December 14, 2023 01:43 PM UTC

Colorado GOP Will Vote To Short-Circuit Presidential Primary

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• by: Colorado Pols

It’s the news we’ve been anticipating ever since word first broke of Monument-based conservative whacktivist Darcy Shoening’s campaign to make Colorado’s the second state Republican Party to formally endorse Donald Trump, well in advance of the Super Tuesday primary. Unless you’ve been purposefully blocking it out, you already know Trump is leading the Republican primary pack by what could be argued are prohibitive numbers, and Schoening’s argument is that time, expense, and unity are being sacrificed to allow for candidates with no chance of prevailing to carry on.

As Ernest Luning of the Colorado Springs Gazette’s political blog reports, the Colorado GOP central committee will vote next month on whether to endorse Trump instead of waiting for primary voters to weigh in on March 5:

Colorado Republicans plan to vote in early January on whether to give the party’s formal endorsement to Donald Trump’s reelection bid ahead of the state’s Super Tuesday presidential primary in March, GOP officials told Colorado Politics on Wednesday.

Under a proposal introduced last week by former Monument Councilwoman Darcy Schoening, the state GOP would throw its support behind Trump — and call on his primary opponents to withdraw from the race — nearly two months before Colorado voters register their preferences at the ballot box.

Now that Schoening has obtained the necessary support to force a vote on endorsing Trump, Colorado GOP chairman Dave “Let’s Go Brandon” Williams has thrown his previous pretense of caution to the wind and is ready to go all in:

While the move would be unprecedented, Colorado Republican Party Chairman Dave Williams said the state party’s prohibition on taking sides in a primary likely doesn’t apply to the presidential nominating process, paving the way for endorsing Trump.

That’s a revised position from Williams, who previously has claimed that party rules forbade the organization from making a pre-primary endorsement and would need to be changed prior to such a motion going forward. At the same time, Williams always delivered that letdown with the requisite wink and nod to make clear that he has a MAGA hat in his closet ready to go. And sure enough, when there’s will-to-power there’s a way!

That a vote by Colorado Republicans to endorse Trump early is no longer hypothetical does raise the question, though: what happens to the tens of thousands of dollars GOP presidential candidates not named Trump have paid to the Colorado GOP to appear on the March 5 primary ballot?

Schoening acknowledged that the party can’t force anyone from the ballot, [Polse emphasis] calling the resolution’s provision “symbolic” but added that she hopes Trump’s rivals face facts.

Unless the Colorado Republican Party becomes a lot less broke, real fast, we’d say that money is as good as lit on fire. It also means that Republican presidential candidates like Chris Christie who opted for the party’s “discount rate” of $20,000 are on the hook for a fundraiser for Colorado Republicans that may well come after the party has formally endorsed Christie’s opponent. In addition to paying full fare, Nikki Haley Tweeted out her own humiliating mandatory promotion for the Colorado GOP just days after the party’s official account bashed her “disqualifying” position on trans kids and parental rights.

If the central committee’s vote goes the way Trump’s supporters want it to, the other pay-to-play candidates on Colorado’s presidential ballot just got one of the rawest deals in modern political history. They will have paid tens of thousands of dollars to have the rug publicly pulled out from under their own campaigns. The potential damage from this vote to the also-rans on Colorado’s ballot could be greater than the number of delegates Colorado has to fight over.