January 03, 2024 01:36 PM UTC

The Other Galosh Drops: Boebert Drains Swamp Into CO-04

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• by: Colorado Pols

Colorado’s celebrity carpetbagger candidate for Congress Rep. Lauren Boebert threw down today what could be considered the second most powerful endorsement available in today’s Republican Party short of the Big Guy himself, that of her current boss House Speaker Mike “Jesus Is My Bank Account” Johnson–a badly-needed show of support for Boebert, whose momentous switch from representing the Western Slope to running in the geographically opposite Eastern Plains of the state in a bid for an even friendlier Republican electorate has been broadly interpreted as confirmation of Boebert’s underway career flameout:

It’s not Donald Trump, but Johnson wading into the primary for what is nominally an open seat for Congress is nonetheless a noteworthy event. On the one hand, Boebert is technically an incumbent Republican member of Congress, so it makes sense for Johnson to support Boebert in that respect. But throwing down early in the primary for an open seat is still going to mightily upset the field of candidates who were running for this seat before Boebert decided to make Ken Buck’s retirement a golden parachute for herself. It’s enough of a risk to invite suspicion from the Denver Post’s opinion editor Megan Schrader that Boebert’s switch was the result of a deal orchestrated above the level of Boebert’s own desperation after all:

If this is an attempt by Washington, D.C. GOP brass to impose their “eight-dimensional chess” will on the voters of Colorado’s Fourth Congressional District, they may be about to once again meet the same maverick distaste for taking orders from Washington, D.C. that propelled Ken Buck over DC-anointed U.S. Senate candidate Jane Norton back in 2010. With a few exceptions like Cory Gardner in 2014, Colorado Republicans tend to react poorly to having their primary choices dictated to them–and Lauren Boebert has vastly more baggage for voters to hold their nose for.

If one of the bevy of other qualified candidates running to succeed Ken Buck wins the primary despite this endorsement, it’s Mike Johnson–again, not our Mike Johnston–who will be left to explain why he tried to prop up Lauren Boebert’s lost cause against the will of the voters.

And in what we still consider the unlikely event, Boebert is the one candidate who might make this otherwise impregnably red district swingable.