May 28, 2024 03:05 PM UTC

The Patient Has Expired: Righties Kill Attempts to Save Colorado Republican Party

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• by: Colorado Pols

May 21, 2024.

We marked it down for you last week: The day that the Colorado Republican Party died. You’ll recall that day as the one in which the Colorado Republican Party sent out an official email calling on all Colorado Republicans to remove their children from public schools post-haste.

“All Colorado parents should be aiming to remove their kids from public education.” There’s no ambiguity in that statement from Darcy Schoening, director of special initiatives for the Colorado GOP. The reasoning behind the GOP’s call for parents to pull their kids from public schools is because of transgender pronouns, or something; it really doesn’t matter, because calling on people to stop using public schools altogether is complete silly talk. Serious people do not make such requests.

We wouldn’t go so far as to call Denver Post columnist Krista Kafer a fully serious person, given that she voted for Republican Donald Trump in 2020 (and, presumably, in 2016) before deciding to become a #NeverTrumper. If you are a politically-active person who lived through the first four years of the Trump Presidency and yet still voted to give him another term in office, your credibility is more than a little strained on the matter. Kafer’s newfound anti-Trumpness also means that right-wing MAGA Republicans aren’t all that interested in hearing what she has to say about, well, anything…even if would be a good idea for them to listen.

Kafer used her latest column in the Post to attempt to reason with Colorado Republicans who agree that they should remove their children from public schools. Of the GOP’s email, Kafer writes:

As evidence, it claims a male teacher named Ms. Sparks uses the 3rd grade girls’ restroom at Grand Peak Academy in Colorado Springs with the principal and school board’s approval. The email also references “House Bill 24-1039 … [which] requires teachers in public schools to use ‘pronouns’ for kids” that do not correspond with their biological sex. To prevent kids from being indoctrinated by Democrats, the Colorado GOP implores “all Colorado parents… remove their kids from public education.”

The email, riddled with factual errors, distorts gender-related controversies and ill-equips parents and voters seeking solutions.

First of all, no teacher by the name of Ms. Sparks works at Grand Peak Academy. Adults in public schools are not allowed to use children’s restrooms; they have their own adult facilities. Secondly, HB 1039 does not require teachers to use preferred pronouns. Legislators know such a law would be struck down by the courts as unconstitutional under the First Amendment. The Colorado law concerns preferred names.

What? The rationale for calling to abandon public schools is complete nonsense? We’re shocked! Check out the picture of Darcy Schoening (at right); seems like a totally reasonable person, right?

Kafer also tries to defend public school teachers in her Post column:

It is demeaning to the thousands of hardworking Colorado public school teachers to characterize public schools as hotbeds of indoctrination. As a substitute teacher and previously as a school evaluator, I have been in hundreds of public schools and can attest most teachers are there to teach. Unethical teachers constitute a very small minority.

The rationale for the “abandon public schools” is wrong, and attacking teachers in an election year is not a smart move. Those are both good points.

Here’s how Schoening responded via Facebook:

Wrote Schoening:

“Krista must like the idea of grown men using bathrooms with little girls and kids of the opposite sex sleeping in beds together at camp. Krista must like the pornography our school libraries are giving kids.”

Uh, what? There’s more:

“Krista needs to leave the Republican Party. We censured her at assembly and asked her leave. She won’t leave because this is all she has.”

In short, the Colorado Republican Party says that Republicans should leave public schools because of transgenderism, or whatever, and the author of that proclamation thinks anyone who disagrees — such as Kafer — should also leave the Colorado Republican Party. The good news for Kafer is that she could do the latter and not have to do the former. For Republicans, this is not the way you make friends and influence people…or keep a political party from dying off in front of your eyes.

May 21, 2024.

Remember it. Write it down. Take a picture.

That day marked the death of a competitive or relevant Colorado Republican Party.