If Colorado Republicans elected a perfect angel at the March 11 convention to lead the party, it’s unlikely the media will ever stop looking for ways to discredit the new chair until they dig up some derogatory statement once uttered.
“Was your first word as a toddler ‘mama’ or ‘birth person,’” we expect some reporter would ask.
Then the new leader would be accused of supporting the Club Q shooter if they confessed it was “mama.”
The media already reported this week the crazy fix was in because Republican State Board of Education member Stephen Varela has dropped out of the race.
UPDATE: Stephen Varela, the only non election denier running for @cologop chair, tells me he’s dropped out of the race. #copolitics https://t.co/yh13r87FLd
— Kyle Clark (@KyleClark) February 21, 2023
Then they trashed him for not being a party switcher.
Varela’s party changes: Republican -> Democrat -> Unaffiliated -> Republican -> Democrat -> Republican -> Democrat -> Republican -> Democrat -> Republican -> Democrat -> Republican -> Democrat -> Republican -> Democrat -> Republican -> Unaffiliated -> Democrat -> Republican
— Kyle Clark (@KyleClark) February 21, 2023
Colorado Politics explained:
For more than a decade, Varela regularly changed his registration, switching affiliation 17 times since 2011, from Democrat to unaffiliated to Republican in various sequences, The Colorado Sun reported last year. Varela said he often switched parties in order to vote in primaries. The Democratic party left him, he said, adding: “I am and will continue to be a Republican.”
Varela might have made some inroads with the party base after the Pueblo Democrat Party chair used one of his campaign signs as target practice with her AR-15.
But playing whack-a-mole with his party registration is definitely a deal breaker.
So now the media has tagged the entire field of GOP chair candidates as election deniers, which is code for threat to democracy.
Announced candidates for party chair include Erik Aadland, Kevin Lundberg, Tina Peters, Casper Stockham, Dave Williams, and Aaron Wood.
Former Republican Party chair Dick Wadhams offered some nails for their coffins
“All six of these candidates are disasters, every one of them,” Wadhams said in an interview. “It’s just going to be a wasteland at the Colorado Republican Party for the next two years.”
“I never thought the party would sink this low. It’s just amazing,” he said. “Who would a mainstream Republican vote for in this crowd? I just don’t know.”
Not that we’re cynical (we are), but Democrats and their friends in the media have done such a fine job of tarnishing the GOP’s image in Colorado, it’s unlikely Jesus Christ Himself could turn the tide at the upcoming party reorg election.
The media would probably tag him as a right-wing Christian hardliner.