Within the white bubble
The Park County so-called Republicans (in the white bubble) and the Park County Democrats (wide open to the beautiful blue day) were nearly side by side at the Park County Fair this year. Do you see the obvious? Do you have a thousand words to describe what you see? Is bubble a telling metaphor?
Consider this. The Colorado Republican Party is the only classification of active registered voters that declined in numbers from August 1, 2022, to August 1, 2023. The Colorado Democratic Party increased its numbers for the same period. The kicker, though, is the Unaffiliated registrants. They also increased in numbers, now totaling nearly 50% of all Colorado active registered voters. Imagine that.
Let’s talk about that bubble, the one the Repugnants are comfortable within.
Dave Williams, the brave new Colorado Repugnant Party Chair, has filed suit against the Secretary of State to keep Unaffiliated voters from participating in Repugnant primaries.
Proposition 108 was passed overwhelmingly by voters in 2016. It allows Unaffiliated voters to cast primary ballots for either Democrats or Republicans but not both. And, one would think, that since nearly 50% of all active registered voters are Unaffiliated, it would make sense to allow them to vote in party primaries if only to express to the party honchos who We the People would like to see on the general election ballot.
Williams, though, says “The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result. We’ve tried the open primary for three cycles now and Republicans have lost more ground with each successive election.”
Hmm… I would suggest to Williams that the problem is not the open primary. Rather, the problem is the Repugnant Party. They’re losing ground because they have become, yes, repugnant. They weren’t always Repugnant. They are now.
Those who still cherish the values of the Republican Party, take pride in referring to it as the party of Lincoln, abjuring Repugnant revisionism that insists it is the party of Trump. In fact, the true inheritors of Lincoln’s party are the likes of those Republicans who refused to accept the Big Lie, who saw honor in supporting the Constitution and placed country over party rather than cave to Trump’s demands. The Georgia Secretary of State, Brad Raffensberger, comes to mind. As do Trump-appointed judges who refused to consider bogus Big Lie lawsuits. Republican state legislators who spurned attempts to appoint Trump electors to overturn the 2020 election must be acknowledged. There are others. Many others.
Back to Williams. He goes a step further. He wants to modify the so-called Colorado GOP bylaws and bypass state law by allowing the Central Committee to count votes not cast by absent committee members as Yes votes. State law requires 75% of the Central Committee to agree by their vote to opt out of open primaries. So, let’s say some members don’t show up for the vote, and only, oh, 72% of the Repugnants vote to opt-out. No to worry, says Williams. It doesn’t matter that some committee members didn’t show up and didn’t vote. We’ll just say they were there and voted Yes. Problem solved.
I’d say that’s a kind of smoke-and-mirrors shuffle, relegating We the People to a voiceless nonentity within which what used to be the party of Lincoln. For Williams, We the People are, I suppose, only those who occupy the delusional bubble. Folks who are proud of their support for the penultimate grifter of all time, the Grand Poobah of Mar-a-Lago.
UPDATE: There may yet be hope. The Colorado Sun reports this morning (July 6, 2023) that the GOP Central Committee did not approve the amendment to the bylaws that would have allowed the smoke and mirrors shuffle to count absent votes as Yes votes. The vote was 186.83 to 149.16 which “…was preceded by an hour and a half of fierce debate that often devolved into yelling and sometimes pitted sitting Republican state lawmakers against each other.” The Colorado Sun story is here.
