March 20, 2024 10:32 AM UTC

How Desperate Are GOP "Suits" To Stop Dave Williams, You Ask?

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• by: Colorado Pols

In a remarkably short period of time, former state Rep. Dave “Let’s Go Brandon” Williams has transformed from a sideshow occupying the House seat formerly held by the equally embarrassing ex-Rep. Gordon “Dr. Chaps” Klingenschmitt, not expected to have any further political upward mobility, into a chaos agent perhaps unparalleled in the history of the Colorado Republican Party–brazenly seizing the party’s brand and funding for personal gain as chairman, and viciously attacking his personal enemies and more recently Williams’ principal 2024 CO-05 primary opponent Jeff Crank via official party communications. The Colorado Springs Gazette’s endorsement of Jeff Crank set Williams at war against that outlet and its owner GOP megadonor Phil Anschutz, as well as the organization Americans For Prosperity, who in addition to backing Crank also supports Rep. Gabe Evans in the red-hot CO-08 race. Although Williams publicly pretended to have no involvement, the Colorado GOP’s vote to endorse Donald Trump in January led directly to Trump’s returning the favor and endorsing Williams in his congressional primary, closing the loop on the party’s abandonment of any pretense of impartiality in the Trump era.

For the substantial number of Colorado Republicans who unreservedly despise Dave Williams, this turn of events has resulted in something of a panic as it sank in that Williams’ treachery is increasingly likely to succeed. Yesterday evening, that panic manifested itself in a bizarre story from arguably the state’s most Republican-friendly television news reporter, CBS4 Denver’s Shaun Boyd. Boyd, as our readers know, has had a multitude of major journalistic malfunctions over the years, like a story about “dead voters” pulled down by her editors and a fumbled piece featuring 2022 U.S. Senate candidate Joe O’Dea’s business partner whom Boyd never disclosed as such.

Last night, Boyd unleashed what’s known in the trade as an “oppo dump” targeting Williams, but unfortunately so transparently contrived that even Williams’ detractors concede today it may well have backfired:

Not even Crank knew until CBS News Colorado showed him trade records from ImportGenius.com, which tracks the contents of shipping containers entering the U.S. using data from U.S. Customs. Those records show Williams’ family business — MKW Global Sourcing — had just over 1,100 imports between 2008 and 2020, all but 11 of them were from China.

“I never knew what Dave did because Dave hides these things from people,” Crank says. “It’s kind of like, what else does he hide?”

While one of Williams’ old campaign websites and a filing with the Secretary of State’s Office show he served as the registered agent and Vice President of Logistics for MKW, his current campaign website and current social media accounts make no mention of the family business that, according to ImportGenius.com, contracted with a Chinese company to ship 12 million pounds of Chinese plastic products into the U.S.

And yet Williams claims he’s a leader of Trump’s America First movement… [Pols emphasis]

Apparently, the big scoop here is that Williams’ family ran a business that…imported products from China? We suppose there could be some Republican voters for whom this is a problem, but the fact is that if you’re in just about any kind of business in 2024, you’re probably importing stuff from China. That does not automatically make anyone who does so an agent for the Chinese Communist Party, although we concede that it would be perfectly natural for Williams to say something like that if he were attacking one of his opponents on either side of the aisle.

In a rational world, Williams would be unelectable because of his brazen misconduct as party chairman, his personal arrogance and generally unpleasant demeanor, and extremism on just about every issue from vaccines to the 2020 presidential election. The problem for Williams’ detractors is that these are actually selling points in Trump’s GOP, so they have to resort to hackneyed xenophobic exaggeration in order to attack him in a way that won’t simply endear Williams to the GOP base all the more.

With apologies to all the Republicans dreading what comes next, this weak sauce won’t keep Dave Williams out of Congress.