THE MORNING RANT: America’s Gerontocracy – AWOL Texas Congresswoman Found Living in Memory Care Facility

A local online media outlet that serves as competition to the legacy newspapers in Dallas and Ft. Worth just broke a huge scandal that was hiding in plain sight.

Representative Kay Granger (R – TX) has not cast a vote in Congress since last July. Her extended absence would seem newsworthy, and with Republicans holding a very narrow House majority, you’d also think that the Republican leadership would be concerned about her vote, especially considering the high-profile votes in the past week regarding the federal debt limit. As it turns out, Ms. Granger is living in a memory care facility. But it’s even worse, her entire staff appears to have shut down all constituent services, along with any pretense of there being Congressional representation for Texas’ 12 Congressional District.

The Dallas Express received a tip that “the Congresswoman has been residing at a local memory care and assisted living home for some time after having been found wandering lost and confused in her former Cultural District/West 7th neighborhood.”

As detailed in its exclusive story titled “Where is Congresswoman Kay Granger?” the Dallas Express first called Rep. Granger’s local and D.C. offices but only got voice mails. They then visited her local office only to find the door locked and its windows covered. Other occupants of the building advised that Rep. Granger’s staff all departed the office before Thanksgiving.

The journalists at the Dallas Express then paid a visit to the memory care facility, where several employees confirmed that Rep. Granger was indeed a resident.

The Express quoted Tarrant County (Ft. Worth) GOP Chairman Bo French as saying, ”The lack of representation for CD-12 is troubling to say the least. At a time when extraordinarily important votes are happening, including debt ceiling, disaster relief, farm bills and border issues, Kay Granger is nowhere to be found. The margin in Congress is razor thin and the lack of a Republican vote representing CD-12 disenfranchises 2 million people. We deserve better.”

In addition to noting that Ms. Granger and her absent staff are all still being paid by taxpayers through the end of her term in January, the Express posed these questions:

• Why have the public and Ms. Granger’s constituents been left in the dark about her whereabouts and the nature of her absence?

• Why has Congressional District 12 gone without representation for more than five months? And how has no one in Fort Worth or her larger district, particularly the Fort Worth establishment media, seemed to notice or care?

• If Ms. Granger is mentally incapacitated, why didn’t she simply retire early and allow Congressman-elect Craig Goldman to be appointed in the interim so the district could be represented during this critical vote and transition period?

Kay Granger is almost 82 years old, and was elected to Congress 28 years ago. To her credit (?), she did not seek re-election this year, and she’ll be replaced by a new Congressman when the next Congress is sworn into office in January. But she should have already stepped down, and she was almost certainly not fit for re-election in 2022, so why did she return then?

Money and power are powerful lures. Upon her re-election in 2022, and with the Republicans gaining control of the House, Rep. Granger became Chairman of the powerful House Appropriations Committee. How convenient for all the rest of the pork-slingers on the committee for them to have a cardboard cutout for a Chairman. She did finally step aside as Chair in April of this year, while remaining a member (albeit inactive) of Congress.

Did her peers know that she had lost her faculties? Of course they did. In fact, just last month, despite Rep. Granger being unable to cast a vote on the House floor due to her dementia, she was propped up for a picture with the House Appropriations Committee to celebrate the hanging of her portrait. Seriously. That is the header photo I used, taken on 11/19/2024. Her peers knew full well that she was still a member of Congress and they knew that she did not have the capacity to vote on the floor of the chamber.

Ryan Girdusky tweeted that Rep. Granger’s mental incapacity was widely known in D.C., stating that a friend had lived in the same building as Rep. Granger, and that ”she could be found roaming the halls, asking people if they knew where she lived.”

Yet amidst her dementia and her move to a memory care facility, Rep. Granger has been actively tweeting on X/Twitter. Obviously, it has been her staff doing the Tweeting. They may not be manning their offices any longer, but they sure do think highly of themselves. This tweet from Rep. Granger praising her interns was just three days ago. (This is a screenshot, not an embedded tweet, in case it gets pulled down.)

As to why the media chose not to cover the story of a Republican Congresswoman with dementia, the answer seems quite obvious. The media was actively engaged in an “Emperor’s New Clothes” propaganda campaign to convince Americans that their eyes were deceiving them about President Biden’s dementia. Exposing an AWOL Republican’s dementia would have hurt the narrative.

Aside from Joe Biden, we also have the Senate Majority Leader suffering from brain freeze-ups and being wheeled around in a wheelchair. Nancy Pelosi has certainly had her moments, and now she is recovering from a broken hip. It was a national disgrace when Dianne Feinstein’s comatose body was wheeled into the Senate Chamber after one of her prolonged absences.

Incumbents are almost unremovable in party primaries, so in solid Democrat or solid Republican districts, the incumbents can pretty much stay in office until they die, no matter the depths of their incapacity. Like an old rusty bolt, they cannot be pried loose.

I favor term limits to help put an end to America’s gerontocracy. As an alternative, there could possibly be some form of attendance requirement, or just a good old fashioned age limitation. We cannot continue to allow so much power to be held by octogenarians who do not have the capacity to serve in their offices.

My latest piece at The Blaze has been published.

In it I discuss how the anti-Trump media heavily promoted the notion that Mexican tariffs would be a “guacamole tax” on consumers. I point out that deficit-fueled inflation is also a tax on consumers, and that if we must accept higher prices to support Ukraine’s defense (and other ridiculous spending), then we can certainly live with higher avocado prices to stop Mexico and China’s asymmetrical war being waged on the U.S. through fentanyl crossing our southern border.

It’s behind a paywall, but if you are a Blaze subscriber, I’d be honored if you’d give it a read.

[buck.throckmorton at protonmail dot com]

posted by Buck Throckmorton at 11:00 AM

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