As this is the last column of mine that will appear before election day, I’d like to tell you a tale about the cattle driver political party of the mid-19^th Century, known as the Whiggamors (Ed: um…we’ll see where this goes…)

In response to the presidency of Andrew Jackson — a man of questionable ethics and beliefs even in his own time — an opposition party formed after Jackson was elected president in 1828. Jackson was a populist, in that he appealed to the “regular” people who were put off by what Jacksonians thought of as elites and stuck up educated folks. Jackson’s xenophobia and other less than admirable personality traits were so off-putting that Henry Clay, Daniel Webster and others formed a new opposition political party to battle, well, Jackson and his ideas. Taking their name from the term “Whiggamors,” which meant “cattle drivers,” the gents who founded the party called themselves Whigs. The Whigs favored a national bank, protective tariffs, modernization, and a meritocracy. They were worried about tyranny in the presidency and found support among entrepreneurs, the professional class, bankers, reformers, and what we now call the middle class.

The Whigs got several folks elected to the White House, but ultimately the party fell apart and the members were largely subsumed by the emerging Republican party, which at the time was the liberal party on the political scene.

I bring up the Whigs as a gentle reminder to my GOP friends that political parties can rise and most definitely can fall when they grow out of touch with the American people. And while I certainly have my differences with the Colorado Republican Party, I am mostly talking about the national GOP, headed by Donald Trump, who appears to be embracing the destiny of the Whigs for his recently adopted party.

Today’s Republican Party has cast off any meaningful ideology and has become a party based on expediency and seems dedicated to only one principle — keeping power at all costs. Hypocrisy does not trouble Trump nor his congressional enablers such as Mitch McConnell and our own Cory Gardner. For Example, the Repubs dreamed up a fake rule to keep Obama from filling a vacant seat on the Supreme Court fully 237 days before the next election, yet showed breathtaking hypocrisy by rushing a (relatively) young and inexperienced — but hard-line conservative — onto the Supreme Court within just a couple of weeks before another election. As a military guy with a strong sense that honor is important, I do not understand how they sleep at night, but I digress…

But the most recent offensive and evil actions of the national GOP have been around the issue of voter suppression. Let me state this as clearly as I can: study after study has proven that voter fraud is not — I say again not — a significant problem in American politics. Yet the GOP claims that to “protect the vote” they need to take a series of actions that (by what they would claim is an amazing coincidence) disproportionately impact groups that tend to vote more Democratic. In recent days we have seen the Texas governor — a loyal Trumper — mandate that no county in Texas can have more than one ballot drop off box. Now, in many rural counties with tiny populations, such a restriction does not matter too much. But such is not the case in big counties. If I told you that, say, the entire state of Rhode Island had a single ballot drop off box for the whole state, would you find that troubling? Well, the Houston area of Texas has roughly four times the population of RI yet has only one drop off box. Why? To fight “voter fraud” that doesn’t really exist? No, it is a policy designed to reduce Democratic turnout.

How about Iowa? My grandparents had a farm there where I often spent my summers. I love Iowa. Yet we find that the GOP there has gone against the CDC recommendations of more polling places (to increase social distancing and make voting safer), and has actually reduced the number of places to vote especially in urban areas where Dems are more likely to be.

You do not have to go to conspiracy theories about Trump to find proof of his corruption. Recall please that he already settled a suit for having a fake university (a $25M fine) and his personal foundation paid another $2M for cheating — get this — a children’s charity. Yet the modern GOP still rallies around him, blissfully untroubled. 

And now, in the waning days of the campaign, one party is trying to make it easier for people to exercise their most sacred duty as a citizen — casting a vote — and one party is trying to make it harder.

I would urge the national GOP leaders to recall the fate of the Whigs. Their party collapsed and their legacy was squandered. History often repeats itself. The choices being made by the GOP today suggest a lack of historical awareness. 

Republicans, to borrow a phrase, history has its eyes on you.