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March 24, 2021 10:34 AM UTC

Anybody But Honey Badger: Gloves Off In GOP Chair Race

  • 14 Comments
  • by: Colorado Pols

With the election for the next chairperson of the Colorado Republican Party coming up fast this weekend, a new coalition has emerged between three of the five candidates in the race with the express goal of ensuring that former Colorado Secretary of State Scott Gessler doesn’t get the job:

Colorado GOP chair candidates Scott Gessler, Kristi Burton Brown.

Try not to chuckle while GOP chair candidates Kristi Burton Brown, Casper Stockham, and Jonathan Lockwood insist that “we not not a party of smears, we are a party of substance!” But it’s clear that something has happened to deepen the acrimony between these candidates and Gessler just a few days before the election.

By most estimates this has been a two-person race between Gessler and the current party vice-chair for some time, with Gessler counting on old school GOP funder support and “KBB” backed by the ideological wing of the party including evangelical conservatives as well as Rep. Lauren Boebert. With that said, former GOP chairman Dick Wadhams has been sounding off with increasing urgency about the misguided message coming from most of the candidates in this race, culminating in a Denver Post op-ed today that minces no words:

Colorado Republicans will be electing a new state chair on March 27 and five candidates are running to succeed the outgoing chair, Congressman Ken Buck. The candidates are former Secretary of State Scott Gessler, GOP vice chairwoman Kristi Burton Brown, Jonathan Lockwood, Rich Mancuso and Casper Stockham. All of the candidates are articulate individuals who have their strengths and weaknesses, but it has been very disappointing to see four of the five contend that the 2020 election might have been stolen. They have expressed varying degrees of actions they would take to expose these conspiracies.

Every minute of time, every ounce of energy, every dollar of money spent on pursuing these conspiracy theories by the new state GOP chair is at the expense of being competitive in the 2022 election [Pols emphasis] when governor, U.S. senator, attorney general, secretary of state, state treasurer, a reapportioned state legislature, and eight redistricted congressional seats — including the addition of a new eighth district — are on the ballot.

It’s not a message that will make Donald Trump dead-enders happy, but we have to believe there are Republican activists voting in this weekend’s elections who understand Wadhams is absolutely right that their party cannot continue to relitigate a proven falsehood from the 2020 elections if they want to start recovering from the historic losses of the last two elections in Colorado.

And if you accept that, as a Republican looking to rebuild, who is your choice to be the next party chair? Gessler, who has literally spent the last decade on a fruitless quest to ferret out election fraud that his own investigation proved does not meaningfully exist, or Kristi Burton Brown–who despite having also engaged in election fraud speculation has far less commitment to the false narrative of stolen elections that threaten to blind Republicans from addressing their real problems?

It’s a choice that will speak volumes about the Colorado GOP’s future. A competitive minority adapting to a changed political landscape, or a permanent minority trapped inside their own delusions.

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14 thoughts on “Anybody But Honey Badger: Gloves Off In GOP Chair Race”

    1. I'm sure making fun of people's names made you the hit of the fourth grade PE class, Barndance.  But your 234th rendition of "Dickwad" is getting a little old to the adults on Pols.

      Today is Get Some New Material, Barndance, Day.

    1. Yup,  4 of the 5 Colorado candidates might want to take a page from her defense and admit they were just making shit up to appease their mentally diminished capacity president, and that no one should have believed a word out of their mouths.  It’s just about the money, honey!

      Powell is now scoffing in federal court at the idea that anyone could have taken her seriously. “Reasonable people would not accept such statements as fact,”

      When she said, as the nation was spinning into crisis, that she had evidence of “the greatest crime of the century if not the life of the world” — a world that in living memory has witnessed the Holocaust and other unspeakable crimes — Powell meant nothing of the sort, she now admits.

      Powell’s confession that no reasonable person could take her seriously, even when she is leveling profoundly serious charges, is important in itself. The implications are perhaps even more important. For example, the former president of the United States, who touted Powell’s lawsuits and news conferences via his once-deafening Twitter megaphone, is not a reasonable person. 

      And Powell’s brief offers a fresh suggestion of the real reason why this hash was ever slung in the first place. Hype makes the cash register ring, Powell informs the court: “Public disclosure helps gain public and financial support.”

      So once again, the Republicans fall back on the “what, you can’t take a joke?” defense.

       

      2. Sounds to me like Sidney just confessed to the court her guilt in filing suits and making statements that were a sham?

         . . . I guess she must have decided to defend herself rather than obtaining competent counsel?

      4. Is telling the truth the new trend among GOP election lawyers? Are all top Republican lawyers saying the quiet parts out loud now? Is their last best defense for their shenanigans…the truth? 

        We suppress voters because we don’t want Democrats to win. “It’s a zero sum game”. – Michael Carvin, defending AZ voting restrictions before SCOTUS. 

        SidneyPowell, Trump’s legal counsel and Kraken handler: “ Reasonable people” wouldn’t have believed me. We did it to raise money. 
         

        What defense will Rudy Giuliani offer when charged with lying to Georgia officials? Will he call Trump in as a character witness? 
         

        What defense would Scott Gessler offer if he  were ever confronted with his crimes of lying to Congress and Colorado officials, and to the general public about “12,000 non-citizen voters”? 
         

        Would he say, “Only racists believed me”? Would he fess up, “ I only did it to elect Republicans”? “ I only did it to make money”? 
         

        Jesus Henry Christ on a tricycle. Where is the exit from this rabbit hole?

  3. As one who looks for more progressive ideas than most Colorado Republicans seem to support, I endorse the local party following Mr. Wadhams.

    His leadership would prove invaluable if he were able to reclaim the chair.

    1. I think Mr. Wadhams made his opinion about leading the Colorado Republican Party abundantly clear when he left the job before. in 2011, his interview answer was

      Wadhams was not just tired of the conspiracies and the "incessant carping," but he was looking at a tiring "authentic conservative leadership" strategy." In a letter sent to the state Central Committee yesterday announcing that he would not run again, he warned, "The ability of Colorado Republicans to win and retain the votes of hundreds of thousands of unaffiliated swing voters in 2012 will be severely undermined."

      And the fight had gone out of him — at least for that fight. "The deeper I got into this, the more I thought there were other thing to do," says Wadhams, who's run numerous political campaigns in his career, and will no doubt do so again. "I've had a fun four years, and this was one of the most exciting things I've ever done — but on the other hand, maybe it's enough."

      And if he didn't like conspiracies in 2011 — imagine why he is not running in 2021.

  4. The next party chair will have to contend with this problem (or thrilling opportunity to pander to their rapidly shrinking base, depending on who wins):

    Extremism and bad candidates cost the GOP the Senate before. What does the party do now?

    Multiple high-profile candidates have signaled they will run on the baseless “stolen election” claims, including some running against those who defended the legitimacy of the election.

    The questions for the GOP establishment are whether it wants these conspiracy theories to infect its ranks even more than they already have and — if it doesn’t — whether it actually has the will to stop it.

     

  5. or a permanent minority trapped inside their own delusions.

    Yeah, that. Has a state GOP anywhere in the country ever returned from its land of delusion? No. That trip is a one way road.

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