January 24, 2018 12:00 PM UTC

Cynthia Coffman Talks Colorado Pols and Embracing Trump

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• by: Colorado Pols

WEDNESDAY UPDATE: 9NEWS gives the world a much higher quality animated .GIF to commemorate the moment:

via GIPHY

And for the record:

Coffman happily stood by what she said when reached for comment by 9NEWS.

“My team won. So yeah, I was excited about that,” Coffman said. “I embrace having a Republican President whether I agree with everything that comes out of this President’s Twitter account or not.”

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With just about six weeks to go until the first party caucuses in Colorado, the race to become Colorado’s next Governor is really starting to get interesting. Last week we got our first look at fundraising numbers for every campaign, and with candidates stumping across the state, we’re getting a better idea of how the gubernatorial hopefuls are positioning themselves to stand out in a crowded field.

It’s no secret that the unpopularity of President Trump is going to play a significant factor in the 2018 election. Many Republican candidates are still trying to figure out how to talk Trump in a manner that appeals to partisan primary voters but doesn’t come back to bite them with a General Election audience. We’ve taken particular notice in this regard of the different approaches pursued by Attorney General Cynthia Coffman, who has been all over the place in talking about the 2016 election results. Here’s an excerpt of something we wrote in early January after Coffman was quoted by the New York Times sounding almost wistful about…Hillary Clinton:

“I think there’s still a great deal of disappointment that we didn’t elect a woman as president” is a very strange thing for a Republican candidate to say in 2018, let alone someone like Coffman who was shouting “Go, Trump!” with a raised fist on Election Night in 2016. Even if you conceded that this might be a decent General Election message for Coffman, it makes absolutely no sense for her to say this just as the battle for the Republican gubernatorial nomination is really starting to heat up.

Our confusion about Coffman’s approach apparently got the attention of the candidate herself. Here’s what Coffman had to say on Friday (January 19) while speaking at a Castle Rock Republican Breakfast Meeting:

On election night…have you seen the clip, where I say, “Go Trump!” at the podium? Oh my gosh. Right now, Colorado Pols – the Democrat blog, if you can call it that – plays that thing like, every week. They put me up there saying, “Go Trump!” [Pols emphasis]

I’m proud of it. I’m excited on Election Night that the Republicans were winning, and that we’re going to take back the Presidency. But I own it now. We own it. You can’t hide from the President of the United States. [Pols emphasis] He’s our party, and a lot of good things are happening under this President. It’s going to take some spin – I’ll tell you, it is, especially in a General Election. But it doesn’t mean abandoning our principles. It doesn’t mean hiding and pretending to be ‘Republican lite.’

We’ve actually only used the above GIF once before on Colorado Pols — not “every week,” as Coffman claims — but that’s beside the point. Coffman is very aware that she is going to have to “own it now” when it comes to her past statements on Trump. Her frank admission of that fact just goes to further illustrate the difficulty with being a Trumpian in 2018.

Coffman also isn’t the only Republican candidate for Governor who has been following Colorado Pols. Earlier this month we noted that Republican gubernatorial candidate Tom Tancredo was talking about Colorado Pols and “The Big Line” on a conservative radio show.

The moral of these stories? Keep reading Colorado Pols, of course.