When Colorado Republicans gather for the GOP’s annual big fundraising event on Friday, called “The 2022 Centennial Dinner,” they will have the opportunity to eat, drink, and enjoy the political musings of right-wing Congressman Andy Biggs of Arizona.
As Ernest Luning reports for the publication formerly known as the Colorado Statesman:
“Congressman Biggs is a respected conservative and someone who is fighting every day to stop the failed Biden agenda pushed by Michael Bennet and Jared Polis,” State Republican Party Chair Kristi Burton Brown said in a statement, referencing Colorado’s Democratic U.S. senator and governor, respectively, who are up for election this year…
…One of former President Donald Trump’s most vocal supporters in Congress, Biggs has been among the leading promoters of unsubstantiated contentions that the 2020 presidential election was stolen from Trump. Last fall, following completion of a controversial, partisan election review conducted in Arizona’s largest county, Biggs said in a congressional hearing that no one knows whether Trump or President Joe Biden carried the state, despite the audit’s conclusion that Biden won Arizona.
Including “Andy Biggs” and “respected conservative” in the same sentence is sort of like making a peanut butter sandwich with mustard, but, whatever.
What will Biggs tell his audience of Colorado Republicans? As Luning reports in a subsquent Tweet, that’s a mystery:
It’s possible @RepAndyBiggsAZ will explain to @cologop donors how a privately owned company exercising its 1st Amendment rights amounts to Soviet-style communism, when he delivers keynote speech at Friday’s Centennial Dinner, but it’s closed to the press, so we’ll never know. https://t.co/vLkySENyQd
— Ernest Lee Luning (@eluning) April 3, 2022
The Arizona Republic recently declared Biggs and fellow Republican Congressman Paul Gosar as “the proud Putin wing of Arizona’s GOP.” Biggs and Gosar were among just a handful of Republicans — a list that includes Colorado Rep. Lauren “Q*Bert” Boebert — to vote AGAINST a bill banning the import of oil and gas from Russia. Biggs and Boebert also opposed recent legislation to suspend normal trade relations with Russia.
Biggs has been closely tied to the “Stop the Steal” rallies that proceeded the storming of the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021; he has publicly suggested that the insurrection was really the work of Antifa. Inviting Biggs as the keynote speaker at their biggest night of the year is a weird choice for Republicans who have otherwise been trying to avoid talking about the “Big Lie” in 2022.
Actually, the more we think about it, the less odd it seems that Colorado Republicans are putting Andy Biggs at the top of their program. Remember back in March 2020 when Rep. Ken Buck (R-Greeley) was one of just two Republicans to vote AGAINST the first big COVID-19 relief bill? Guess who cast the other ‘NO’ vote?
Yup: Biggs.
Will it be any real surprise, then, if State Rep. Ron Hanks makes it onto the June Primary ballot for U.S. Senate one day later when Republicans meet for their state assembly? Hanks is YUGE proponent of the “Big Lie” and even uses homemade insurrection footage in his campaign ads. He’s exactly the kind of candidate that someone like Biggs would endorse.
It will be interesting to see if any of the top 2022 Republican candidates in Colorado try to avoid being seen with Biggs. Ducking the annual “Centennial Dinner” will be more difficult than skipping out last summer when the El Paso County Republican Party invited Georgia Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene to keynote their big fundraising event.
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Is it true that if you look up "flaming asshole" in the dictionary, there is a picture of Biggs' face next to it?
Yes. That photo is in fact from the dictionary.
Oh, I dunno. Unhinged right wing authoritarians are what pass as "respected conservatives" in the increasingly devolved GQP.
As a Republican, I’d be willing to pay some bucks to hear Susan Collins, Mitt Romney, Lisa Murkowski, Liz Cheney, Robert Gates, Jim Mattis, or Ben Sasse.
Ass-hole Biggs…..no way.
You do know that none of those people are Republican?
Trump, Palin, Biggs…
You still consider yourself a Republican when everyone you hold up has been harassed; while the mainstream of your party are doing everything they can to throw you, and them, out of the party as RINOs.
Dream on, fart breath. Biggs and his like are CINOs (Conservatives in Name Only).
So in your head… this isn't happening?
It’s happening. And eventually the pendulum swings. But you Dems should be happy with all this. Unless you blow it, you’ll be in power in Colorado for the reminder of this decade thanks to the CINO crazies.
People are not voting Republican because Republicans are nuts. You know it but stay because you pretend that they arent Republicans and you are pure and true. You see how crazy that is? Get a check up from the neck up and leave the Republican party!
North: I take advice from certain people whose opinions I trust and respect. You're not one of them.
If you actually live "north of Denver," your attention might be better spent working to keep a CINO crazy from becoming 8th District congressperson.
Bad news: They are your Republicans.
They're just as bad as the Democrats.
Nope.. sorry, dustpuppy. They are not. You cannot call an equivalency here. I am still a registered Democrat because my party did not try to overthrow the government. My party does not attack gays, refugees, brown people, etc.
No, the Dems are not perfect by any stretch of the imagination, but to say they are as bad as the Republicans just isn't an accurate statement.
"As a Republican, I’d be willing to pay some bucks to hear Susan Collins, Mitt Romney, Lisa Murkowski, Liz Cheney, Robert Gates, Jim Mattis, or Ben Sasse."
And soon you will be able to see them all living in captivity in a RINO Endangered Species Nature Preserve.
Is that the place you find discarded RINOs that can't find a good home because no-one wants them any more?
Well, I want the RINOs. At least, I want a multiple party system. Parties evolve in response to social pressures. The Democratic party of the Civil War era switched places with the Republican party of the Civil Rights era.
I could see corporatist Dems like Hickenlooper splitting off to ally with the corporatist Rinos like Campana and Romney to form the Corporate People’s Party ( CPP).
Maybe CHB and his fellows could form a true Conservationist party, allied with Greens and environmentalists on specific legislation.
Meanwhile the gunheads and insurrectionists could form their own FreeDumb party. It would always be a minority party because they would keep dying off from COVID and long term horse paste overdosing.
The Trotskyists would keep on trying to co-opt liberal causes and recruit Democrats. Green and other small parties would keep on being the voice in the wilderness and pisding off folks like R&R with their very existence.
And so it goes.
What is wrong with Biggs' neck in that photo? Does he not know how to dress himself?
I think that is Biggs’ lowered mask. He does look positively midi-evil. He and Tim Reichart would be right at home on the Inquisition.
So that’s what it is. I wondered about that. It almost looked like an ascot, which would have been redundant to the Windsor- knotted tie.
It’s almost entertaining to see how cozy the modern Republicans want to be with people like Putin. I can remember when “Republican” and “Russia” didn’t belong in the same sentence unless the former were threatening to bomb the latter back to the Stone Age.
I hope there will be full coverage of the security measures taken to guarantee the media is not able to report on the event. That means keeping out dissidents who want to embarrass KBB and the current Republican establishment; vetting the wait staff and probably insisting on exclusion of all electronic media devices; having security sweep the room for listening devices; and convincing the insiders not to brag on their social media.
Will the efforts be sufficient to foil the Colorado media? Will embedded law enforcement agents have nothing to report when they are debriefed or or on depositions?