If Gabe Evans harbors any latent liberal-leaning tendencies, he has done a masterful job of concealing them. His record as a conservative is impeccable, and I am referring not only to his record in the Colorado House of Representatives, which alone is impressive in its championship of liberty, limited government and respect for whatever remains of our laws; I refer as well to the life he leads, and has led.

Evans is running for the Republican nomination to the U.S. House of Representatives, in the still newborn Congressional District 8, held by the incumbent Democrat, Yadira Caraveo, who narrowly beat Barb Kirkmeyer due to the lamentable presence of a Libertarian spoiler candidate. By any measure he is an estimably qualified candidate, and about the only sort-of-legitimate concern conservatives could have about his running for the U.S. House is the loss of his voice in the state House, which he raised routinely in defense of sanity and reason both in committee and at the well.

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But again, it is not simply the votes he has taken or the principled conservative positions he has staked out that qualify Evans so remarkably for the federal seat, but the life experience that forged those beliefs. He volunteered to serve his country twice, first as an Army Blackhawk helicopter pilot, and later as a police officer, giving him a birds-eye view of the mayhem wrought by far-left, “defund the police” policies.

Now, these two life experiences may not be prerequisites for the job, but they certainly ought to count for a great deal in evaluating one’s qualifications for Congress. That dysfunctional institution bears a great deal of responsibility for the disorder being experienced both at home and abroad. As the Cold War fades from memory, fewer and fewer remain in Congress who possess the clarity needed to appropriately and effectively address the threats posed by China, Russia, Iran and North Korea. And there weren’t really all that many to begin with; Joe Biden managed to sit in Congress for 40 years without figuring out how to be on the right side of a foreign policy decision. Being the sharp end of the bayonet in enforcing your country’s foreign policy goes a long way to forging that clarity.

Likewise, it is one thing to formulate criminal justice policy at a desk, or at a poetry reading in a coffee shop; it is quite another to come to it after confronting the shattered lives of crime victims, experiencing humanity at its worst every day and approaching a car or apartment door not knowing if a knife or bullet is waiting for you when it opens. Conservatism has been described as the “politics of reality,” and there are few things like policing that can so distill reality from idealistic theory. The current Congress has but a handful of experienced law enforcement professionals, making Evans’ record uniquely desirable.

On top of all this, Evans is just, well, likeable; he’s the sort of person you rather want representing you in the halls of Congress. In some circles, that’s called “electability.” William F.  Buckley has a famous political maxim to follow when evaluating a candidate for office: select the rightward-most person who can be elected.

So why, one must wonder, is Evans facing a primary? Well, there is no accounting for taste, or logic, or politics, and after all even Ronald Reagan had primary opponents. The more imperative question is, why, for Heaven’s sake, is the state Republican Party politburo actively supporting a lesser candidate in this primary?

The answer is elusive; it could boil down to pettiness, a desire to further descend into some kind of heroic irrelevance, or simple dysfunction. In any case there is an irony here — the populist, clenched-fist “power to the people” crayon-munchers comprising the state GOP apparatus have taken great pains to extol the caucus and assembly process, going so far as to use fealty to it as the excuse for abandoning the time honored (and honorable) tradition of not interfering in primaries. Well, the good Republicans of CD8 appear to be sold on Gabe Evans, and accordingly afforded him top-line — by a considerable margin — at their assembly. So logic would dictate if the state party is going to be in the business of interjecting itself into primaries on behalf of the “grassroots” candidates, they would therefore be obligated to support Evans in CD8, right?

Yes, logic would dictate that, but revolutionary logic is something quite different. The Colorado Republican Party under Chairman Dave Williams has become a case study in insular naval gazing and hypocrisy.

There are few bright spots for conservatives in Colorado, but CD8 is one of them; so long as Republicans there continue to support Gabe Evans, and thereby demonstrate the clarity so markedly absent in the state Republican Party.

Kelly Sloan is a political and public affairs consultant and a recovering journalist based in Denver.