A Path Forward for Colorado Republicans

Ditch the crazies and make peace with secularists.

By any measure Colorado Republicans got their asses handed to them yesterday. It was a blowout. What is the path forward? Republicans need to do two main things.

First, ditch the crazies. No more putting up with people like Tina Peters and their conspiracy fantasies. No more tolerating violent rhetoric from the likes of Joe Oltmann. Besides being wrong, such dangerous nonsense scares the bejeezus out of normal voters.

Second, stop making everything about religion. We get it: Many Republicans want to ban abortion on religious grounds. The head of the state GOP, Kristi Burton Brown, first made a name for herself trying to ban abortion through ballot measures.

Yet not many years ago I attended a Republicans for Choice event with former Senator Hank Brown. Guess what: Abortion is legal in Colorado, and it’s going to stay that way (barring federal interference). Legal abortion is the morally correct position, and trying to ban abortion is a political loser in Colorado. Also, no, Republicans are not ordained by their God to reform the country. Knock it off with such divisive nonsense.

Still a Libertarian Spirited State

Although Progressives now rule the roost in Colorado government, neither hard-left Progressivism nor religious conservatism best fits the overall spirit of the state. Instead, the state traditionally and today leans libertarian, in the broad sense of “fiscally conservative, socially liberal.” Live and let live.

This explains why Coloradans tend to be okay with abortion and legal marijuana but also favor restraints on state spending.

As I write in my review of Jared Polis’s policies, Polis has worked hard to project a broadly libertarian-friendly image, and that partly explains why he helped carry Democrats to victory.

Here’s what Polis told HuffPost on the eve of the election: “We’ve leaned into individual responsibility in Colorado, which is very consistent with our culture as a state. We’re a fiercely independent state that values our freedom.”

This is not a new sentiment in Colorado. As Ryan Sager noted in his 2006 book, “The West has a socially libertarian and anti-federal-government streak as long as the Rocky Mountains.”

A lot of voters, including me, routinely feel stuck between tax-and-regulate Progressives from one party and social-control religious conservatives from the other.

Some may worry that I’m projecting my personal preferences onto state trends. I’ve long leaned into free markets. I once served on the board of the Libertarian Party (back when it was somewhat less crazy than it is now). I joined the Republican Party mainly to try to keep Trump out of the White House. Although I now usually dodge the “libertarian” label due to its baggage, I remain broadly libertarian in that “fiscally conservative, socially liberal” fits me pretty well.

But I don’t think I’m just trying to wish my own preferences onto the state as a whole. As Polis’s rhetoric indicates, Colorado really does have a loosely libertarian heritage.

Of course, Colorado’s demographics have changed a lot as more people have moved into the state. But think about why people tend to move here. To a substantial degree, they are drawn to the “mountain freedom” of Colorado, and they see Colorado as a place where religious conservatives do not dominate culturally or politically.

It would be easy to overstate Colorado’s libertarian tendencies. Voters appear to have approved a couple of important net tax hikes even as they lowered the state income tax rate. In Denver voters elect some self-identified socialists, while in some more conservative parts voters embrace religious fanatics. Still, I think Colorado is more broadly libertarian than it is leftist Progressive or religious conservative.

Republicans Take a Beating

According to preliminary results Wednesday morning, Polis trounced Heidi Ganahl by 17 points. That was the top-of-ticket race, and Ganahl’s incompetently run campaign badly hurt other Republicans. The overall message that Ganahl’s campaign projected is that Republicans are crazy and incompetent, and that message drowned out the more-sensible Republican voices.

Democrats cleaned up in the other state-wide races. They also did surprisingly well in the congressional races. Brittany Pettersen absolutely destroyed Erik Aadland by 17 points. Amazingly, as of Wednesday morning, Adam Frisch and Yadira Caraveo held small leads over Lauren Boebert and Barbara Kirkmeyer (respectively). I thought Boebert would easily win and that Kirkmeyer was the clear favorite. Even if those races end up in the R column, they should have been easy Republican victories, not nail-biters.

That Ganahl fell for a moral panic about “furries” in schools illustrates the general tenor of her campaign. Yes, there was a grain of truth to her claims—a few kids wore cat ears and the like to schools. This was a non-issue. Yet Ganahl and some of her supporters obsessed about this.

Ganahl openly campaigned with the conspiracist John Birch Society, and she appeared on shows with Steve Bannon and Joe Oltmann. To review, Oltmann suggested that Polis be hanged.

Ganahl ran one of the worst high-profile campaigns in Colorado history. She picked horrible advisors, they gave her terrible advice, and she listened to it. And most Republicans either cheered her on or sat on their hands and said nothing. Shameful.

The reason that I voted for Pettersen is that Aadland said the 2020 election was “rigged.” I disagree profoundly with Pettersen’s politics, but she is basically a sensible and decent person who is not actively trying to tear the country apart. If Republicans give me the choice between dangerously crazy and Progressive, I will choose the latter every time.

What about O’Dea? He was a basically decent candidate, but running a political neophyte against a seasoned incumbent is just stupid. Unfortunately, Colorado Republicans have largely destroyed their bench. Because O’Dea holds a moderate position on abortion, the anti-abortion zealots in his party either rejected him or gave him tepid support, while voters concerned about the overthrow of Roe v. Wade went with Michael Bennet. O’Dea’s message was overwhelmed by the craziness coming out of Ganahl’s campaign.

A Choice

Colorado Republicans face a basic choice. They can focus on sensible, prosperity-oriented economic policy and forget their divisive culture-war infatuations, or they can continue to embrace conspiracy fantasies and religious crusades. The majority of voters have been extremely clear about which path leads to political viability.

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