August 01, 2024 01:38 PM UTC

Colorado Republicans Cruised Past Parody and Kept Right on Going

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• by: Colorado Pols

Colorado Republicans are, in a word, absurd.

If you follow politics at all in Colorado, you are aware that the Colorado Republican Party is in the middle of a spectacular shit show related to various attempts at ousting State Party Chairman Dave Williams. The fact that Republicans are bogged down with this nonsense with just 10 weeks left until ballots start dropping in Colorado is a pretty good explanation of how this became such a blue state. It makes sense that Republicans don’t hold a single statewide elected office in Colorado and exist in a micro-minority in the state legislature.

But if you’re still not convinced, for some reason, that Colorado Republicans are hopelessly lost in the political wilderness, allow us to present two more examples…

We were forwarded an email recently from Leadership Program of the Rockies (LPR), which has long been a training ground of sorts for aspiring Republican leaders. The top of the GOP ticket in 2022 (Heidi Ganahl for Governor and Danny Moore for Lieutenant Governor) are both former LPR grads and current boosters. The language used in this invitation for an upcoming LPR event is laughably self-important:

Join LPR for a “Meet & Greet” so that you can “learn more about how LPR can equip you with the skills to articulate freedom’s principles.”

That’s a real sentence and everything.

While that LPR email demonstrates a bizarre lack of self-awareness, this next example is both tone deaf and stunningly racist. Take a look at this Facebook post from Raymond Garcia, a frequent Republican candidate for various offices in El Paso County and the actual Chairman of the Colorado Hispanic Republicans [sic] Board of Governors:

If you like tacos, then you are as Hispanic as the next guy!

What are you doing?

How do you not immediately find this to be demeaning and insulting?

Perhaps because Garcia is himself of Hispanic origin, he has no problem making this attempt at a joke. But isn’t the point of the Colorado Hispanic Republicans to, you know, convince more Hispanic Republicans to join their ranks?

Much like the MAGA movement in general, the only reason to be a part of this group is if you were already a member. Whether through the use of ridiculous self-important rhetoric or inappropriate jokes, Colorado Republicans make no serious attempt to even consider how their words might sound to someone else.

Those who lack self-awareness are always the last to notice when the rest of the world has left them behind.