Democrats don’t trash their own party members for being “insufficiently” woke, a Socialist or a leftist, while Republicans routinely dismember their own party members for being “insufficiently” Conservative, anti-tax, anti-abortion and so on.
Republicans attacking their fellow GOPers as Republicans in Name Only (RINO) has no parallel stigma on the other side – Democrats in Name Only (DINO.) That’s because the Democrats have learned they win when they charge as a single fighting unit. Republicans are too often fragmented into warring factions.
If only Republicans put the same passion into supporting their Republican candidates that they pour into sabotaging and undermining them.
The sainted Mike Rosen, dean emeritus of Denver talk show hosts, schooled his vast audience for many years with the imperative to “VOTE PARTY NOT PERSON!” This is particularly critical today when many Republicans would rather not vote at all for the Republican candidate, if that person is Insufficiently Conservative according to whatever personal purity test the voter, or even the Party, imposes.
Here in Colorado, that perfectionist attitude has helped fuel a dramatic shift in our state legislature, which has become a Democrat dictatorship with only 12 Republican senators to 23 Democrats, along with an anemic 19 Republican House members to 46 Democrats. These overwhelming numbers have never before been seen at the Capitol. Never.
So why was Rosen right? Because the majority party rules. The majority party makes the rules and runs the government. The majority party gets to put a majority of members on each House and Senate committee to vote for their prosperity-killing, Constitutional rights-usurping, abortion-funding, gun-confiscating, children-corrupting, taking-over-your-life bills. They can kill any Republican bill in Committee, or on the floor.
The Democrat President of the Senate and the Speaker of the House can even decide NOT to allow a Republican bill to enter the legislative process. The only leverage we had was the filibuster to delay and maybe sidetrack their terrible bills. Our slim delegation in 2023 bravely used this tool and held the floor far into the night to speak against the Democrats’ plans. But now, for the first time in over 20 years, the Democrats are using a little-known rule to limit Republican filibusters to just one hour. They have all the power. We have none.
And yet, all over social media and in Republican group meetings a great tribe of pontificators rave on endlessly about the need to purge the RINOS and the Establishment and vote for only the candidates who uphold Conservative “values and principles.” Every Republican should know, three years into the national siege on our Constitution directed from the White House, that Democrats will not uphold Conservative values and principles, but will set them afire and dance their jig of “wokish” glee on the burning pyre.
Same with the edicts the Dems in our statehouse have been torturing us with these many years. It just gets worse. As we lose Colorado House and Senate seats, the Dems rush to the microphones and claim they have a mandate from the people – for more abortion access, more “gender-affirming care,” more anti-gun laws, more control of our schools, our families and our lives. And as long as we keep losing seats, they can’t be stopped.
Yet, we have Republicans who actually admit they would rather lose a seat to the Democrats than vote for a “moderate” Republican. They say absurd things like there are no differences between Republicans and Democrats.
I wasn’t crazy about Joe O’Dea, the Republican nominee for Senate in 2022. But when Ted Harvey, a former state senator and longtime Douglas County political operative, told me he wouldn’t vote for O’Dea or promote him in any way because the candidate would permit abortion up to 22 weeks, I tried to reason with him.
“If your central issue is abortion, (which he had said) then who do you think will murder more babies; Democrat Sen. Michael Bennett who would allow a child killed even as the infant is emerging from the birth canal, or O’Dea who would stop abortion at 22 weeks?” I told him. Ted didn’t answer my question, he just kept repeating he wouldn’t vote for O’Dea.
But, if you don’t vote Republican, you are helping the Democrats win. That’s just the naked mathematical truth. And now Harvey, this “conservative grassroots” influencer who, despite his legislative experience, utterly fails to accept the basic reality of winning elections, is running for CD4 Representative. (Insert hand smacking forehead emoji here.)
As long as Republicans keep undermining Republicans, this will continue to be a major factor in helping us lose. Mark Hampton, the leader of Parker Conservatives, one of Douglas County’s most prominent groups with more than 700 members, has spent the last year savagely attacking and sabotaging Rep. Anthony Harsook, the very same newly-elected Republican who represents Parker in the Colorado House.
During the entire 2023 legislative session, when Rep. Hartsook could have educated and involved these Parker Conservatives in fighting the Democrats’ freedom-killing bills, Hampton banned the group’s elected representative from the group’s monthly meetings. He wouldn’t even allow Hartsook membership in the group, so he could speak on the Parker Conservatives Facebook page. Hampton effectively cancelled Rep. Hartsook just as Democrats consistently cancel the voices of Conservative Republicans.
Hartsook’s mortal sin was to vote for Rep. Julie McCluskie, the Democrat running for Majority Leader on the first day of the 2023 session. But Hartsook wasn’t the only one, in fact the majority of House Republicans (11 out of 19) voted FOR the Democrat. This included Minority Leader Mike Lynch, who actually seconded the nomination of McCluskie. This vote is simply a traditional way of starting the session with the two sides shaking hands. Hampton doesn’t care this is a nothing-burger issue.
Although many Parker Conservatives have asked Hampton to end his manic vendetta against Hartsook, he clings to his obsession and vows to continue it through the new session unless Hartsook apologizes to Parker Conservatives. Translation: apologize to Mark Hampton. This is unlikely to come from this decorated combat veteran who risked his life fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan and retired as a Lt. Colonel after 26 years of service in the Army.
The ripple effects of this kind of Republican-on-Republican beat-down, which happens in far too many of our counties, are potentially devastating. Rep. Hartsook will run again, but how many of the 700-plus Parker Conservatives will knock doors and make phone calls to re-elect him after an entire year of Mark Hampton’s relentless demonization of this solid Conservative? How many will back a possible primary that would suck scarce monies and volunteer hours from the Douglas County GOP, which should be spending all those resources to defeat “Biden Bob” Marshall in House District 43 – the only Democrat elected in Douglas County in memory?
As a founding steering committee member of Parker Conservatives who helped reach hundreds to join the group, and the recipient of Hampton’s “Conservative Activist in Colorado” award, I am appalled that this Leadership Program of the Rockies graduate doesn’t comprehend or care about the harmful effects of his bizarre persecution.
In yet another Douglas County example – because that’s where I live and have served the party as a hard-working Precinct Committee Person and Assembly delegate for years – the DougCo GOP leadership in November helped blow the very winnable election of three Republicans to open DougCo School Board seats. They chose to prioritize their wrath against new school funding measures above the stated primary purpose of the Douglas County Republicans in the bylaws: “TO ELECT REPUBLICAN candidates to office.” (Re: Article II: Purpose.)
Instead, the party elite refused to support three well-qualified conservative Republicans because they favored the new school funding, and weaponized the school tax issue against them all over social media. The Party used its own resources to discriminate against them by paying $7,000 for a mailer promoting the sole anti-funding candidate. Ted Harvey (yes, Ted again) insisted that only the anti-tax candidate (Dave DiCarlo) be listed as a candidate on the DougCo GOP website, so the 18,000 people who visited the site during the election cycle didn’t know the other three candidates were Republicans!
Caught by surprise when all three open seats were won by wokesters and all the Republicans lost, the party scrambled to blame the Douglas County School Board for unanimously placing the funding on the ballot. The DougCo GOP claimed that Republicans just won’t vote for tax increases, a theory soundly repudiated by reality: 5a passed, and their one heavily promoted and endorsed anti-tax candidate lost by the largest number of votes in this heavily red county.
Purity tests just help divide and defeat us. Making the perfect the enemy of the good just helps divide and defeat us. Pitting the “grassroots” against the “establishment” and calling anyone with whom you disagree a RINO just divides and defeats us. What will be the next boxes the “grassroots” will insist candidates check to be considered worthy? What next purity tests will the county parties use to endorse candidates, or not? A few disturbing possibilities seem to be shaping up. Will all candidates need to vow opposition to abortion at any time after and including conception? Will every candidate need to affirm the 2020 election was stolen? This must stop.
The ultimate irony is that our two most magnificently conservative Republican presidents in the last 60-plus years would never have passed the “grassroots” purity tests. Both Ronald Reagan and Donald Trump were once Democrats, and donated big bucks to Democrat causes and candidates. Trump was pro-abortion, and favored gun control and single-payer health care. Once they became Republicans, they would have been defamed and mocked by the “grassroots” as pretenders and Establishment RINOs whose party switch was all games and deceit.
I still have my Jan. 22, 2016, copy of the National Review, an entire issue devoted to destroying Donald Trump, its pages crammed with erudite Trump-hating screeds from a who’s who of credentialed Conservative luminaries all along the lines of: “He is not deserving of Conservative support in the caucuses and primaries. Trump is a philosophically unmoored political opportunist who would trash the broad conservative ideological consensus within the GOP in favor of a free-floating populism with strong-man overtones.” Well, YEAH!
Let this be a lesson to us. When I posted on my Facebook page and in a number of groups “Our Republican Principles Only Win When Republicans Win Elections. Act Accordingly” I got blowback. WHAT ABOUT KEN BUCK? Our 4th Congressional District Representative was one of the most conservative members of Congress, an eminent founding member of the Freedom Caucus, and a strong voice for Republican values since he was first elected in 2014. Until he wasn’t. Buck earned a 100% rating from National Right to Life and 100% ratings from Family Research Council, FreedomWorks, and a 99% lifetime score from Heritage Action. Then he went wobbly in a series of odd appearances on CNN and other Left Media. He denied the Jan. 6 political prisoners were being abused and aired other outlandish views. Still, in a House hearing he boldly told Homeland Sec. Mayorkas that’s he’s a traitor for allowing illegal aliens and lethal fentanyl to flood into America. After dismissing a Biden impeachment, he voted to proceed with it. Go figure. For nearly 10 years Rep. Buck served us well in CD4. People change and thankfully he decided to retire.
But now all three of our Republican Congressional seats are up for grabs with the incumbents vacating their positions. The Republican primary for each will be a political bloodbath with a couple of dozen Republican candidates sharpening their knives for each other. Although they’ve all been reliably Republican districts, to keep them Republican when the blood is mopped up, we all must solidify behind the primary victors and support them no matter our previous loyalties. Certainly that’s what the Democrats will be doing. No more us vs. them, grassroots vs. RINOS and Establishment and on and nauseatingly on ad infinitum.
On Jan. 10, the Democrat juggernaut at the Capitol will be back with new and improved ways to make our lives miserable, to restrict our rights, destroy our pursuit of happiness, and repackage many of the worse bills that failed last year. Until Republicans realize and act on the knowledge that the Democrats are our enemy – not our fellow Republicans – and vote party not person (except for Pam Anderson of course) we will keep losing.
Joy Overbeck is a Douglas County journalist whose work has appeared at Townhall.com, American Thinker, The Washington Times, Complete Colorado, The Federalist and elsewhere. Follow her on Facebook and on Twitter (X) @joyoverbeck1.