Colorado GOP gubernatorial candidate Heidi Ganahl yesterday made liars out of those political pundits and media outlets hinting that Colorado primary election voters last month chose “moderate” candidates over far-right extremists.
Rational people and moderate Republicans don’t tell everyone President Joe Biden stole the election from Donald Trump in 2020.
Air Force veteran and Aurora military contractor Danny Moore did.
Rational people and moderate Republicans don’t hitch their political wagons to people who tell everyone President Joe Biden stole the election from Donald Trump in 2020.
Ganahl did.
Republican gubernatorial nominee Heidi Ganahl — knowing that Moore was outed last year as chairperson of the state’s congressional redistricting committee last year because of his remarks as a pro-Trump election denier — made Moore her choice for lieutenant governor yesterday.
Ganahl, currently a University of Colorado regent, has struggled from the beginning of her campaign to come clean on whether she drinks from the powerful GOP political fountain flowing with Donald Trump’s Big Lie.
She finally plunged in yesterday.
“Danny is a wonderful addition to our winning team,” Ganahl said in a statement.
The choice was far from wonderful for voters looking for the Colorado Republican Party to turn back from going farther down the road to screaming extremism.
Having just won the GOP nomination during the June Primary, this was Ganahl’s final chance to throw aside any of the usual political pretenses used by Republicans and Democrats alike to court the party faithful and fearsome to collect primary votes.
Ganahl has for months insulted Colorado voters by coyly refusing to push back against rampant conspiracy theorists and election deniers in the GOP, telling push reporters only that “Biden is president.”
Now, having locked in the nomination and most Republican votes, Ganahl has been free to abandon the conspiracy theory lunacy and focus credibly on arguments why she’s better suited than Democratic Gov. Jared Polis to lead Colorado out of its seemingly endless pandemic quagmire.
Instead, she deliberately chose a running mate who shines a bright light on her own dubious link to conspiracy theorists, Donald Trump and his increasingly violent horde of election deniers.
Faced with that morning blunder, she outright lied to voters later Monday on a talk radio show.
“Danny is not an election denier,” Ganahl told 850 KOA talk radio host Mandy Connell. “He had concerns like many people across Colorado and this country did about what happened in the election, and election integrity. And, as a citizen, he was asking questions and made a post on Facebook that caused some drama when he was on the redistricting commission.”
Drama?
The election redistricting commission last year asked him to resign as chairman after Kyle Clark from Next on 9News revealed Moore had made repeated Facebook posts filled with common Trump’s Big Lie banter.
Although he deleted the posts, 9News yesterday reported that Moore, on Jan. 7, 2021, the day after the Capitol insurrection, posted: “by any account, the election of 2020 will go down as the most questioned election in our country’s history.
Ganahl yesterday said it’s unfair for the media and pundits to focus on that, because it’s so innocuous.
That’s not the focus of credible news reports. Here’s what Moore also said.
“What we know for sure is that mass mail-in ballots can be controlled by the people you give them too [sic] (the Postman, ballot counters.) Once you hand them over you lose any voice you thought you had,” 9News reported.
He went there and beyond.
Replying to a comment on his own Facebook page, Moore said on Jan. 11, 2021, “no one believes that 80 million people voted for Joe Biden,” another popular denier slogan.
Actually, 80 million Americans do believe that, and most others as well, because it’s provably true.
And on Jan. 29, 2021, Moore said about Biden, “This is the guy elected by the Democrat steal,” according to 9News.
Truly, Moore’s addition to the team is “wonderful” news for those hoping that Ganahl is as dangerously bent as CongresspersonGOP Lauren Boebert and indicted GOP Mesa County Clerk Tina Peters, both willing to back violent insurrectionists over American democracy.
Rather than apologize and find another running mate, Ganahl said she has nothing to apologize for, because voters who can read for themselves actually heard Moore defend his weird conspiracy theory tropes as free speech. It’s the media and naysayers that should be the ones admonished for questioning her dubious record claims cogency and honesty, her supporters trying pass Ganahl off as a moderate insist.
No, and hell no.
Despite repeated attempts by extremist Republicans to normalize and downplay the danger and duplicity of election deniers and conspiracy theorists, most Colorado voters won’t go there, and they shouldn’t.
Insurrection sympathizers and conspirators as elected officials are absolute deal breakers even for the most conservative Colorado voters, and they damn well should be.
Unfortunately for those hopeful that Ganahl would fervently denounce her growing ties to GOP extremism, this was the final, not the first delinquency.
On day one of her actual campaign, 9News reporter Marshall Zelinger let the air out of her credibility by pressing her to explain why she suddenly deleted almost all of her 2,000 old Twitter posts just before her big September announcement last year. “I’ve had a policy as a businessperson to clean up my social media every few months for years, it’s not anything new,” Ganahl said.
It must not have been new for Moore either, because he also erased damning evidence, according to 9News and other reports.
Just business as usual for these two.
As for wanting to focus now on policy differences between Polis and the Ganahl regime, that train left the credibility station she set on fire yesterday.
Colorado voters looking for a credible alternative to Polis as the next governor, a candidate who can be trusted not to sell out our state and democracy to the Trumpist insurrectionists, are going to have to look down ballot this fall.
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Ganahl can’t have it both ways. She can either be a credible politician with plans to help the state, or she can be a wingnut Trumpalo. The two choices are not compatible.
She certainly did lower her chances of getting elected.
Normally, republican lies, repeated often enough, become perceived as truth, and they utilize the media to disseminate those lies far and wide. That’s one of the MOs from the republican playbook. Fortunately, in this case, however, they have been unsuccessful in their continued attempts to make this assertion stick. No one outside of their own circles believes any of this hooey. And I’m not even sure they themselves believe it, but rather, just keep saying it in the hopes it will somehow catch on. It won’t.
Hey Joe, what is hooey. Could it be the comments that someone who makes comments on everything makes.
Trying to delete the past merely leaves us with our memory of what was there — which in Danny Moore’s case, was written up where he cannot erase it.
Somehow, I’m betting the “deleted” posts are still around in an opposition research file someplace. Even if they are not, I’m pretty certain that if questions about the 2020 election are asked, there either will be
The GOP needs to be marginalized. Only a party that is willing to appeal to the people and accept the judgment of the voters ought to be in power. And for now, it seems NEITHER of those standards will be met by the Ganahl-Moore ticket.
Lie down with dogs, get up with fleas.
Very powerful statement for dogs.