If the company you keep defines you, then the Colorado GOP has confirmed it is comfortable with crazy. In one week, it featured two players from MAGA's minor leagues — Laura Loomer and Kari Lake. These two charmers have yet to break through to the majors — to do that, they would have to win an election in the polling booths, not just in their imagination, or score regular gigs on Fox, not just the RW media’s lunatic fringe — but they are darlings on the local GOPs rubber-chicken circuit.
As Krista Kafer, a columnist for The Denver Post, wrote:
”Last week, the party’s Twitter account hyped a video conversation between Dave Williams, chair of the state’s GOP, and Laura Loomer, a self-described white nationalist and islamophobe, her words, not mine. Loomer routinely spreads loony conspiracy theories about mass shootings and elections including her own loss in a Florida congressional primary race. Naturally, she blamed election fraud and has refused to concede.”
Adding: “Loomer was banned from ride-share services Lyft and Uber after a daylong Twitter harangue against Muslims.”
Kafer then addressed Arizona’s most vocal opponent of sanity.
“A couple days after tweeting about the Loomer-Williams interview, the Colorado Republican Party welcomed Kari Lake, failed Arizona gubernatorial candidate, as the party’s annual fundraising dinner speaker. Lake, an election conspiracy theorist, has yet to concede her loss to Katie Hobbs in 2022 blaming election fraud sans evidence. She attempted to overturn the election results in court but thus far has lost every case.
Adding: “Lake has accused Gov. Hobbs and other elected Democrats of taking bribes from drug cartels and pushed for the imprisonment of Hobbs and journalists for unspecified election crimes.”
The Colorado GOP’s embrace of these two reflects — and is a product of — political reality. How so? There are four kinds of citizens.
- Those who never vote. Even in 2020, a year that generated huge electoral tallies in Biden’s thrashing of the incompetent incumbent — over 158 million living citizens voted — a full third of eligible Americans (33.4%) did not cast a ballot.
- Those who vote in general elections
- Those who vote in all elections, including primaries
- Those who are also active in local parties
It is the last who are the tail that wags the dog. Most people who vote choose from among the candidates on offer. The party activists are most influential in deciding who the candidates will be — they control the party money being doled out. And unfortunately for democracy and common sense, in the GOP, these people tend to be swivel-eyed fanatics.
In solid red states, this has little impact on Presidential elections. And because gerrymandering has reduced the number of competitive seats, it blunts the effect locally. But in purpler states — like Colorado — the descent to derangement devastates the GOP’s chances.
In Lake’s home state Arizona, the local GOP has done Republican prospects in the state no favors. It is home to Christofascists and other rabid righties. Ignoring political reality, it still backs total abortion bans and the repeal of same-sex marriage. And it has been second to none in election conspiracies. Even paleoconservative Arizonan Barry Goldwater — a man considered a dangerous extremist by his contemporaries — would have thought these people nuts.
Kari Lake was also the headliner at the Michigan GOP’s September biennial fundraiser on Mackinac Island. This year, the event, which in 2015 attracted six presidential candidates, featured just the politically miasmic Vivek Ramaswamy. The nearly bankrupt party also shelled out $110,000 for screen Jesus Jim Caviezel to offer his QAnon viewpoint. It was a financial bust. And the party is $500,000 in debt.
Pre-MAGA, the Michigan GOP was a financial and political force. Since it fell pray to madness, the GOP has seen the Democrat Gretchen Whitmer win the governorship twice, and the Democrats gain majorities in the state House and Senate. In addition, the other top three statewide posts, Lt. Governor., Secretary of State, and Attorney General, are also in Democratic hands.
The hegemony achieved in 2022 shut the GOP out of state power for the first time in 40 years. (Note: in the 2023 local elections, two incumbent House Democrats won mayoral elections. Leaving the House tied until special elections restore the Democratic majority.)
Trump promised the GOP they would get tired of winning. Who knew he meant the Republicans would get tired of the Democrats winning? When MAGA goes the way of the Know Nothing Party, I suggest its biography be named ‘Lord of the Flies’.