While I haven’t had the pleasure of meeting all our writers here at Colorado Citizens Press, as a grassroots blog we were brought together to give a voice to Colorado conservatives that they often don’t get in traditional media.
I was asked to help build a place to air one’s grievances, and call pitches as we see them. So while we aren’t a strict media organization as much as a citizen’s blog, we’ve done some spectacular work. I have certainly been impressed when my fellow colleagues have uncovered stories nobody else has.
Today, however, I felt called upon to defend the honor of an El Paso friend and colleague Jeff Hays from the likes of Cole Wist, a bitter loser who has attacked Hays’ and the Colorado GOP’s good name in his most recent lashing-out.
I’m not going to say that Hays’ or the Colorado GOP did a particularly good job this last year. Statewide, Republicans suffered harsh losses and were outspent something like four-to-one. Yet I don’t know what Cole Wist expected the party to do better.
The El Paso County office encouraged people to make phone calls and go door-to-door, they set up candidates for free on the Advantage app – and while I wasn’t particularly a fan of the app and had my fair share of issues with it – it was given free to Cole Wist just like every other candidate. That alone is enough to give a hard-working candidate a chance assuming they didn’t squander it.
Instead of accepting his loss, Cole Wist accuses Jeff Hays of “Russian Collusion” with Dudley Brown. Which is just as ridiculous as the claims that Donald Trump stole the election.
Don’t get me wrong, Dudley Brown is an unhinged lunatic who cares about guns more than anything. He would attack his own mother if she pushed for background checks on cap guns. It’s unheartening, but it’s also kind of his job.
Furthermore, gun rights are an essential part of the Republican Party platform, a platform Chairman Hays promised to promote and uphold as an elected officer of the party. I’m not saying that all “Republicans” have to follow the platform, but they certainly shouldn’t expect someone as principled as Hays to cross that line – even in Wist’s delusional world where Dudley Brown and Jeff Hays were in cahoots.
Don’t get me wrong, I’ve barely met Wist, I don’t really know him. Maybe he was a good Republican, maybe he deserved to win, but as an observer on the outside, it looks like he is a crybaby trying to destroy the Republican Party from within. First by pushing gun control that drew the ire of Dudley Brown and many Republicans across the state, and second by engaging in Clinton-esque conspiracy theories badmouthing our current and former GOP leadership.
