PERRY: Modern history of Boebert and her GOP rivals is no laughing matter

A very long time ago, I was treated to a college history prof who was actually able to enthrall bored teenagers with tales we would never forget.

Most of us came to class with our heads stuffed with the dates and exposition of heroes pitted against villains during the eons that humans have been keeping track of such things.

But what Professor Carla Joy explained is that history is also crammed with endless episodes of stupid people doing stupid things or just episodes of aimless stupidity.

I marveled when I found out that brutal fascist Benito Mussolini was a clandestine and crappy romance writer. He charmed Italians with pompous tough talk. He made “Italy First” a thing that others would imitate. He told people that he alone could and did fix everything. He admired and joined up with some pretty sick folks back then.

In between terrorizing his own people, he published “The Cardinal’s Mistress.

 It was a torrid and horrid waste of pulp that pitted the Church against a randy priest because of his insatiable burning loins of heaving desire for a woman. It was difficult to tell it from parody.

Which brings us to 2024, and to Congressperson Lauren Boebert, R-Who Knows, Who Cares.

It’s been hard to miss, but if your coma just lifted, Boebert came to Aurora a few years ago and told visiting Texas Dem star Beto O’Rourke to take her gun over her flat-lined body. Then she went home to Rifle and got elected as a Republican to Congress.

Boebert told everybody how stupid they are and how much she loves guns, Donald Trump and ammo, but especially guns and Donald Trump. She yelled at President Joe Biden and barely got re-elected in 2022 in her solid GOP district running against a Democrat from Aspen.

After that, she yelled a lot more and got caught last year on camera at a Broadway production of Beetlejuice in Denver vaping in the theater and rubbing her date’s crotch while he rubbed her breasts.

She got into a few public rows with her recently divorced husband, and when it became apparent in December that she was totally unelectable, she moved to Weld County, She’s running for that congressional district seat against eight other Republicans, all seeking the GOP nomination.

So all this modern, local history involving a congressperson who thinks climate change is fake and funny, that Trump was the best president ever, and still is because he beat Biden in 2020, reached her pinnacle last week. It was while the herd of Republicans gathered for the first time in public to vie for votes from folks who mostly still lament that Trump isn’t in the White House instead of headed to the big house.

Among these Republicans is former state lawmaker Jerry Sonnenberg, a farmer, rancher and infamous secessionist. He’s been howling over making northeast Colorado the 51st state when he isn’t accusing Gov. Jared Polis of something and everything.

During the pandemic, when we, the media, literally, had near-daily press conferences with Polis and a roomfull of health and safety officials answering our every question, Sonnenberg said Polis was hiding stuff. He wrote this to the Sentinel in 2020.

“The lack of transparency regarding this pandemic is appalling,” he wrote in an opinion column. “We see only what the governor and his team choose to share — but that is what happens when a dictator is unchallenged and the press becomes his mouthpiece.”

Evidence and data have never concerned Sonnenberg much. Tough talk does.

It’s much the same with GOP State Rep. Mike Lynch, who was the House minority leader until a few days ago.

He lost that job last week after the Denver Post revealed that Lynch had gotten a DUI in 2022 near Fort Collins, driving 95 mph on I-25. He made the cop who pulled him over pretty nervous when Lynch admitted that he had a handgun in his pocket and a knife in the other.

Makes you wonder what kind of social life and fears far-right extremists have out there on the plains.

Lynch was caught on cop-cam asking about keeping this all away from the media. He sat on the convictions, until he got outed, first about his past, and then from his leadership role.

He wasn’t alone among the GOP hopefuls for Ken Buck’s soon-to-empty 4th Congressional seat who not only profess their love of lawmen, but have had run-ins with them.

Six of the nine Republicans running for Buck’s congressional seat admitted they, too, had been arrested or charged with crimes.

Republican voters in the audience gave the admissions a rousing round of applause.

Lynch wasn’t finished with Boebert yet, however. Her sudden move from the Western Slope all the way to eastern Colorado for a fresh start from a bad marriage and to save a GOP congressional seat here, because she had incinerated one in Rifle, has supercharged her competitors.

“Could you give the definition of ‘carpetbagger?’” Lynch queried Boebert as the Republicans in the Ft. Lupton crowd gave up some “ooooohs” an “arrrrgs.”

Boebert’s modus operandi is based on the false belief that if one talks loudly, everything sounds sensible and profound. Boebert, and much of what’s left of the Republican Party in Congress, are daily proof of that misnomer.

After a few hard blinks and some jaw movements I’ve seen previously in TMJ patients, she stared at particularly nothing and terse-smiled her response while jilting her neck.

“Is this a Mary Poppins question?”

At this point, I’d like to give Boebert credit for knowing not only who Mary Poppins even is, but that in one scene of the 1960s classic, Poppins “magically” pulls large items from her travel bag — made out of carpet.

Carpet bag. Mary Poppins. Get it?

What she didn’t address is where the word “carpetbagger” really does come from.

The term was coined by southerners after the Civil War. It was a derogatory word for northerners, often carrying cheap luggage made of cloth and carpeting, who descended on the region during The Reparation as conniving and often opaque opportunists.

I can imagine they told weird chummy stories in an effort to build confidence, and in reality torching it.

Like the time last year during congressional hearing testimony about drug prices Boebert lobbed this gem.

“I left a prescription at a pharmacy once. I went to get birth control … The price was very, very high … And I said, ‘It’s cheaper to have a kid.’ And I left it there, and now I have my third son.”

As it turns out, Boebert straw-polled last week in the middle among those who attended the gathering.

History in the making.

She and others leave behind a trail of tales for a future ignorant teen to scoff over as some future college prof delights the class with stuff they’ll have a hard time believing actually happened, right here in Colorado.

Follow @EditorDavePerry on BlueSky, Threads, Mastodon, Twitter and Facebook or reach him at 303-750-7555 or dperry@SentinelColorado.com