June 20, 2023 02:38 PM UTC

In Which Right Wingers in Colorado Go Truly "Batshit" Crazy

• 12 Comments
• by: Colorado Pols

We took note last week of a proposal between the Colorado Republican Party and the Colorado Libertarian Party to “join forces” (sometimes) in an effort to prevent Democrats from continuing to win elections in Colorado. The idea stems from a belief among some politicos on both sides that Libertarian candidates — who have long been sort of the “Dollar Store version” of Colorado Republicans — are siphoning away votes from Republican candidates to the benefit of Democrats.

The math doesn’t really support this idea on a larger scale, but facts have never gotten in the way of complaints for right-wing voices in Colorado. In the 2022 race for Governor, for example, Republican Heidi Ganahl could have received ALL of the votes that went to Libertarian Party candidate [checks notes] Kevin Ruskusky, and Ganahl still would have lost the race by 19 points to Democrat Jared Polis. The situation was the same in the race for U.S. Senate, where Democrat Michael Bennet defeated Republican Joe O’Dea by a 56-41 margin, with Libertarian candidate Brian Peotter picking up less than 2% of the vote.

A “Republicertarian Alliance” might have changed the outcome in Congressional District 8, where Democrat Yadira Caraveo defeated Republican Barbara Kirkmeyer by 1,632 votes; Libertarian candidate Dan Ward received 9,280 votes, which theoretically could have swung the race in Kirkmeyer’s favor. Of course, there’s no guarantee that Ward voters might have instead been Kirkmeyer voters, or if they might have just left that race blank on their ballot.

Anyway, all of this talk about a “Republicertarian” alliance glosses over the bigger problem with the hardcore base in either political party: They’re too crazy to appeal to average voters in Colorado.

According to prominent Republicans and Libertarians, Colorado State University in Fort Collins is building out a bioweapons laboratory focused on bat research because, um, well…like most fantastical conspiracy theories, the “why” is less important than the “yarrghhhhh!!!”

As Kyle Clark of 9News noted on Twitter:

Hard to overstate how the fringe has become the center of the Colorado Republican Party today. Here you have the GOP’s 2022 Gov nominee lining up with a writer for RFK Jr’s anti vaccine website + the CO Libertarian Party, which is calling a local CDC facility a “bio-weapons lab.” pic.twitter.com/ZGiPw8N1vc

— Kyle Clark (@KyleClark) June 19, 2023

9News covered this manufactured conspiracy back in February, around the same time that the Rocky Mountain Collegian was reporting on the news of a $6.7 million federal grant for a new “Chiropteran Research Facility,” which is a complicated way of saying that CSU is building a new bat cave:

This summer a new construction project will begin at the Colorado State University Foothills Campus. With a $6.7 million grant from the National Institutes of Health, CSU is able to build the Chiropteran Research Facility, which will be a breeding space for bats to research viruses that have been theorized to have developed in the animals. According to Construction Journal, the design of the new building is a 14,000-square-foot, stand-alone bat vivarium.

“CSU researchers have safely studied and worked with bats and other vectors for over 30 years,” said Rebecca Moritz, CSU biosafety director. [Pols emphasis] “Due to global warming and population growth, humans and animals are coming into contact more frequently and in ways not previously seen. This could result in an increased number of outbreaks and possibly pandemics. The main purpose of this facility will be to house bat breeding colonies for CSU researchers and researchers around the United States and the world. This facility will allow an expansion of CSU’s current work, including projects focusing on the role that bats play in disease transmission and the development of vaccines and therapeutics.”

This center is an extension of the CSU Center for Vector-Borne Infectious Diseases, which has been active on campus since the late 1970s. The new facility is projected to be completed by 2025, allowing students to conduct groundbreaking research in the next few years. [Pols emphasis]

This may be big news to Heidi Ganahl and anti-vaxxers such as Pam Long, but CSU has been studying chiropteran bats in Fort Collins for 50 years now. It’s not a big secret.

Nevertheless, Ganahl focused an entire podcast episode on the subject back in May, in which she interviewed the head of a group called — and we’re not making this up –the Covid Bat Research Moratorium of Colorado (CBRMC). The idea that studying bats is tantamount to creating bioweapons is easy to sell to anti-vaxxers, who respond to any use of the phrase “gain-of-function research” as though someone had activated, well, a “bat signal.”

And what proof do any these folks have that would demonstrate that CSU is creating some sort of “COVID bats” in Fort Collins? They have no evidence, of course; they know it is true because the Internet told them all about it.

Substitute “COVID bats” for “kids dressed in cat costumes,” and you have basically the same silly story that put the final nail in the coffin of Ganahl’s 2022 gubernatorial campaign.

As you no doubt recall, Ganahl insisted for weeks — without providing any serious evidence — that school districts across the state were allowing kids to participate in classrooms while pretending to be cats, or something.

The reason Ganahl believed this nonsense is because some people on Facebook told her it was true. Colorado voters, understandably, decided not to allow Ganahl or her Facebook page anywhere near the levers of government.

People who say stuff like this tend to have a hard time winning elections…no matter how many Libertarians are involved. Colorado voters generally worry less about bat research and more about roads, schools, and preserving basic freedoms. As Colorado Democratic Party Chairman Shad Murib told Colorado Newsline when asked about the “Republicertarian Alliance” last week:

“The Colorado Republican Party’s problem is not Libertarians spoiling elections for them – their problem is that their platform is opposed by the vast majority of Colorado voters. If their path to victory is to embrace folks who are even more extreme than then, I’d remind them that two wrongs don’t make a right.”

Two wrongs don’t make a right, but two “rights” make up a bunch of other nonsense. No “Republicertarian Alliance” will accomplish squat in Colorado until they solve that problem.