I’m not exactly breaking any ground here by noting that the Colorado Republican Party, as presently constituted, is a, uh, dumpster fire. A train wreck. A cluster$@%.
You can pick your own disaster-themed metaphor/cliché. There are so many to choose from. But, at the same time, I can’t think of a single one that comes even close to capturing the moment.
You can try to do it with numbers. For example, state Republicans hold zero statewide offices. They are outnumbered in the state legislature by more than three to one. In what amounts to their best showing, they hold three of eight congressional district seats.
But to make matters even more precarious, there’s not a single GOP incumbent running in any of those three districts this year*, meaning that it’s not a certainty that even the safest of GOP seats is absolutely safe, no matter how old Joe Biden — and, yes, also the oft-befuddled Donald Trump — will be by Election Day.
(*OK, we all know all about Lauren Boebert, who presently represents the 3rd Congressional District, but won’t run for re-election there because even a built-in GOP advantage — Trump won there by 8 points in 2020 — was apparently insufficient to guarantee a Boebert victory. And so she carpetbagged her way over to the 4th CD, where Trump won by 16 points, to run in the primary there. Yes, Boebert is an incumbent, but not an incumbent, in much the same way she’s allegedly a working member of Congress, but not so you’d notice.)
Hold on. It gets worse.
If you follow Colorado politics closely, you know that Dave Williams is the state GOP chair, but not in a good way. His major accomplishments to date have been, well, defending the indefensible Tina Peters while working tirelessly to reduce the number of primary voters in the ever-shrinking GOP.
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And while remaining party chair — what, you expected him to do the right thing and resign? — he has jumped into the 5th CD primary race, two years after being trounced there by the now-retiring Doug Lamborn. The real drama is whether Williams will agree to retire his “Let’s Go Brandon” nom de politics this time around.
Yeah, it’s bad. It’s worse than bad. But what can Colorado Republicans — so deeply in thrall to Trump and his MAGA world — do to change the political calculus?
Not much in a state that has gone from deep red to purple to deep blue in less than two decades. But they could make a statement that would show that at least some state Republicans dream of becoming more than a nominal political party again.
For starters, Republicans in the 5th CD could reject Williams, who might as well be the election-denying, culture-war-obsessed, corruption-tolerating poster person for all that is radically wrong with the state party. The only thing I’d nominate Williams for is as the person most likely to get sucked into Trump’s latest con and walk away wearing a pair of $399 gilded sneakers.
But in a far more symbolic act, Republicans in the 4th CD could reject Boebert, making the profound statement that sending a laughingstock to Congress may not put your team in the best possible light.
I’m not predicting Boebert will lose. It will be a crowded primary — although we’ll have to see just how many of the 11 candidates qualify for the primary ballot, either through the assembly process or by collecting signatures — meaning a candidate can win with a smallish percentage of the vote.
But I am willing to say it’s more than possible she could lose. I mean, Boebert won her last election by only 546 votes — which is why she abandoned her drama-weary 3rd CD constituents — and that was before she groped her way into, and then out of, the “Beetlejuice” performance.
The Wall Street Journal dropped in on Boebert’s 4th CD campaign, saying she has received a “chilly reception” from GOP grassroots groups. It has set off quite a stir in the political-junkie world.
One voter was quoted as calling Boebert a “lowlife,” which is not exactly a surprise.
Republican strategist Josh Penry, who is supporting state Sen. Jerry Sonnenberg in the 4th CD primary, was quoted as calling Boebert a “fringe conservative,” and saying the primary was a “horse race.” That’s not a complete surprise either. What’s left of the old-line state GOP is definitely anti-Boebert.
But according to the Journal, several voters said they were worried about Boebert’s electability, even in a district that Buck won last time out by 24 points. If Boebert could receive enough votes to be nominated, I doubt very seriously she could be beaten in the general election, even if she were to, say, buy season tickets for the Buell Theater.
But the fact that some GOP voters would see Boebert as that serious a liability — because, I guess, she is seriously liable to traffic in political outrage at any time— speaks volumes.
And if one or more candidates, preferably none of your Trump sycophants, could beat Boebert in the primary, it could say there might be a whisper of a chance that maybe, just possibly, although certainly not any time soon, the state GOP would no longer be a complete lost cause.
Mike Littwin has been a columnist for too many years to count. He has covered Dr. J, four presidential inaugurations, six national conventions and countless brain-numbing speeches in the New Hampshire and Iowa snow. Sign up for Mike’s newsletter.
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