She’s sometimes called the “conservative AOC.” Though it seems too few Republican candidates have learned anything from the success of President Trump’s bold, straight-talking, sometimes combative campaign style that his fans love, Colorado Congressional candidate Lauren Boebert most definitely has. And voters in Colorado’s Third Congressional District are loving it.
When famous gunphobe Beto O’Rourke came to Aurora, Colorado last year and proclaimed he would take our guns, this small, pretty dark-haired woman with a Glock pistol in her hip holster stood up and told him, “I’m here to say hell no, you’re not! ” Boebert had driven several hours from her home in Rifle, Colorado (yes, really!) and made national news when she schooled O’Rourke on western reality. She continued, “I have four children. I’m five foot zero, 100 pounds, and I cannot defend myself with a fist. I want to know how you’re going to legislate that because a criminal by definition breaks the law. So all you’re going to do is restrict law-abiding citizens like myself.” Following her O’Rourke showdown, Boebert suddenly became a popular guest on national media, including Fox and Friends where she condemned the dangers of the left’s gun confiscation plans for normal citizens like her.
Boebert and her husband own Shooter’s Grill in Rifle (again, really!) where all the servers, mostly female, wear guns on their hips in compliance with Colorado law allowing open carry. She’s a scrappy new kind of Republican – gutsy, truth-telling – much more Trumpian than GOP candidates typically dare to be in purplish Colorado. When her friends started telling her she should run for Congress, she challenged five-term incumbent normal nice guy Republican Scott McGinnis, won the primary and was heartily congratulated by President Trump.
She’s been blitzing her large mostly rural district with an upbeat, high-energy campaign that’s attracting big campaign donations from worried Democrats as well as enthused Republicans. Consistent with their service as the communications branch of the Democrat Party, The New York Times branded her a criminal in a recent article that reported her “multiple brushes with the law.”
Did she hold up banks or jewelry stores with her Glock? Actually, her lawlessness amounted to an unsafe vehicle charge after a truck accident in 2016, and a disorderly conduct citation at a 2015 music festival when she was accused of interfering with the arrest of minors for underage drinking. The disorderly charge was dismissed, and the unsafe vehicle charge resulted in a $100 fine.
The New York Times’ moral indignation at Boebert’s “crimes” is comical to most citizens of her mainly rural district who know the same august newspaper virtually never identifies the real criminals – the looters, arsonists, anarchists, and destroyers of America’s cities - as dedicated leftist/Marxists and Democrats. But the paper’s accusation against Boebert for lawlessness could carry weight in the lofty and largely Democrat ski principalities of Steamboat Springs {home of her Democrat opponent) and Aspen where such hypocrisy is common currency.
But wait, there’s more. Boebert’s ultimate offense was defying Colorado’s Democrat Governor Polis’ lockdown orders, potentially killing dozens or even hundreds of people as the well-worn Dem/leftist meme goes. Scolds the Times, “But the run-ins with the law did not stop there. Ms. Boebert drew a cease-and-desist order from the county this year for opening her restaurant to indoor dining despite quarantine restrictions…” Yes, the woman is a murderess, or at least a murderess-in-waiting. Or a future murderess in the Democrats’ alternative Wuhan virus universe?
Diane Mitsch Bush, Boebert’s far-left Democrat opponent who is posing as a moderate, snipes in the same article, “She says she supports the Constitution, but she seems to support only the parts she likes.” Ms. Bush believes that a governor’s stay at home order is enshrined in the U.S. Constitution? Or maybe the Colorado Constitution? The voters now have learned in one sentence that Bush doesn’t have the remotest acquaintance with government structure or powers.
And Bush is also tragically unaware – as is the Times writer -- that a great many of the people she expects to vote for her consider defying government lockdown orders to be the brave modern equivalent of Paul Revere jumping on his horse and sounding the alarm for a liberty revolution.
The election is a stark study in political contrasts mirroring the rest of the nation. This is Ms. Mitsch Bush’s second run at the Third Congressional; in 2018 she lost to incumbent Scott Tipton. Way back two years ago she was a proponent of the Green New Deal which would increase regulation and ultimately disappear fossil fuels, and a big fan of Medicare for all. But now she has rejected those positions, and a cynic might say they just didn’t work last time. Mitsch Bush has taken Planned Parenthood Action Fund donations, and is endorsed by Barack Obama.
Lauren Boebert is proud to stand against government healthcare socialism and for rugged western individualism, including capitalism, and clean natural gas and coal jobs in the energy industry which is a large driver of the economy of the district.
In her campaign commercial she says, “I'm Lauren Boebert, a small business owner, a mom, a Coloradan fed up with far-left Washington politicians. AOC? Nancy Pelosi? They'll take away our Second Amendment rights. They'll replace our health insurance with socialized medicine. Not on my watch. I'll keep the government bureaucrats off our backs. I'll fight for good-paying jobs. I'll fight for our local energy, steel, and farms.”
This is the voice of a new breed of Republican. Young, impassioned, full of righteous fire. And hopefully a harbinger of Republicans to come.
Joy Overbeck is a Colorado-based journalist and author who has written for Townhall, American Thinker, The Washington Times, The Daily Caller, The Federalist, and others. Twitter: @joyoverbeck1