March 12, 2019 04:08 PM UTC

GOP Lawmakers Have Time for Everything BUT Governing

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• by: Colorado Pols

Colorado Republicans were squawking about Democratic “overreach” long before the final ballots were counted in the 2018 election. They were warning of “secession” in mid-November. Republicans have been throwing around “recall” threats for months and pushing counties to pledge to be “sanctuaries” in the event that so-called “red flag” legislation is passed.

In response to getting walloped in the last election cycle, Republicans have focused their energies on doing whatever possible to muck things up at the state legislature. They don’t want Democracy; they want anarchy.

As the Denver Post reports, Republicans are now suing Democrats for not allowing them to do more to waste everyone’s time at the State Capitol:

Colorado state Senate Republicans have sued Leroy Garcia, the Democratic Senate president, over the use of multiple computers to read a 2,000-page bill Monday, claiming the move violated the state Constitution…

…On Monday morning, state Sen. John Cooke, a Weld County Republican, asked for a 2,000-page bill to be read at length, a request that could have taken up 60 hours to accomplish. No committee hearings or other floor work may take place during the reading, which would mean bringing work in that chamber to a halt.

However, Senate leadership used five computers simultaneously speed reading to get through the bill by 5:30 p.m. Monday.

The Post writes that the lawsuit is the latest development in “a legislative session that has been defined in part by the brinkmanship between the two parties in the statehouse’s upper chamber,” but that’s not a fair assessment of what is really taking place at the State Capitol. Republicans are doing everything they can to prevent the legislature — comprised of lawmakers duly elected by Colorado voters — from doing its job. They’ve been throwing wrenches into the process since well before the 2019 session even began.

Republicans aren’t even pretending that they aren’t trying to gum up the works wherever possible. This is a sad day in what has been a sad couple of months for a political party that seems determined to remain irrelevant when it comes to governing this state.