Jon Caldara
Yep, the Colorado Republican Party can be completely dysfunctional and embarrassing. It has elements many call “ultra-right wing”, or “alt-right.”
And you shouldn’t care because it just doesn’t matter.
There is no bigger non-story in Colorado than Republican infighting. How could there be? They have no political relevance. None. They are the super-minority. Democrats control the state’s executive branch of government, the judicial branch, and boy howdy do they control the state legislature.
There is only one real story in town and it’s getting harder and harder to keep it suppressed. It’s the growing civil war inside the alt-left that run our state.
The rumors of complete embarrassment and behind-closed-doors dysfunction in the Colorado Democratic Party are already legendary. But now the dysfunction is spilling out for all to see.
With at least six members of the Democratic Socialists for America among their ranks, and many more sympathizers in the legislature to mention, there seems to be a new breed of Stalinist-styled viciousness echoing through the halls of the State Capitol.
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Like MAGA supporters wearing buffalo horns and ransacking Nancy Pelosi’s office, these folks just can’t contain themselves. But the slight little difference here is these protesters are also our lawmakers.
Just in time for our own awkward family Thanksgiving dinners, they treated us to a legislative special session supposedly regarding “property tax relief.” But they turned it into a clown show followed by a socialist-styled redistribution of our TABOR refunds.
There’s been incredible pressure from the media, academia, Hollywood and the political elite on conservatives of all stripes to condemn the ultra-right-wing MAGA crowd who claim Trump’s election was stolen.
That is, we’re supposed to call out fellow conservatives for behaving badly.
How odd then that when liberals and progressives watch their team behave badly there’s little pressure for them to do the same.
For a fun starting point, do a Google search of terms. Search terms like “ultra-right Republican” and you’ll have at least three to four times as many hits as “ultra-left Democrat.” Same if you search “alt-right” versus “alt-left” (try in just the “news” section, too).
It seems those pillars of culture (media, academia, Hollywood), are pretty breezy about labeling people on the right as extreme, but apparently there’s very few extremists on the left.
Does anyone else find that odd?
How is freshman state Rep. Tim Hernandez not labeled ultra-left? The desks in the statehouse chamber have the Colorado and American flags on them. Makes sense given our state reps have taken an oath to both the Colorado and U.S. Constitutions. Hernandez ripped his American flag down to put a Palestinian flag in its place. This is the same guy who refused to condemn the Hamas attacks on Israel.
Isn’t state Rep. Elisabeth Epps alt-left? She took to the House floor to go on a 45-minute, antisemitic tirade about genocide in Gaza during a discussion about, what else, food stamps.
The fun didn’t stop there as Epps then took to the gallery to join fellow Palestinian protesters. When one of her Jewish colleagues took to the House floor and said something she didn’t like she screamed from the balcony he was, “out of order” so often the speaker called the House to recess to have her removed.
Yes, anecdotal stuff, but we see it played out in governments all across Colorado like Denver City Council and school boards.
The overriding theme is the Democratic adults in Colorado refuse to rein in their ultra-left-wing children.
The largest case in point is of course Gov. Jared Polis, who made it very clear during the Proposition HH campaign he did not want to see TABOR refunds used for income redistribution; you know, socialism. On the televised debate he said, “rather than keep redistributing more and more money let’s just cut taxes period.”
Yet the bills now sent to him only redistribute TABOR refunds from those who paid more in taxes to those who paid much less, if not nothing at all, in taxes.
If true to his words, Polis must veto those bills.
But if five years of Gov. Polis have proven anything, it’s that he cannot stand up to the vicious alt-left of his party, many of whom are now making it clear they’re not fond of Jews like him.
Jon Caldara is president of the Independence Institute in Denver and hosts “The Devil’s Advocate with Jon Caldara” on Colorado Public Television Channel 12. His column appears Sundays in Colorado Politics.