren landscape.

Even worse, Obama has openly vowed to break his oath of office and begin enacting his own brand of law through executive decree. This is a wholesale violation of his oath of office and a disqualifying offense.

Worth keeping in mind is the fact that Stockman has a history of making a spectacle of himself during the State of the Union, with the most obvious example being his decision to bring racist rocker and NRA enthusiast Ted Nugent as his guest in 2013.

This year, Stockman tried to garner attention by using his guest selection to troll once again, bringing along Chad Henderson, a young man whose claims of enrolling in Obamacare were exposed to be untrue, to the delight of the right.

Perhaps because Stockman's choice was outshone by fellow Republican Rep. Vance McAllister, who brought along a member of the "Duck Dynasty" tribe, Stockman this year performed a walkout, too. Let's hope he at least let Henderson, who is an Obama supporter, stay for the rest of the speech.


By Elias Isquith

Elias Isquith is a former Salon staff writer.

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