September 28, 2020 01:41 PM UTC

Boebert Hides From The Denver Post, Too

• 12 Comments
• by: Colorado Pols

This weekend, the Denver Post made their endorsement in the unexpectedly swing CD-3 race, throwing their support behind Democratic candidate Diane Mitsch Bush over Republican upstart nominee Lauren Boebert:

We think Mitsch Bush will be an excellent representative for Congressional District 3. She is ready and willing to listen to her constituents — be they Democrats, Republicans or independents — and she is transparent and open about her decision-making process.

For most of the last decade, the Post repeatedly endorsed incumbent GOP Rep. Scott Tipton for re-election to this seat, based not so much on policy agreement with the editorial board as a presumption that Tipton’s politics were a good fit for the district. In 2018, the Post declined to endorse either Mitsch Bush or Tipton, complaining about Tipton’s standing “idly by while President Donald Trump has repeatedly lied to the American people and stoked hatred and fear.”

That’s no less true in the case of the avowedly MAGA Lauren Boebert, who blew right past MAGA to the unthinking Trump worship necessary to embrace QAnon–but as the Post’s endorsement of Mitsch Bush continues, Boebert did herself no favors in another crucial respect:

Mitsch Bush is facing first-time political candidate Lauren Boebert, a Republican who we know very little about. In part that is because Boebert declined to participate in a video-conference meeting with The Denver Post editorial board. Her campaign spokeswoman said Boebert decided to focus on media in her district, and Boebert did meet with the Grand Junction Daily Sentinel.

We would have liked to ask Boebert, who doesn’t have a single policy position on her website, how she’d vote on a complete repeal of the Affordable Care Act; how she’d weigh legitimate concerns over the growing national debt with the need for additional stimulus funds to keep the economy moving; and what bill she’d introduce her first year to help her district. And yes, we would have asked her if she actually believes there is a deep-state conspiracy to undermine President Donald Trump and how much that theory would guide her work in Congress.

Elected officials work for the people. Part of representatives’ jobs is to explain to voters how they voted and why. If Boebert won’t answer tough questions now, we are skeptical she’ll be accessible to the public as an elected official.

In another very poor decision by Boebert’s not-ready-for-primetime campaign management, Boebert refused to even talk to the Denver Post’s editorial board. Given the Post’s statewide footprint, this excuse about focusing on “local media outlets” is silly–and if the focus is on the locals, why did Boebert skip out on the golden opportunity she had to reach them unopposed at the Club 20 debates?

Once again, the only reasonable conclusion to be made is that Boebert is afraid to appear in any kind of unscripted setting, and it’s because she has inch-deep at best comprehension of the issues she’ll face questions about. It’s not like Scott Tipton wowed the Denver Post with his charm and policy smarts to win their endorsement–it was just a matter of showing up and not making a complete fool of yourself.

That appears to be more than can be expected from “Q*Bert.”