June 22, 2022 09:28 AM UTC

Starting The Revolution With Rep. Ron Hanks

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• by: Colorado Pols

Fresh off a journalistically dubious attempt to manufacture controversy around mailers and ads targeting the Republican Party’s red-hot primary elections next Tuesday, CBS4 political reporter Shaun Boyd is back with another grabby headline in the expectedly fraught U.S. Senate contest between equally unknown contenders “Rando” Joe O’Dea and state Rep. “Raging” Ron Hanks:

That’s right, folks–in a move that should surprise no one, Rep. Ron Hanks is refusing to commit to accepting the results of next Tuesday’s election. And since you asked, he’s got reasons. Lots of reasons:

Hanks attended former President Trump’s “stop the steal” rally on Jan. 6. When asked if he would accept the results of the primary election, Hanks responded, “We’ll have to see what we’ll see here.”

Hanks called for changes in election procedures.

“I think we ought scrub the voters rolls clean and start over… and frankly the mail-in ballots is a big problem.” [Pols emphasis]

Of course, the election in which Rep. Hanks is currently running is being conducted almost exclusively with mail ballots. And although Hanks might like for the voter rolls to be “scrubbed clean,” that’s not going to happen before next Tuesday either.

So basically, unless Ron Hanks wins, and make no mistake, he may well–but if he doesn’t, just like President Donald Trump himself did months before the 2020 presidential elections, Hanks has set himself up to simply disregard the results and declare himself the winner based on stipulations he knew would not be satisfied. Which, again, is nothing more than what Trump himself did.

O’Dea insists Hanks election conspiracy theories are why Democrats are spending millions to make him the nominee…

O’Dea is partly right, but he can’t admit to the real reason why. Hanks’ election conspiracy theories are dangerous in the Republican primary for one simple reason: a majority of Republicans agree with him. This is the point that has been steadfastly missed by the alarmist media coverage of “Democratic meddling” in Republican primaries in recent weeks. Playing up Hanks’ views wouldn’t help anyone if Republican voters weren’t on his side.

And so, like Rep. Lauren Boebert sweating unaffiliated voters in her primary, we all have to wait and see if they choose to honor the rules of democracy…or go the way of January 6th.

It’s the genie that Trump let out of the bottle.