Colorado Republicans - Keep Fighting, It'll Get Better
One party states become lazy & corrupt - we, all of us, need you.
Ok, this election was incredibly demoralizing for you Republicans. You lost a State House seat in fucking Douglas County! CO-3 is down to the wire and even if you don’t lose there, it isn’t supposed to be competitive.
I get it. It sucks. Big time. But how do you think us Democrats felt for 8 years of George W. Bush. And then after 8 good years, we learned that it could be much worse then Bush when we got 4 years of Donald Trump. You’re suffering for the next 2 years is nothing compared to what we went through. But we made it through and you will too.
And you’ll come back. First off, with such heavy control of the state legislature the Democrats will over-reach. Guaranteed. It’s human nature. They’ll read the overwhelming Democratic wave as support for a very progressive platform and will go enact it.
Why (some of) us Democrats Want You to Win
Part of being a vibrant democracy is everyone feels their voice is heard and their needs are being met. If the conservative part of the state feels shut out, they become uninvested in our democracy and uninvested in our state. That is bad.
In addition, having a wide range of philosophies and viewpoints in the crafting of legislation leads, usually, to better legislation. In the compromises and trades required to pass bi-partisan legislation, often what is crafted works well. The negotiation improves it.
Finally a one party state becomes corrupt. We presently have a very clean government. But that will not remain is it is dominated by either party for 20+ years. We need the party in the minority to be big enough and powerful enough that they can identify and publicize problems.
How You Can Come Back
Sitting on your ass waiting for Democratic overreach is not going to be sufficient. Yes it’ll get you a couple of seats back in the legislature. But it’s not going to get you any state wide seats. It’s not going to bring you even close to getting a majority in the legislature. To come back you need to do two things.1
First, you need to move beyond Donald Trump and the big lie. You don’t need to be a Liz Cheney but you do need to be a Brian Kemp. You need to be done with Trump, you need to acknowledge who wins elections. And you can’t play footsie with the MAGA base.
You had a good candidate in Pam Anderson and a decent one in Joe O’Dea. But they could not bring themselves to cleanly break from the crazies. And that killed their chances. You don’t get to be a little bit pregnant and by the same measure, you don’t get to be a little bit MAGA crazy yet still appeal to the sane moderate center.
Second you need to separate from the RMGO and other grifters. All of these people & groups demanding philosophical purity do so for their own financial gain even though they know it hurts the Republican party’s prospects in elections. Push them out so they’re shouting from outside the party. Ignore them.
What will happen? You’ll lose some primaries to opponents that have drunk the Kool Aid. But the reasonable thoughtful candidates that make it through the primary will then be strong challengers in the general election.
More important, if most of your candidates, including all of your state wide candidates, are sane thoughtful professional people, that then reflects on the party as a whole. And that will boost every candidate.
If you take back your party, you can return this state to purple.