There you have it. Lauren “Bobo” Boebert (R-CO) switched congressional districts with her carpet bag packed with a tattered personal history and managed to beat four opponents and win the 2024 District 4 Republican primary in Colorado. She left her western slope district where things were looking grim and scampered across the mountains to eastern Colorado where she found primary victory.

Source: Wikipedia. Colorado’s 3rd Congressional District. Where Bobo bailed.
Source: Wikipedia. Colorado’s 4th Congressional District. Where Bobo parachuted in.

Bobo is popular especially with the angry rural white conservative bunch which can be found everywhere to some extent. On a recent trip through the desolate Paradox Valley passing through the town of Bedrock in western Colorado we saw multiple Boebert campaign signs crammed in the scrub brush. Her spirit even lurks in Bedrock.

Lauren’s conservative fundamentalism and support for Trump appeals to a great many. You can protest to a supporter that she is crude, somewhat dense, and harbors appalling political beliefs. But it matters not to her supporters because she is one of Trump’s more aggressive attack dogs, and that is a virtue to them.

Formerly a swing state, Colorado has been electing Democrat state representatives since 2008 and presently has 5 out of 8 members of the US house and two Democrats in the senate. Conservatives are more predominant in the east and west thirds of the state and Democrats are concentrated along the I-25 urban corridor from Ft. Collins south to Pueblo. An exception to this liberal corridor is Colorado Springs, located an hour south of Denver. It is known for its large and politically influential evangelical conservative community.

Colorado Springs is also the home of James Dobson’s Focus on the Family fundamentalist protestant organization as well as many, many others. According to the Cause IQ website, there are 623 Christian non-profit organizations in the Springs with 8,150 employees, revenues of $804,278,628, and with assets totaling $777,104,922. Protestant fundamentalism is big business. By contrast, Catholic non-profit organizations only number at 13 with $5,003,712 in revenues.

These conservatives can be reliably counted on for wanting to convert the country into an authoritarian theocratic state if given the chance. The USA started as an effort to separate itself from a theocratic monarchy in the Revolutionary War and now finds itself full of people who want a protestant authoritarian theocracy. Really dumb.