How not to revive the Colorado GOP: Step 1 | SONDERMANN

Let’s say you have been on a two-decade losing streak. In 20 years, you have won one statewide election for the high office of senator or governor. Even that victory, Cory Gardner’s one-term capture of a U.S. Senate seat, was 11 years ago by a scant margin.

Let’s further, say that your rival party has enjoyed a clean sweep of all state executive offices for the past six years, with none of those elections being remotely close. That other party prevailed in the last two contests for governor, first by 11% and then by 19%, both overwhelming numbers.

Beyond that, your party has rapidly become an afterthought in the Colorado General Assembly. Two decades back and rather consistently before then, your party had run the legislature. Now, it has been reduced to minority status in both houses by nearly two-to-one ratios.

And for the record, your party’s presidential candidate this past year, who swept every “battleground” state on the way to his self-proclaimed “mandate,” lost Colorado to a seemingly weak opponent by double digits.

That outlined above is a recent performance review of the Colorado Republican Party. It is the story of a downward drift from dominance to competitiveness to narrow losses to virtual irrelevance.

Yes, Democrats in Colorado have benefitted from in-migration to go along with superior resources and political infrastructure. But the Colorado GOP has been a willing, eager accomplice to its own demise.

As the Republican Party has narrowed, and narrowed again, moderate voices have departed leaving the reins to the ever more extreme. A party that was once chaired by the likes of Bruce Benson, Bob Beauprez, Ken Buck and Dick Wadhams is now led, for another week anyway, by the noxious Dave Williams.

It is as if those few remaining in the ranks of party activists have signed a suicide pact. They seem intent on sinking ever deeper into wackyville and political oblivion. The smaller the enterprise, the bigger the role that otherwise bit players get to take.

All of which brings us to the Republican Party’s coming Centennial Dinner and their featured guest, none other than the neo-fascist ideologue and white nationalist fanboy, Steve Bannon.

Perhaps Bannon is already in town to make restitution to those he defrauded in his “We Build the Wall” money-laundering gambit for which he was arrested, pardoned by President Trump in the waning hours of the first term, and to which he pled guilty last month in state court.

I can’t wait for the “tough on crime” part of his speech.

That is if his Colorado GOP sponsors can find a venue for these festivities after a prominent hotel in downtown Colorado Springs closed their doors to the event. To be clear, I have little use for such cancellations, no matter how reprehensible the speaker and how horrid his views are.

“America First” was a mistaken approach when espoused in the late 1930s by the likes of Charles Lindbergh and Father Charles Coughlin. It remains a dubious philosophy in the current moment, especially when championed by hateful, self-enriching, alt-right sorts like Bannon.

To just skim the surface of his record, Bannon’s boisterous election denialism paved the path to the Jan. 6th attack on the Constitution. During the height of the pandemic, not exactly a shrinking or sensitive type, Bannon called for the beheading of Dr. Anthony Fauci. He has cheered on the anti-democratic likes of Bolsonaro in Brazil, Orban in Hungary, the Holocaust-minimizing AfD party in Germany and other assorted ultra-right nationalists across Europe.

In January, Bannon saw fit to close a speech with an unmistakable Nazi-like salute. Will he similarly entertain his Colorado Republican audience next week?

Just this past week, Bannon used an appearance on NewsNation to lend his endorsement to Trump running for another term in 2028 in blatant violation of the 22nd Amendment and all democratic norms.

This, my friends, is whom the bright lights at the helm of the state GOP are bringing to town to rally the troops. It might be an expression of their values and what floats their boat. But as a signal to the broad Colorado electorate, it is a contemptuous non-starter.

Given the party’s long slide into the abyss of perpetual defeat, one might think they would choose to put forward a more palatable face with far greater mainstream resonance.

However, sadly, that would be an illusion wholly out of keeping with what has become of the Colorado Republican Party, despite the talent and common-sense moderation to be found here and there among their depleted ranks.

Eric Sondermann is a Colorado-based independent political commentator. He writes regularly for ColoradoPolitics and the Gazette newspapers. Reach him at EWS@EricSondermann.com; follow him at @EricSondermann