Jason Gemmer will listen to y’all…

Any Yahoo can listen. We need a doer, my friend!

The PR Chair for the MAGA-oriented Park County Republican Central Committee, Kimberly Gregory, interviewed Jason Gemmer, the Central Committee’s candidate for District 2 commissioner, during Burro Days in Fairplay.

“Jason, you’re running for, ah, Park County, ah, Commissioner? Right?” Gregory asks.

“Correct,” says Gemmer.

“Why are you running? And what do you, ah, have to offer Park County?”

“Let’s start with the last question,” Gemmer says. “My offers to Park County are to have somebody involved in government that doesn’t necessarily want to be involved with government but wants to help out the people and be for them. Do my best for the county and their concerns; listen to ‘em all.”

“Awesome,” says Gregory.

“The reason I’m running,” Gemmer continues, “is, ah, is because I believe that this county is going to be pushed very hard toward the Democrat Party by the Democrat elites. My opinion is I want to keep this county red. I want this county to be free as possible. And I want the freedom for the people.”

Here’s the video of that conversation so anyone can FactCheck my transcription.

You will note that prominent in Ms. Gregory’s video is the Park County Democratic Party booth in the background. I’m not sure what optics Ms. Gregory was going for. Perhaps she intended to evoke the fear factor that resonates well with MAGAites: “Be afraid, be very afraid. Give them an inch, and they’ll take a mile. First, they set up a booth at Burro Days—Look at all that blue!!!—and the next thing you know, they’ll want to establish a health district east of Kenosha!”

Or maybe Gregory didn’t notice all that blue while framing her shot.

Gemmer offers Park County someone who, as he says, doesn’t necessarily want to be involved in government.

I live in District 2, the district Gemmer wants to represent, and by God, he’d better want to be involved in government. I expect and demand that whoever wins the District 2 commissioner seat be 110% involved in county government and that his devotion to county government is 24/7, specifically in the best interests of me, my neighbors, and the county. Just listening to me and my neighbors won’t cut it. Any Yahoo can listen. I require whoever wins to DO, to ACT, to use whatever is possible within the law to make northeast Park County more liveable, business-friendly, safer, and more attuned to the specific requirements of this portion of the county where over 60% of the county resides. That $101,180 yearly salary, our tax money, isn’t just for listening, buckaroo.

Gemmer then explains why he’s running for the District 2 commissioner’s seat. He says Democratic elites are pushing the county toward the Democratic Party. He doesn’t like that and wants to keep the county red. He wants freedom for the people.

That’s it. Mic drop. The fat lady has sung.

But wait a damned minute.

One would expect a person running for public office, especially for a county commissioner seat, to express an intent to work within the government to undertake serious efforts to accomplish the desires of the majority of his constituency. Indeed, while respecting those who don’t share majority views, he must balance the foreseeable good of any endeavor that will affect the total community: health care, recreation, zoning that respects residential neighborhoods, business opportunities, prioritization of road repairs, wildfire planning, and wildfire mitigation efforts, and assuring the health and safety of the district is as good as it must be to protect us all, and a thousand other concerns.

But Gemmer doesn’t approach it that way. Instead, he approaches it from an ideologically driven, incontrovertibly MAGAtized perception of the world that identifies red and blue as the only considerations worth making when seeking public office. Red is good. Everything that isn’t red is evil. Red is freedom. Anything that isn’t red is tyranny.

What else does one need except MAGA platitudes to win a commissioner seat in Park County?

By the way, Gemmer’s approach is the mantra of the Park County Republican Central Committee. Gemmer has not fallen far from that tree.

When Gemmer talks about Democratic elites pushing the county toward the Democratic Party in Park County, one cannot help but wonder who the hell he’s talking about. Are these the most intelligent people in the county? The wealthiest? The most entrepreneurial? The most innovative? The most powerful? Who are they?

Or has Gemmer latched onto MAGA bugaboos and bogeymen, those words guaranteed to get a visceral kneejerk reaction from the MAGA faithful in the Age of Trump, those thoughtless responses that are the foundation of politics as performance art?

To paraphrase Sheakespeare’s Macbeth, can those terms be characterized as “…tales told by idiots that are full of sound and fury that signify nothing” other than the scarcity of the teller’s intellectual honesty and the unthinking obsequiousness of the MAGA faithful’s responses?

Note to Gemmer: Rural counties across this country are significantly conservative, “red” if you will. No amount of elitist pushing is going to shove them into the Democratic Party. What does occur, however, is true conservatives, those beholding to the essential tenets of conservatism, Lincoln Republicans, as opposed to mindless politics as performance art MAGAites, will occasionally see the desperate deficiencies of a candidate running as a Republican who does not mirror their rock-solid conservative values, or, perhaps more importantly, is a jerk and has always been a jerk. At those times, the alternative candidate’s integrity, abilities, and vision matter more than dogmatic adherence to the party.