By Jimmy Sengenberger | SOURCE: Gazette
Move over, old guard Republican Establishment. There’s a new Establishment sheriff in town.
This week, Colorado GOP Chairman Dave Williams used the party’s official email account to declare his bid for the 5th Congressional District seat being vacated by U.S. Rep. Doug Lamborn. He embedded his campaign press release while pledging to remain chairman — raising eyebrows given the chair’s job is to elect Republican candidates, including ensuring fairness in the primaries.
Let’s be clear: Irrespective of party, clinging to leadership while using your position as a political booster seat is as ethical as selling ice to an Eskimo.
Williams refuses the same courtesy to other congressional candidates, punting the decision to the party’s executive committee. You can’t miss the hypocrisy, especially since Williams reportedly counseled former COGOP Vice Chairwoman Priscilla Rahn to resign before running for Douglas County commissioner.
He likewise abandons tradition. As The Denver Gazette editorialized, in 2002, former U.S. Rep. Bob Beauprez honorably resigned as chairman to run for Congress. In 2019, when Congressman Ken Buck, an incumbent without a primary challenger, snagged the chairmanship, Republicans knew what they were getting with a sitting U.S. representative as their chairman.
Meanwhile, Williams gets a lift from RINO Watch Colorado — a small band of masked crusaders hell-bent on exposing all “Republicans In Name Only” (RINOs).
“The grassroots meanwhile appear to be strongly united behind Dave Williams,” they wrote. “And that is freaking out the UniParty.” (A Republican is really a Democrat — unless the arbiters deem otherwise.)
Last October, RINO Watch’s unsolicited email newsletter hit the inboxes of unsuspecting Republicans statewide, unveiling a “RINO Wall of Shame” (RWOS). How’d they get all the emails? Did Williams share the party’s rolodex?
Enter the omniscient potentates of Republican orthodoxy, who divine the true colors of institutions like the Independence Institute and Advance Colorado. Both spearheaded the successful opposition to Proposition HH last year, but they stand accused as “RINO/Establishment.”
While Colorado Senate Republicans actually challenge Democratic legislative dominance, the arbiters slap them with the RINO label. Former GOP gubernatorial nominee Heidi Ganahl — the latest RWOS inductee — stands accused of launching a “shadow Republican Party.”
It’s hard to tell who the “Real Republicans” are, but apparently, they include Williams and Ron Hanks. As the GOP’s election security committee guy, Hanks urged county Republican parties to refuse to certify the election that quashed HH. (Five followed suit.) Now, he’s eyeing the 3rd Congressional District seat being vacated by Lauren Boebert, even though he reportedly lives in the 7th Congressional District himself.
“Grassroots warrior Ron Hanks enters the race for the CD3 GOP nomination after Rep. Lauren Boebert abandons her constituents,” they wrote. Boebert, however, “surrender(ed) CD3 to the enemy” by running for the 4th Congressional District.
Weston Imer, the 20-year-old Republican wunderkind at Prodigy Consulting Group, told me he was hired to help with the newsletter setup and layout, list imports, graphics and hosting their address. He denied doing other tasks, including the newsletter content and their website design (seemingly a relic of a 2000s Yahoo GeoCities webpage).
So, who are these mysterious caped crusaders? They sure aren’t the Founding Fathers needing the “Publius” pseudonym. They may fancy themselves vigilante heroes like Batman, but they aren’t Bruce Wayne, either.
According to Imer, RINO Watch consists of multiple individuals; it isn’t a formal organization. While he left it to his former clients to reveal themselves, he did extend a tease from them.
“It’s not hard to find out who it is,” Imer quoted them saying.
Let’s be serious: When you appoint yourselves custodians of GOP legitimacy, tasked with separating wheat from chaff and branding the RINOs, all while wielding official party machinery and (apparently) their exclusive email list — you aren’t fighting the Establishment.
You are the Establishment.
If you’re in the RINO Hunters Club, you can manipulate party infrastructure, receive adulation and get a pass on dubious behavior.
If you’re out, you’re dunked on by cowardly keyboard vigilantes, casting stones whilst hiding behind an Oz-like curtain of anonymity.
“In the long run of history, the censor and the inquisitor have always lost,” the American historian, Alfred Whitney Griswold, once observed. “The only sure weapon against bad ideas is better ideas.” Alas, the new Establishment largely disregards policy ideas. They’re uninterested in policy debates with Democrats.
Forget Reagan’s 11th Commandment — no speaking ill of fellow Republicans. Here, your 98% ally is just a 2% foe.
“Instead of highlighting what makes them a better choice than Democrats, they condemn Republicans who don’t pass their purity test,” Jon Caldara wrote this week.
That purity test keeps changing; there isn’t a RINO rubric. Rather, placing blame on those who disagree with their tactics is a convenient — if ultimately futile — way to explain away their repeated failures.
The theatrics of the New Republican Establishment feels like a comical parody of Mel Brooks’ classic, “History of the World: Part I,” giving Democrats a hearty laugh.
I keep anticipating they’ll break into a RINO Inquisition musical, complete with song, dance and choreographed political moves.
“Let all those who wish to confess their evil ways and accept and embrace the True Republicans convert now or forever burn on the RINO Wall of Shame. For now begins the Inquisition!”
“The Inquisition (What a show!)
The Inquisition (Here we go!)
We know you’re wishing that we go away
But the Inquisition’s here, and it’s here to stay!”
Jimmy Sengenberger is an investigative journalist, public speaker, and host of “The Jimmy Sengenberger Show” Saturdays from 6 a.m. to 9 a.m. on News/Talk 710 KNUS. Reach Jimmy online at Jimmysengenberger.com or on X (formerly Twitter) @SengCenter.