December 20, 2023 12:46 PM UTC

Rage Of MAGA World Pours Forth Upon Colorado

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• by: Colorado Pols

Yesterday’s ruling by the Colorado Supreme Court disqualifying ex-President Donald Trump from the 2024 ballot in Colorado based on Trump’s participation in an insurrection against the federal government on January 6th, 2021 has provoked a discomforting firestorm of backlash and even threats of secession and civil war from supporters of the ex-President. As the Colorado Sun’s Jesse Paul reports, Colorado Republican Party chairman Dave “Let’s Go Brandon” Williams says if the ruling stands, the party will simply ignore the presidential primary and send delegates via caucus:

Williams told The Sun that if Trump isn’t on the ballot and the Colorado Secretary of State’s Office won’t cancel the Republican presidential primary, “we will ignore the primary” results.

The Colorado Secretary of State’s Office said the Colorado GOP couldn’t withdraw from the presidential primary and that it has doubts about whether the party can ignore the primary results.

“Colorado law does not allow a presidential primary election to be canceled at the request of a political party,” the office said in a written statement Wednesday. “If the Colorado Republican Party attempts to withdraw from the presidential primary or ignore the results of the election, this would likely be a matter for the courts.”

Keep in mind that the Colorado GOP central committee is set to vote next month on a motion to endorse Trump and call for the other candidates to pull out of the primary, so it’s not the process that matters to Williams but rather the outcome. Yesterday’s ruling directly challenges the alternate reality still adhered to as gospel by Williams and the hard-right MAGA faction in control of the Colorado GOP that Donald Trump is today the rightful President of the United States, and all of the mythology that descends from that falsehood–from the false panic over Dominion Voting Systems still pushed today by the party’s “election integrity department” to the “escorted tour into the Capitol” Rep. Lauren Boebert says took place on January 6th. Protecting Donald Trump from accountability for these events is why the right had to manufacture their own alternative version of both the 2020 presidential election and January 6th.

Whatever happens next, the findings of the Colorado Supreme Court in this case are crucially important to the judgment of history. That larger role is the true reason why the right is so incensed over a decision that has a good chance of being overturned by the conservative activist U.S. Supreme Court, and wouldn’t materially affect the 2024 presidential race beyond the primary that Colorado Republicans want to short-circuit anyway given the slim odds of Trump actually carrying the state of Colorado in November. The District Court judge established the critical finding upheld by the Supreme Court that Trump engaged in insurrection. From there, Trump’s attorney Scott Gessler was left with a narrow semantic argument over Trump’s oath of office that judges rejected and either way was not auspicious politically for the ex-President.

With all of this in mind, let’s take a look at some of the backlash we’re seeing from the right against Colorado from yesterday’s ruling:

That’s conservative college activist Charlie Kirk, who readers will remember was an enthusiastic supporter of Heidi Ganahl’s 2022 gubernatorial train wreck of a campiagn, declaring the Colorado Supreme Court’s ruling “the declaration of a Cold Civil War in America.” We assume the “cold” part means the FBI shouldn’t get involved just yet? Unfortunately, some of Kirk’s colleagues are forgetting to keep things the legally requisite degree of chill:

Here we have John Hayward, the “national security deputy editor” at Breitbart, warning that yesterday’s decision “could lead to a serious, long-term national schism.” Our question would be in response, who created that schism–the peddlers of a false narrative that the 2020 election was stolen and that January 6th was not an insurrection, or the courts of law determining the opposite? We can all agree that this schism is “incredibly dangerous,” as the events of January 6th demonstrated. But there is a right and a wrong side, and the consequences of who prevails are…well, everything.

Back in Colorado, we find rhetoric from Republicans running for higher office only slightly less incendiary:

There’s Republican CD-8 congressional candidate Scott James declaring it’s time to “fight this with everything we have,” and we really wish he had included the word “legally” or some other qualifier to make it clear that he doesn’t mean, you know, literal fighting. If we take the bombastic former talk-radio host at his word here, it could be cause some some alarm.

From here, we could descend into the dregs of every kind of demeaning remark about the state of Colorado, the name-and-shame campaign against the majority Justices in yesterday’s ruling, and the innumerable even less carefully-worded threats of violence that have flooded social media in the last 20 hours. In their ruling the majority acknowledged the controversy of ruling on this weighty and divisive question, but made clear they would not be intimidated:

We do not reach these conclusions lightly. We are mindful of the magnitude and weight of the questions now before us. We are likewise mindful of our solemn duty to apply the law, without fear or favor, and without being swayed by public reaction to the decisions that the law mandates we reach.

Circumstantially, this is not a case that would likely affect the outcome of the general election, and Colorado alone will not be the decisive factor in the Republican primary whether Trump is on the ballot or not. This case is about something much more fundamental than the results of any one election, asking whether the 14th Amendment of the U.S. Constitution is still enforceable against today’s insurrectionists like it was after the first, and hopefully only, American Civil War.

All we can hope for from our limited-view spectator seat is that cool heads and the truth prevail.