Congresswoman Lauren Boebert has been making the wrong kind of headlines over the past few days, thanks to the release of a video of her speaking at a public event joking about U.S. Rep. Ilhan Omar and insinuating she was a suicide bomber because she is Muslim.

Omar, colored by her own checkered past of outrageous tweets, responded to the release of the video on a Twitter account called PatriotTakes by calling Boebert a buffoon, saying her story was made up, and characterizing it as anti-Muslim bigotry, according to reporting by The Sentinel’s Dennis Webb.

We were initially encouraged that Boebert responded, after her insulting remarks were shared widely, by apologizing to the Muslim community and agreeing to speak with Omar directly about her comments. That combined with her statements in support of District Attorney Dan Rubinstein’s handling of the investigation into Mesa County Clerk Tina Peters made it seem like she was starting to turn over a new leaf.

To no one’s surprise, her call with Omar apparently went poorly after Boebert refused to issue a public apology to the congresswoman. She made that worse by accusing Omar of not putting America first and sympathizing with terrorists.

“Make no mistake, I will continue to fearlessly put America first, never sympathizing with terrorists. Unfortunately, Ilhan can’t say the same thing and our country is worse off for it,” Boebert said after the call.

To be clear, while Omar certainly deserves an apology, she also is playing the same attention-seeking politics that Boebert is. Hanging up on Boebert when an apology wasn’t forthcoming was sure to draw attention and she knew it. Boebert and Omar (or AOC, for that matter) are just opposite sides of the same coin.

It’s the Mean Girls’ Club in full effect.

This is all a sideshow and it does the people of western Colorado (and Minnesota) zero good.

Boebert engages in this political theater to boost her own name, her own brand. It’s effective and she is very good at it.

The problem is that governing isn’t a reality TV show. Our system requires compromise and working across the aisle to get things done, as we’ve seen recently with the bipartisan infrastructure bill.

Boebert has enormous potential, but on this count, she is worse than useless to her constituents. Her brand is so toxic that she can’t get anything done except rack up retweets and troll her political enemies. This is why we don’t, as a paper, cover every single one of her tweets or statements. They aren’t substantive and typically don’t have much to do with western Colorado.

It’s a shame, because she does have a knack for getting attention. Instead of constantly riling up the base, she should get serious, drop the Mean Girls act, and use some of her skills to advance legislation that would benefit the Western Slope.

She’s a paid public employee who works on our behalf. We’d love to use this space to praise something she’s done to help this community, but she hasn’t been interested in doing the hard work and making compromises that would take.

She has only been in Congress for a little less than a year, so there is plenty of time for her to change. We’re hoping that happens sooner rather than later. We need a real congresswoman, not a reality tv/Twitter star.

Grand Junction Daily Sentinel editorial board