March 09, 2018 10:33 AM UTC

Stay Classy, Jon Caldara (Die in a Fire Edition)

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• by: Colorado Pols

Early Wednesday afternoon, a large fire broke out at an apartment construction site in the Uptown neighborhood of Denver. It’s unknown as of yet how the fire started, but it quickly exploded into a three-alarm blaze that forced the evacuation of neighboring buildings, literally melted nearby parked cars, and resulted in two deaths and numerous injuries, including injuries to responding firefighters.

After the fires were under control, two bodies were pulled from the rubble, believed to be construction workers who were caught in the rapidly-spreading conflagration.

For some reason, Jon Caldara, the head of Colorado’s leading conservative advocacy group the Independence Institute thought Wednesday’s tragedy would be appropriate to use in a lame joke about climate change. It’s not the first time Caldara has crassly used local disasters as political punchlines, like back in 2013 when he faked an excuse about the deadly floods in September of that year to help him beat a charge of election fraud.

But once again we’re compelled to ask–who does this? And why does the entire press and political establishment in Colorado take someone who does this seriously? And don’t tell us you don’t. Caldara gets earned media on a regular basis, and local luminaries line up to appear on his mostly-unwatched cable access show.

We all deserve better, not least the conservatives for whom this asshole purports to speak.