October 05, 2020 04:54 PM UTC

The Reviews Are In: Boebert is an Unqualified Mess

• 17 Comments
• by: Colorado Pols

[mantra-pullquote align=”right” textalign=”left” width=”50%”]“[Boebert] has no business in Congress.”

— The Pueblo Chieftain editorial board[/mantra-pullquote]

The two biggest population centers in Colorado’s Congressional District 3 are Pueblo and Grand Junction, which sit nearly 300 miles apart in the sprawling, geographically-massive district that is CO-03. That physical divide is not unconquerable; Republican Congressional candidate Lauren “Q*Bert” Boebert is uniting the district in its agreement that she should be as far away from a Congressional seat as possible.

Over the weekend, The Pueblo Chieftain endorsed Democrat Diane Mitsch Bush for CO-03, confirming a pattern of behavior that in any normal timeline would make Boebert 100% unelectable:

Sure, Boebert can hold news conferences and be a darling on Fox News, but she would be ineffectual in Congress with that attitude. And that’s where we need success. Air time on conservative networks doesn’t help Colorado.

Mitsch Bush, on the other hand, would be well-respected from day one, drawing significant committee assignments and she would begin working her way up the seniority ladder. That’s how the system works, and that’s how Colorado would benefit in terms of representation and legislation that helps our state.

Boebert has made quite the name for herself in far-right circles, especially in opening her Shooters Grill in Rifle, where men and women dress up like cowboys and cowgirls, strap on their guns and wish they could have been extras in “Tombstone”.

Fine with us. We think that’s where she should continue to hold court. She has no business in Congress.

That’s not a “no” on Boebert from the Chieftain — that’s a hell no.

The Grand Junction Daily Sentinel also weighed in on CO-03 over the weekend, and while it didn’t formally endorse a candidate, it pretty much crapped all over Boebert:

We thought that speaking to the candidates would help us better understand their policy differences. We were wrong — primarily because Lauren Boebert stonewalled the Sentinel’s editorial board and eluded virtually all of our questions, thereby denying us the opportunity to make a fair comparison.

[mantra-pullquote align=”right” textalign=”left” width=”60%”]“Lauren Boebert stonewalled the Sentinel’s editorial board and eluded virtually all of our questions.”

— The Grand Junction Daily Sentinel[/mantra-pullquote]

Seems like we’re off to a bad start. Let’s continue:

Boebert, the GOP candidate, failed the first test of public service, which is to be accountable to the people. If she wants to represent us in Washington, D.C., she has to be willing to answer questions. She wants to tell us who she is and what she stands for by serving up platitudes instead of delving into policy specifics. Perhaps this is intentional because she’s never held elected office and she just doesn’t know her stuff.

Indeed, when the editorial board asked for some clarity on her contention that “free and open markets” would help solve the health-care dilemma, she turned to a campaign staffer for an answer. In another instance she said, “No one has fought more for water than I have,” because she helped gather signatures to get Proposition 113 on the ballot. That proposition concerns Colorado’s participation in an interstate compact to ensure that the presidential election is decided by the outcome of the national popular vote. It’s politically naive to conflate a voting compact with interstate water compacts, which are authorized by Congress. [Pols emphasis]

Lauren Boebert apparently believes that anything with the word “compact” in the title must be basically the same thing. If you are confused by the term “water compact,” then you DEFINITELY should not be running for Congress in a district that includes Western and Southern Colorado. This is not something that should be unique to Boebert; you can’t do this job if you don’t have even a cursory understanding of water policy in Colorado.

But wait, there’s more from the Sentinel:

Boebert spent the majority of her time with the editorial board refusing to answer questions until she got through a point-by-point refutation of an oped Mitsch Bush wrote about her views on health-care policy. She refused to say whether she would vote to repeal the Affordable Care Act. She’s against a single-payer system, but we could never pin her down on specifics of what an ACA alternative would look like if she were to play a role in crafting one.

The most definitive thing Boebert said was that she would never vote “for legislation that removed citizens off of their health care plans.”

[mantra-pullquote align=”center” textalign=”left” width=”95%”]“If Boebert won’t answer tough questions now, we are skeptical she’ll be accessible to the public as an elected official.”

— The Denver Post editorial board[/mantra-pullquote]

We noted last week that Boebert flat out refused to even talk with the editorial board of The Denver Post, probably because her campaign knows that answering substantive questions is not Boebert’s…strong suit, shall we say charitably. This is the same reason that Boebert has ducked every single debate proposed between the candidates in CO-03.

Newspaper endorsements aren’t always important in a political race, but sometimes — and this is one of those times — journalists covering the race feel compelled to flash a GIANT RED CAUTION SIGN at any voter who can read. Ignore that warning at your peril, CO-03 voters.