August 11, 2023 01:41 PM UTC

Lauren Boebert Pays No Mind And It Painfully Shows

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• by: Colorado Pols

The Durango Herald’s Reuben Schafir reports on far-right Rep. Lauren Boebert’s August recess tour through La Plata County on Wednesday, sitting down with local officials to discuss issues pertinent to Boebert’s constituents in the southwest corner of the state. High on the list was the ever-present issue of wildfire prevention and management, laying heavily on the minds of officials in the region with five major fires having burned thousands of acres in recent days.

Aware along with the whole country now of Boebert’s acute vulnerability after barely holding on to her seat in the 2022 elections, Boebert has tried to appease critics by attempting to converse rationally about mundane issues like water and fire safety that aren’t related to the wedge issues and gun fetishization that propelled Boebert into politics.

The problem is, as Boebert has agonizingly demonstrated from the very beginning, she’s far too preoccupied with her narrow agenda to care what the words she strings together into angry little sentences on other subjects actually mean:

In a jab at Sen. Michael Bennet, the congresswoman appeared to confuse wildfire mitigation, which refers to preemptive treatments that reduce the impact of fire, with wildfire suppression, which refers to containing fires after they have started. [Pols emphasis]

“He has a lot of funding going towards fire mitigation, and I want to start before that,” she said. “I don’t want to be reactionary. Obviously we’re there, we have to mitigate these fires, but we need to be proactive and manage our forests before it gets to a catastrophic wildfire.”

In other words, thanks to Sen. Michael Bennet for “a lot of funding” going to what Boebert means to say we should be funding! Boebert simply doesn’t know the difference between wildfire “mitigation” vs. “suppression” and assumed Bennet wanted the wrong thing, when in truth they both want the same thing.

And with that, everyone’s time has been almost perfectly wasted.

All the way back in October of 2020, it was painfully evident to anyone asking Rep. Boebert questions about the hard issues confronting the rural Third Congressional District that her comprehension was inch-deep at best. Speaking with the Grand Junction Sentinel’s editorial board that year, Boebert conflated the interstate water compacts with an interstate compact to elect the President by popular vote. Boebert’s strategy has always been to bridge the gaps in her understanding with volume and vitriol. But after nearly three years in elected office, Boebert could have taken the time to educate herself on the issues that matter most to her constituents–attention to which would have helped compensate for Boebert’s Marjorie Taylor Greene-wannabe image that Boebert’s much more competitive district otherwise cannot support.

There was a time not long ago when ignorance on such essential issues as fire management and water would have disqualified a political candidate on the Western Slope regardless of their party affiliation. Even Boebert’s CD-3 predecessor Rep. Scott McInnis managed to plagiarize his way to an informed opinion.

Lauren Boebert, proudly and unapologetically, is making all of American politics dumber.