QAnon nut case wins GOP primary in Colorado swing district

This is a bad news/good news kind of thing:

Boebart had largely been known for her gun rights activism, with the candidate running a restaurant called Shooters Grill in Rifle, Colorado, where staff “proudly open carry as they serve their customers,” according to Boebart’s campaign website.

Boebart also gained attention in September 2019 after she confronted former Democratic presidential candidate Beto O’Rourke during a town-hall meeting in Aurora, where he had pledged to seize assault rifles in the state.

“I am here to say: Hell, no, you’re not,” Boebart said, vowing to fight O’Rourke’s plan.

According to The Denver Post, the gun rights activist had driven three hours from Rifle to the event to speak out against O’Rourke’s plan. [Ed: It’s 185 miles of mostly mountain driving. Also, calling the town Rifle is a bit too on the nose.]

“Self-defense is a right that we have that shall not be infringed in America,” she said at the time.

In the wake of the coronavirus outbreak, Boebert also gained attention after she spoke out against Democratic Gov. Jared Polis’ orders for businesses to close to help prevent the spread of COVID-19.

Defying Polis’ orders, Boebert opened Shooters Grill, forcing county officials to have to obtain a cease-and-desist letter from a district judge to see the restaurant closed.

Boebert has also raised eyebrows after speaking approvingly of the QAnon far-right conspiracy theory, which makes claims of a “deep state” plot against Trump and his supporters.

Speaking during an appearance on the web show Steel Truth, which has been associated with the QAnon conspiracy theory, Boebert said: “Everything that I’ve heard of Q, I hope that this is real because it only means that America is getting stronger and better, and people are returning to conservative values.”

Now, Boebert is set to run in November’s election against Diane Mitsch Bush, a former state lawmaker who claimed the Democratic nomination on Tuesday, to represent Colorado’s 3rd Congressional district.

This is understating things: she’s a QAnon wack job. The Colorado GOP has up until now on remained for the most part relatively non-insane, although the state certainly has pockets of hard right paranoia (Colorado Springs, some eastern rural counties full of common law writ nutters etc.)

On the other hand, the 3rd is a genuinely competitive district: it had a Democratic representative in the aughts, and Trump, Romney, and McCain only got 52, 52, and 50 percent of the vote respectively. So this could easily be a pickup of another seat in the House for the Democrats.

The glass half full take here is that Colorado may be trending toward an Oregon situation, where the GOP isn’t even competitive any more, so the crazies win a lot of nominations. The glass half empty perspective is that this whole country is actually going to Hell at warp speed.