As I type these words, the temperature outside my Colorado Springs home is -7 degrees Fahrenheit, but the political temperature inside the Colorado Republican party appears to be really heating up. There is so much to discuss!

I’m tempted to write about Eric Sondermann’s very insightful look at the three GOP seats in the U.S. House that suddenly have no incumbent, but he nailed it so I won’t drone on about that.

I also am tempted to offer a few thoughts about Gov. Jared Polis and his State of the State address, and how some of the elected folks from the eastern plains of our lovely state are upset about how little the governor had to say about their region, whilst regularly decrying the role, heck sometimes even the need, for state government. How’s that secession to a new state coming along?

And there is a tiny part of me that even wants to point out the new Miss America is not only from Colorado, but is a graduate of the Air Force Academy and is currently on active duty – should make for an interesting year for her TDY schedule, eh? She’s a remarkable young officer already with many achievements.

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But instead, I want to talk about my own duty at the Air Force Academy, where I spent the bulk (15 years) of my 25 years of active military duty, teaching political science with a focus on American government and the Constitution. Wow, I think that transition worked well (Editor: don’t get cocky).

In the core course all cadets must take on the American government and national security, there is, of course, a section on political parties and how they function. I was reminded of this set of lessons when I read Ernest Luning’s terrific summary of a remarkable and, frankly, undemocratic, action recently taken by the Colorado Republican Party.

Now, we know from a number of CoPo stories the Centennial State’s GOP has long been a source of conflict, disorder and, well, bizarre stuff. The GOPers have a chair who, when running for office himself, thought “Let’s Go Brandon” should be part of his name on the ballot. The infighting and other strange shenanigans has been, to a former poli sci professor and a former Dem county chair, quite interesting and insightful.

But what the state GOP did over the weekend was shocking and was a blow against free and fair elections. They announced the state party’s full and enthusiastic support for Donald Trump for president, months before the GOP primary, where the voters would seemingly get to pick the GOP nominee.

The state party leadership should be ashamed of themselves, but they have long since abandoned any sense of honor or propriety. For today’s Colorado GOP, it is all about getting power and keeping power, and toadying up to those who can help make that happen.

So, had you found yourself in my AF Academy political science classroom on the day we started talking about political parties, you’d hear me talk about the three traditional roles parties play in our governance, at virtually all levels of government. Different poli sci textbooks have slight variations of these themes, but fundamentally political parties: one, recruit and select candidates for office; two, provide voters with an identification of candidates that can help voters decide for whom to vote, absent actual knowledge of the candidates; and, three, organize legislative bodies. 

More simply put, parties help find people to run for office. As Dem county chair, one of my tasks was to find folks who might be talked into running for the various local and county offices. The U.S. Congress usually had self-starters (like me in 2008) who self-select.

Secondly, parties provide a guide to voters who, for whether the reason be disinterest or being too busy, don’t have the time or inclination to research every candidate for every office. If you don’t want to spend time, say, researching the candidates for county clerk or assessor, you can usually be guided by which party they are from. I vote for Dems when I don’t know the candidate, for example.

Lastly, the parties provide an organizational structure for our legislatures. National and state constitutions do not set up the day-to-day operations of state legislatures or the U.S. Congress, and parties assume that role.

In theory, state political parties, in doing these tasks and more, stay effectively neutral regarding candidates seeking the party’s nomination for an office. In my own run, for example, I received no help from the state Dems until I won the primary and became the Dem candidate. On the presidential level, parties are supposed to stay neutral until after their party runs a caucus (think Iowa) or a primary (think most other normal states). Once the primary or caucus voters have decided, the state party usually goes to work trying to help the nominee win the state’s electoral votes.

Or at least that’s how it is supposed to work. 

But as I noted above, Colorado’s state GOP formally renounced any claim to neutrality or objectivity in the 2024 presidential contest. With roughly two months until the actual Colorado primary, the GOP’s central committee (both parties have a committee with that name, with a few hundred members. I have always thought the actual name “central committee” sounded a bit Stalinish to me, but whatever) voted roughly 65% to 34% (with some abstaining) to formally endorse former President Trump now, rather than wait for the voters to decide.

That is really a stunning rejection of the will of the GOP people. This is not even another attack on Dems with claims of stolen elections and other such nonsense. This is a matter of GOP leaders clearly and directly deciding the will of the hundreds of thousands of GOPers who vote in their primary matters not at all. Back in 2020, Trump got 628,876 votes in the Colorado GOP primary, and he was certainly likely to win the 2024 contest as well, but the state GOP has decided the will of the voters is not worth waiting for.

What message does this send to former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley and Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis? It tells them to skip Colorado, as the die is cast. The roughly 400 member GOP Central Committee has decided candidates not named Trump are not welcome here. The Ohio GOP took similar actions a while back, making Colorado the second state in the nation to nullify voters’ opinions.

When historians of this time are writing, decades from now, I believe the scholars of that future time will wonder what miasma, what strange cult, what hypnotic forces took over the GOP between 2016 and now. How did a party that once claimed to be anti-Russia and pro-family come to adore a candidate who was a thrice-married serial adulterer, veteran-attacking, deadbeat and convicted fraudster?

I personally have no clue, but I cannot help wondering when that spell of corruption and delinquency will lift.

I will urge my grandchildren to stay tuned.

Hal Bidlack is a retired professor of political science and a retired Air Force lieutenant colonel who taught more than 17 years at the U.S. Air Force Academy in Colorado Springs.