By all appearances the Republicans now in charge of the Colorado party have given up on trying to win elections or grow the party and just want to centralize their own power and play pretend kingmakers.
How else to explain the determination of Chairman Dave Williams and his followers to rig party rules and seize power over the state central committee to dictate who can and cannot be a Republican Party candidate in Colorado?
At the party’s next state meeting on Sept. 30, Williams and his crew will use a convoluted set of rules to kill the party primary process and block voters from choosing who will take on the Democrats in future General Elections.
Instead, the Williams crew wants to consolidate that power to a favored majority of the central committee to select our candidates for us.
The same process worked great for the former Soviet Union, but only because theirs was the only candidate allowed on the ballot.
In present day United States, those tactics aren’t likely to have the same effect. Especially among stubborn Republicans who, as a rule, don’t like being told what to do or who to vote for.
This will be the third time this year Williams has tried to opt out of the primary, the most recent being last month when the first round of rigged rules failed to get them across the finish line.
From The Colorado Sun:
State Sen. Barbara Kirkmeyer, a Weld County Republican who opposes the opt-out push, called the proposed rules for the Sept. 30 meeting “corrupt.”
“It’s just shady and it’s corrupt,” she said, questioning why six pages of rules are needed for the gathering. “Who looks at this stuff?”
Here’s the bottom line:
If the GOP opts out, general election nominees would instead be selected through a version of the caucus and assembly process by a relatively small number of Republicans. That would leave hundreds of thousands of party members out of the process and likely lead to more partisan candidates.
Opting out would also prevent candidates from gathering signatures to get on the ballot.
It appears the Williams crew is just going to keep twisting the rules at every state meeting until they get the desired results to lock the voter out of the nominating process.
Just when it looked like Republicans couldn’t possibly lose any more elections, Williams has found the way.