Cliven Bundy-Loving AFP Spox Lands Colorado Senate GOP Job

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by: Colorado Pols

Sean Paige.

The local arm of national conservative advocacy group Americans For Prosperity has made a lot of noise in the last couple of years, which is to be expected for a well-funded and staffed group set up by the Koch Brothers to organize the "conservative grassroots." In the last year, though AFP Colorado has run into frequent trouble with our local media–from fact checks of their anti-Obamacare ads that didn't even try to be truthful, widespread condemnation of the group's misuse of photos from the aftermath of the Aurora shooting in a political ad against Mark Udall, and also a bizarre incident last year involving the Nevada standoff between the federal government and rancher Cliven Bundy.

In mid-April of last year as the standoff in the Nevada desert between Bureau of Land Management officials and Bundy raged, AFP Colorado joined its Nevada counterpart in a vigorous defense of Bundy's "right" to graze his cattle on federal land without a grazing lease. A few days later, Bundy launched into a nationally televised rant about "the Negro" that precipitated a dramatic loss of support. Not long after, AFP Colorado deleted the Tweet you see above supporting Bundy along with several others, and for good measure several complete months of their Twitter history–including their defense of using the aforementioned Aurora shooting photos in their ads.

The spokesman for AFP Colorado at that time was longtime Colorado Springs conservative activist and sometime radio host Sean Paige. AFP Colorado and Paige's Twitter accounts were often posting the same items simultaneously in those days, but that ended after the Cliven Bundy mass deletion incident–and sometime after that, Paige himself and AFP Colorado parted ways.

Fast forward to today, as the Denver Post's Lynn Bartels reports:

Welcome, @SeanPaige, the new press guy for the @ColoSenGOP. Goodbye, @MattConnelly, who is DC bound. #coleg #copolitics

— Lynn Bartels (@lynn_bartels) February 24, 2015

That's right, folks! The very same Sean Paige is now the press secretary for Bill Cadman's Colorado Senate Republican majority. At first blush, you might consider this to be a big mistake on the part of the Senate GOP–whose media operation is already hard-pressed to run cover for the antics of members like Vicki Marble, Kent Lambert, Laura ~~Waters~~ Woods, and Kevin Lundberg while they push "Anti-Vaxxer Bills of Rights" and other such publicly repellent agenda items. Is Paige really the right man for this job?

And that's when it hits you–of course he is.

14 thoughts on “Cliven Bundy-Loving AFP Spox Lands Colorado Senate GOP Job”

Moderatus says:

February 24, 2015 at 4:51 pm

Sean Paige is a great conservative (we've met). I'm not surprised that Pols is scared of him!

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1. BlueCat says:
  
  February 24, 2015 at 6:27 pm
  
  And Clive Bundy? Of course you aren't returning are you?
  
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2. Conserv. Head Banger says:
  
  February 24, 2015 at 7:56 pm
  
  I've not had the pleasure of meeting Mr. Paige. Several years ago, when he had a blog that accepted comments, I responded to one of his more outrageous statements. Don't recall the details now, but it was a common sense conservative comment which is what I'm all about. He never replied; next thing I knew, I was blocked from further comment. Then the blog was taken down.
  
  I also read some of his stuff when he wrote for the Gazette. My impression is that Mr. Paige is good at "dishing it out," but can't handle pragmatic conservative responses, let alone comments from liberals. So, no reason at all to be "scared" of him. Sean is a classic paper tiger. C.H.B.
  
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  1. gaf says:
    
    February 24, 2015 at 11:39 pm
    
    Head Banger, you have got Paige exactly right.
    
    Is he the right guy for the job? Well, the crazies of the party are his kind of people, so, yeah, I guess so.
    
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3. Duke Cox says:
  
  February 25, 2015 at 5:08 am
  
  Tell me, Moderatus…
  
  What part of this article gave you the impression that anyone, let alone "CPols",
  
  is afraid of this clown?
  
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  1. BlueCat says:
    
    February 25, 2015 at 9:00 am
    
    You know he's not coming back.
    
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    1. Duke Cox says:
      
      February 26, 2015 at 5:27 am
      
      yeah….I know…
      
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Big Time says:

February 24, 2015 at 7:30 pm

Mod – is Cliven Bundy a great conservative, too? Seems a lot of Colorado’s sheriffs seem to think so, as does Paige.

The GOP isn’t even pretending any longer – the class of 2014 has officially made white supremacy the public face of the party.

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Littlebugger says:

February 25, 2015 at 7:47 am

Word from the insiders say Sean Paige will be making $8,000 a month and they are giving him a relocation package. So much for protecting the taxpayers, eh?

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1. Phoenix Rising says:
  
  February 25, 2015 at 9:29 pm
  
  I wonder what COGOP Senators get for $96k/yr. plus relocation… And what does that salary say? Someone considers Paige to be worth three State Senators.
  
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ct says:

February 25, 2015 at 7:55 am

Sean has never been more than a mouthpiece for the Status Quo pretending (often poorly) to be principled.

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Zappatero says:

February 25, 2015 at 9:54 am

Paige is very smart and ruthless. He was Op-Ed Editor at the Gazette for years, and gave Mike Coffman free reign to run his "I was in Iraq" column over and over as Coffman was running for SecState. I hope Dems have their shit together wrt this enemy combatant.

Speaking of which……….is someone checking Coffman's military record for any O'Reilly-isms?

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1. Littlebugger says:
  
  February 25, 2015 at 10:13 am
  
  and he was fired by the Gazette too.
  
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  1. gaf says:
    
    February 25, 2015 at 3:03 pm
    
    Of course, being fired (or demoted and pushed out: See Chacon, Daniel) by The Gazette can be a badge of honor for an honorable person who wants to write the truth! (I don't put Paige in that catagory.)
    
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