We’re just going to put it out there: The Republican brand is so damaged in some parts of the state that many faithful party voters won’t even admit their leanings in public anymore.
We’re not saying the party doesn’t bear some blame.
Too often if a conservative goes off script, the establishment media blows it out of proportion until the lot of us are branded by Democrats as racists, Nazis, and mortal enemies of the woke and politically fashionable.
And then there’s Trump, who can’t help but be Trump.
But gone are our conservative leaders once dedicated to educating young and old Republicans alike on the mission, the principles, and unification of our party.
We’ve been reduced to a hollow bumper sticker slogan, the acronym of which is sneered in the public square.
The GOP base that believes in the party’s principles of conservatism, a free market, and freedoms guaranteed in the Bill of Rights, are now divided in our own party by some who see it as a means for their own personal power.
Until Saturday, when many in the base pushed back and stood up to the new Colorado party leadership attempting to close our primary elections to conservatives and moderates alike who no longer want to register with any political party.
Or as the media described it, “angry chaos,” because making Republicans look bad is their job.
“I hope the media is not here, because we’re going to look terrible,” state Rep. Anthony Hartsook tells the Colorado GOP’s central committee as its meeting as it devolves into angry chaos #copolitics
— Jesse Aaron Paul ☀ (@JesseAPaul) August 5, 2023
An amendment to change party bylaws and allow absent voting members of the state GOP’s central committee to be automatically counted as “yes” votes mercifully failed to reach the two-thirds vote required to pass.
It was a bizarre sort of ballot harvesting scheme that chairman David Williams backed to get the votes he needed to pass the closed-primary measure, which also required a super-majority vote to pass.
Contrary to the evidence, there are many Republicans who are convinced Democrats would throw away their vote to cast ballots in a GOP primary instead of their own.
But even Pew Research shows how independent voters are crucial for Republicans to win elections.
And shutting independents out of Republican primary elections so that their only choice to participate in elections is siding with Democrats is just lousy politics, and unAmerican.
This should have been a major consideration before the CO GOP took it too far. Their fear of “democrats interfering in elections” is not worth us losing support of more unaffiliated voters. #copolitics https://t.co/xYwMiTjtrz
— Maddison Meeks (@maddisonmeeks12) August 5, 2023