Only a political party intent on becoming even more irrelevant and politically impotent could continue to pursue an irresponsible lawsuit doomed to fail.

During the recent Colorado Republican state convention in Pueblo, where only 2,100 of 3,500 delegates actually showed up, speakers continued to claim the 2020 election was stolen from defeated former President Donald Trump, including here in Colorado. They also condemned the ability of unaffiliated voters to participate in major party primaries.

A few days later, the state party released a video asking Republicans to raise $50,000 to send directly to California attorney John Eastman, who a judge recently announced should be disbarred, to continue a failed lawsuit targeting unaffiliated voters who make up nearly half of the Colorado electorate.

Eastman was one of the masterminds of the scheme to overturn the results of the Electoral College on Jan. 6, 2021, by forcing then-Vice President Mike Pence to refuse to count ballots, thereby denying the duly-elected Joe Biden from becoming president. In an act of statesmanship and courage not found in Eastman and his co-conspirators, Pence stood by the U.S. Constitution in the face of personal attacks from then-President Trump.

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Pence counted the Electoral College votes that day in the aftermath of the disgraceful attack on the United States Capitol by those who screamed “Hang Mike Pence!” Trump now pledges to pardon the “hostages” and “political prisoners” who have been convicted of crimes in that violent assault.

The Colorado Republican Party hired Eastman and his sidekick, local stolen-election conspiracist Randy Corporon, to file a lawsuit in federal district court in Denver to overturn Proposition 108, which was overwhelmingly passed by voters in 2016 to allow unaffiliated voters the ability to vote in one of the two major party primaries.

U.S. Chief District Court Judge Philip Brimmer, a Republican appointee, soundly rejected a preliminary injunction sought by Eastman which would have immediately overturned Prop 108 in time for the votes to be stolen from unaffiliated voters in the 2024 primary election.

Despite being shot down by the federal court, the Colorado Republican Party is doubling down. Basic math seems to be a major challenge for those who support this lawsuit.

Unaffiliated voters make up 48% of the Colorado electorate at 1.7 million. Democrats are 27%, with 1.1 million. Republicans are a distant third at 24%, or 900,000.

It doesn’t take a proverbial rocket scientist to figure no candidate, Republican or Democrat, can win a general election in Colorado without winning a majority of unaffiliated voters. And, yet, current state Republican “leaders” are intent on telling unaffiliated voters to get lost. They believe the party must be purged and purified not only of unaffiliated voters, but also of those Republicans who refuse to worship at the altar of stolen-election conspiracy theories.

The conspiracists who run the state party have very creative theories as to why Republicans have lost every statewide election since 2018 while Democrats built massive state legislative majorities. They ascribe these losses to unaffiliated voters being allowed to vote in the Republican primary. They ignore the reality of how deeply disliked Trump is by unaffiliated voters, which has infected virtually every Republican candidate.

Laughably, they contend if Republican candidates had just campaigned more like Trump they would have won despite the fact Trump himself lost Colorado by four points to Hillary Clinton in 2016 and by 14 points to Joe Biden in 2020. You can’t get more Trump-like than Trump himself. But then, their conspiratorial fallback is led by failed 2022 Senate candidate Ron Hanks, who claims the Chinese stole Colorado from Trump.

Major statewide elections have always been challenging for Republicans even during the decades when the state was essentially one-third Republican, one-third Democrat and one-third unaffiliated. Republicans who won elections for U.S. senator and governor during those years, such as U.S. Sens. Bill Armstrong, Hank Brown, Wayne Allard, Ben Nighthorse Campbell, Cory Gardner and Gov. Bill Owens, all ran campaigns that not only secured the Republican nomination but appealed to unaffiliated voters going into the general election.

The current Republican “leadership” is an ongoing embarrassment as it abuses state party money and violates bylaws by endorsing in primaries and throwing a reporter out of the state convention. 

And now they are trying to send $50,000 to a soon-to-be disbarred California lawyer who sought to destroy the United States Constitution on Jan. 6, 2021.

Dick Wadhams is a former Colorado Republican state chairman who worked for U.S. Sen. Bill Armstrong for nine years before managing campaigns for U.S. Sens. Hank Brown and Wayne Allard, and Gov. Bill Owens.