The House rules chairman blocked Lauren Boebert's measure under a 'new rule' against 'lunatics'

"I'm not going to be part of any effort to legitimize people who are fucking lunatics," Rep. Jim McGovern recalled saying, according to a new book.

• Rep. Lauren Boebert offered a "rational" amendment, but the House Rules Committee chairman blocked it.
• Rep. Jim McGovern said his committee's "new rule" is that "if you're batshit crazy, you're not getting an amendment," a new book says.
• His recollection is described in "Weapons of Mass Delusion: When the Republican Party Lost Its Mind."

House Rules Committee Chairman Jim McGovern created a "new rule" on his committee for people like Rep. Lauren Boebert, the gun-toting far-right firebrand from Colorado.

When one of her "flurry of nonsensical amendments turned out to be reasonable," McGovern, a Massachusetts Democrat, blocked it from going to the House floor and a Republican committee member wanted to know why, according to journalist Robert Draper's new book, "Weapons of Mass Delusion: When the Republican Party Lost Its Mind." 

"As McGovern would recall it, his response was, 'We have a new rule in the Rules Committee. If you're batshit crazy, you're not getting an amendment,'" Draper wrote. "'I'm sorry. We're not doing this. We're not doing this. I'm not going down that road. I'm not going to be part of any effort to legitimize people who are fucking lunatics.'"

The book does not describe the amendment. McGovern and Boebert's offices didn't immediately respond to Insider's requests for comment.

Boebert was among the 147 Republicans who voted to overturn the 2020 presidential election results after a pro-Trump mob stormed the US Capitol on January 6, 2021. In the aftermath, Draper describes how some Democrats, including McGovern, weren't inclined to work with election-denying Republicans.

Draper describes McGovern as someone who always thought the minority party in Congress "deserved an airing of its views," but who "modified" his position after January 6.

McGovern was among "the vast majority" of Democrats who initially believed what House members had been through on January 6 would bring them together, just as members came together after the terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001. 

One Republican member told McGovern that, because of the riot, he would vote to uphold the election results. But the Republican changed his mind by the time the vote occurred, explaining to McGovern, "'I won't come back otherwise'" to Congress.