January 05, 2018 02:07 PM UTC

Cynthia Coffman is Very Strange

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• by: Colorado Pols

Some politicians are just naturally good at saying the right thing at the right time. Others have honed this skill over many years on the campaign trail.

And then there’s Cynthia “Wait, What?” Coffman.

When it comes to making awkward statements that seem to make little strategic political sense — “I didn’t blackmail anybody” is a prime example — Coffman is on a different level than just about anyone else. In a story about the Colorado Governor’s race in today’s New York Times, Coffman does it again:

“I think there’s still a great deal of disappointment that we didn’t elect a woman as president, and there are women voters in Colorado who would like the chance to have the first female governor in the state,” [Pols emphasis] she told me, adding that “the #MeToo movement — the discussion of gender and inequality — has enlivened and invigorated them.”

Wait, what?

If we had provided that quote without attribution, you might have assumed it came from a Democratic candidate for Governor such as Cary Kennedy or Donna Lynne. “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.

Maybe Coffman has figured out there there is a significant bloc of Republican Primary voters who really wish that Hillary Clinton had been elected President but also want a gubernatorial candidate with a clear record of supporting Donald Trump.

Or maybe she’s really just this terrible as a candidate.