Not to change the subject from the Republican Party in Colorado working feverishly to pour high-priced political gasoline all over each other and threaten to strike a match, but the party’s most faithful just sent their 2022 hopes of moving Colorado back to purple right up in smoke on Saturday.
The far-most favored candidate for U.S. Senate to take on two-term Democratic Sen. Michael Bennet this fall? It was the guy who went to Washington on Jan. 6 to cheer for Donald Trump’s relentless lies about the 2020 presidential election he lost by 74 electoral college votes, reflecting his loss by more than 7,060,140 popular votes.
U.S. Senate candidate Ron Hanks’ winning comment Saturday to the feverish, cheering throngs of Republicans, so fervent about the cause they’d go to Colorado Springs for a day to prove it?
“I fully expected Donald Trump to win in 2020 — and he did,” Hanks said, clinching the fact that he shamelessly lies about the election results and unproven fraud. “When we saw what we saw on election night in 2020, it changed everything just like the changes we felt after 9/11.”
Besides equating American democracy to naked terrorism, Hanks has offered choice words in his brief Colorado political career making it clear “patriots” need to take care of business to ensure “we the people” don’t allow “those people” to keep running the country.
We saw on Jan. 6 and then in the following I Love Loosey election “audit” show in Arizona just how that political philosophy plays out.
Simply put, Hanks is a first-term state representative who’s made a name for himself among Republicans statewide for talking like Congresswoman Lauren Boebert but with an added emphasis on extremist blather about upending American democracy by allowing political parties in power to overthrow an election because they lost it.
Hanks insists that voting machines have foreign parts and are secretly controlled by alien adversaries who want to see free-market libertarian-leaning pro-education progressives like Gov. Jared Polis run the state.
Sure, cringe and snort all you want, among the about 3,700 Republicans who turned out and chose on Saturday, almost 40% chose Hanks.
It means that about 1,480 of your Colorado neighbors, who are very politically active, also believe Trump’s Big Lie and will stand and cheer for it. It’s a Big Lie that undermines the very thing that sets the United States apart from everywhere else: Dictators, kings, queens and other assorted tyrants suck and aren’t allowed here.
Other than that, Hanks will make just as fine a candidate for U.S. Senate as Mesa County Clerk Tina Peters makes for Colorado Secretary of State.
Oh, yes. That’s right, the Queen of Meaningful felonies in an outed attempt to undermine the integrity of election equipment in the Grand Junction region also won accolades Saturday from the rank-and-file shaping the new Colorado Republican Party.
Peters won the confidence of a whopping 61% of the people who left the event Saturday to drive on the same roads you do, shop in the same stores and, apparently, howl at the same moon lighting our dark world every night.
It’s unclear how the party favorite, Peters, barred by a judge from overseeing last year’s local elections, and now facing felony charges laid out by a local Republican DA, will run her campaign from a jail cell if she’s convicted before Election Day.
If you see a pattern here, it’s that what used to be the “party of law and order” is being guided by people who hope to elect people who no more follow the law than they do best practices for maintaining mental health.
I’d like to offer some hope to the dwindling number of people who identify as Republicans because they believe less, honest, credible, sane, fair and reasonable government is best.
But GOP candidates in Colorado who don’t embrace their inner election fraud crazy and let it all out, don’t have the temerity to call out others’ dubious grip on reality for fear of being tossed aside like the credible Republicans who now litter the road to 2022.
Colorado GOP Candidate Heidi Ganahl on Saturday lost the favorite candidate contest to former Parker Mayor Greg Lopez, who drinks deeply from the GOP cistern of red-flavored Election Fraud Kook Aid.
Despite near daily prodding, begging and pleading from Channel 9 journalists and others to stand behind The Big Lie or stand up and tell the truth about it, Ganahl will talk about anything else to avoid uttering what clearly brings the GOP kiss of death.
For the rest of Colorado, this is far more than just amusing to see people teetering on the edge of reason do the Lemming Limbo into the great political abyss of greats like Sen. Joe McCarthy, Richard Nixon and Donald Trump. It’s catastrophic.
It means that even if tempered Republicans try to find credible candidates on the June primary election ballot, they have to fight top-line lunacy all the way to the November ballot box.
Unless the Republican adults are willing to come back into the room, it means that voters will have to choose between the only safe, sane and cogent candidate on the ballot, or the Republican.
Follow @EditorDavePerry on Twitter and Facebook or reach him at 303-750-7555 or dperry@SentinelColorado.com
I would be happy if it was only 1400. I am surprised when people are shocked by this. Is anyone outside of the rank and file Republicans checking in on Fox News? Information (or misinformation) and how it spreads, and how it solidifies, is the biggest threat to democracy, not one or two politicians.
I really think they enjoy looking foolish.
Mr. Perry you are brilliant and please never stop writing. You are on the front lines bringing awareness to everyone. No one can say they will be surprised by the republican s you are making sure they are not surprised. I appreciate every word you write.
What ‘Republican adults’? Herschel Walker? Sarah Palin? Dr. Oz? Patrick Neville? Lori Saine? Greg Abbott? Ron DeSantis? Who did you have in mind, Dave?