Regardless of who might be leading in the Colorado Republican Primary, the state’s Republican Party leadership has introduced the idea that the state party should endorse former President Donald Trump and that any other GOP candidates should drop out of the Colorado primary race.
Never mind that Trump’s ability to be on that ballot is now a case appealed before the Colorado Supreme Court. Brought by a group representing both Republican and Unaffiliated voters, the case focuses on the premise that Trump is prevented from being on the ballot by the 14th Amendment because of his role in inciting an insurrection on January 6, 2020, to prevent the peaceful transfer of power.
State GOP Chair Dave Williams. Image courtesy of 9News.
The Colorado Republican Party jumped in to join the lawsuit on Trump’s side. Their argument is that the voters, not the courts, should decide which presidential candidates to nominate and send to the White House.
But a proposal circulated last week by former Monument Councilwoman Darcy Schoening turns that on its head. Its thesis: the Colorado Republican Party’s central committee should just adopt a resolution endorsing Trump (making Trump the party’s choice before voters have a chance to weigh in) and tell any other Republican candidates to drop out ahead of the state’s March 5 Super Tuesday primary.
So there’s that.
Then, just this past week, former state Rep. Ron Hanks, who is a fervent 2020 election denier announced that the GOP members of the canvassing board really only existed to praise Hitler (that’s his term for the Colorado Secretary of State Jenna Griswold). Hanks was also in the mob at the January 6 insurrection that sought to prevent Congress from certifying the 2020 presidential election.
In his first act as the Colorado Republican Party’s official leader on election security, Hanks told five local GOP leaders on the election canvass board not to sign off on the certification results of the 2023 election. All five, representing some big Colorado counties, have reportedly refused to certify their election results.
At this point, there are five Republican candidates on the Colorado primary presidential ballot: Trump and his leading challengers, South Carolina Governor Nikki Haley, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, businessman Vivek Ramaswamy, and former New Jersey Governor Chris Christie.
I suspect they pushing for this to give the Colorado Supreme Court some incentive to dismiss the case of 14C3 against Trump. If the Supreme Court were to disqualify Trump, and he was the only one on the GOP Primary Ticket, then all GOP voters in Colorado would have no one to vote for.
This would truly be in violation of Colorado’s State Constitution:
Colorado Constitution:
Section 5. Freedom of elections. All elections shall be free and open; and no power,
civil or military, shall at any time interfere to prevent the free exercise of the right of suffrage.
James Youngblood of the Villages, Florida
I don’t know if you’ve heard – there’s at least 4 other people running for the GOP nomination. In their own ways, each one of them is just as bad as DJT, but I think that Ramaswamy leads the pack in terms of conspiratorial idiocy and being a hateful and fundamentally unlikeable person, so I assume the GOP will rally around him if anything happens to the Trump candidacy.