(Giving a RINO the Boot)

No, the real problem is the fact that a majority of the 168 top GOP people voted for her. And now that has happened five times so they cannot claim they didn’t know what she was.

In spite of the fact that under her “leadership” the party had deliberately sabotaged the will of its base, had deliberately refused to challenge blatant election fraud, had gone out of its way to ensure certain candidates do not get nominated, had diverted donor money to namby-pamby candidates who have all the electoral appeal of a puddle of dog vomit…and in general has done nothing whatsoever to help fix the problems that plague America.

However that last is to be expected; I cannot expect anyone who IS the problem to help FIX the problem.

RINO McDaniel would have been powerless without an entire party leadership of the same mind as her. They wanted this dismal performance; they want to ignore the party base.

Her being gone will likely solve nothing as someone just like her will eventually be elected by those same pustulous people.

Me, over and over again in my openers (as amended when RINO McDaniel got the boot

So there I have been screaming at the top of my QTree lungs time and time again, that we have RINOs up and down the Party leadership and as long as that is true we will get nowhere.

Well RINO McDaniel is gone. But what about those 168 people?

In particular, what about this useless bint?

This is Vera Ortagnon, the National Committeewoman for Colorado.

The RNC consists of one woman and one man from each state and territory in the United States, plus (I believe) the state (or territory) chair. 50 states + DC + 5 territories = 56, 56 x 3 = 168.

And as I have been pointing out, likely to the point you’re sick and tired of reading me do so, most of these people loved RINO McDaniel.

Including Vera Ortagnon. She endorsed RINO McDaniel the last four times RINO McD ran for RNC Chair.

At the Colorado State convention, which was held on Saturday April 6, both the national committeewoman and national committeeman were selected for a new four year term.

The Committeeman for Colorado was unopposed for re-election, claimed he did not vote for RINO McD, and I heard absolutely no grumblings or suspicion of him at all.

National Committeewoman, on the other hand…well, I just told you Ortagnon’s a problem.

And two people ran against her.

Ortagnon first. In addition to her love of RINO McD, one thing that’s a bit aggravting is that it is impossible to hear from Vera Ortagnon without her making the point that she is Hispanic. I mean she explicitly says so, just in case her accent doesn’t make it clear. (She is a legal immigrant from Colombia; I have to admit that when she told the story of her naturalization, it was touching.)

The first opponent was Laura Imer. She was endorsed by plenty of prominent people (including the committeeman, once he was re-elected)…but there’s something offputting about her. Maybe it’s the fact that she looks a bit like Lynn Cheney. She is loud, and angry. But I saw no sign whatsoever that she is a RINO.

When she gave her speech, she dropped in the fact that Ortagnon had endorsed and presumably voted for RINO McD four times. Now it’s customary NOT to sling mud at your opponents, so that just showed a mean streak to most of the deletages, and I am glad she did it because Ortagnon and Imer took hits from that shot.

Because I wanted the third candidate to win. Meet Christy “Ruckus” Fidura.

She has been the driving force in turning Pueblo, yes Pueblo, the town of steel workers’ unions and lots and lots of Hispanics, RED when it has been “blue” for decades upon decades.

Unlike many places in Colorado, the geography makes sense. Pueblo is in Pueblo County, which is the county immediately to the south of El Paso County, in which is not El Paso. For many years, Pueblo was more famous than Colorado Springs; globes and small-scale maps would show two cities in Colorado: Pueblo and Denver. Even as a kid I would see these. By the time I was looking at maps, though, Colorado Springs had exceeded Pueblo in size, and now Colorado Springs is much better known across the country and to some extent even around the world, than Pueblo is.

So why the nickname “Ruckus”? Because she fights and the Dems in Pueblo know better than to mess with her. And someone coined the slogan “I aim to raise a ruckus” and Ruckus herself loved it.

In short, she’s effective, combative…and just absolutely Deplorable.

OK so I’ll come back to this race in a bit.

I mentioned that El Paso’s delegation to the two races we worked on yesterday was very small. Seven of us in a meeting of hundreds for US Congressional District 4. Twelve of us for House District 56. Completely overshadowed by other counties, even ones we tend to think of as “small” counties.

At the State convention, though, El Paso County is by far the biggest one. We owned an entire block of chairs on the floor. A supercontinent of our own.

But only seven of us had gotten to vote for Boebert the day before.

Did I exploit the sheer envy value of my photograph of a ballot with Lauren Boebert’s name on it? Who, me?

I went over to the Hinsdale County delegation during a break and told them, “Now I know how you must feel at these things.” Hinsdale is one of the emptiest counties in Colorado, with a population of a 788 people in 2020. And Hinsdale is famous for being where Alferd Packer, the “Colorado Cannibal” had his meal of long pork.

[Aside: Here’s what the sentencing judge, presumably a Democrat, is supposed to have said when he sentenced Packard (spelled phonetically): “Stand up yah voracious man-eatin’ sonofabitch and receive yir sintince. When yah came to Hinsdale County, there was siven Dimmycrats. But you, yah et five of ’em, goddam yah. I sintince yah t’ be hanged by th’ neck ontil yer dead, dead, dead, as a warnin’ ag’in reducin’ th’ Dimmycratic populayshun of this county. Packer, you Republican cannibal, I would sintince ya ta hell but the statutes forbid it. ”

Well, that’s one answer for the question of what to do with Democrats. But not one I endorse. Probably too much mad cow disease in the meat.]

After an additional discussion about this quote (the Hinsdale folks were adamant that Packer et all of the Dimmycrats) I went back to my seat.

People who arrive at these events have to be “credentialed” and it seems like that cannot be anything but a gigantic clusterf*ck no matter what. We were supposed to start at 9 AM, didn’t come close to that, and the credentials committee finally submitted their final report (including alternates who had been made delegates) at 3 PM. After which we could vote.

So the candidates made their speeches including an electrical engineer alumnus of CU Boulder who was running for the board of regents (we’re close to the same age and may even have been in classes together). He was unopposed (no petitioners either), and nominated by acclamation; I wish him luck in the general election.

One useful bit of business that got done is the party leadership is now allowed to explicitly endorse candidates that won at the assembly, which can be used to give them a leg up over those who petitioned on.

And we had some speakers. Including…drumroll…Matt Gaetz!

(I regret that I have found no video of his speech, which was excellent.)

He was here to help out both Lauren Boebert and Dave Williams (apparently Matt’s wife and Boebert are besties). Dave Williams is our state chair, and he is running to replace Doug Lamborn in the 5th district (the one that covers most of El Paso County; the one I was in before redistricting). By all accounts Williams, should he win the primary and the general election, would be a fighter for MAGA; some think he’d be just as solid as Gaetz. Good luck, Dave!

The registration process was complicated. We got our badges (showing photo ID to claim them). We then had to walk through a doorway and they put a sticker on the back with a six letter, mixed case code on it. We were then supposed to scan a QR and give it both our badge number (on the front) and the code on the back to complete sign in. Out of a couple of thousand people, however, about a 150 didn’t do that last step. When they went to vote for committeewoman, they had to complete their registrations before they could vote, but then…the credential committee report had to be amended one more time. That caused a…er…ruckus.

The delegates had to walk right by the Pueblo County delegation to cast their ballots. As you might imagine there were a lot of Ruckus signs there. In order to avoid mobbing the voting area, delegates were divided into six roughly equal-sized groups, El Paso County was Group One (all by itself). After I voted, I looped back to the Pueblo area and held up a Ruckus sign. Next to us were a bunch of very young people holding Immer signs; then we realized they were guests, not delegates! Our spiel incorporated “Ruckus has support from actual delegates!”

Finally after all that, at about 6:30 PM (it had taken three hours to vote and hand count the ballots; that was actually a smooth process), we got to hear the results. I don’t recall the exact numbers but, with just under two thousand ballots cast:

Vera Ortagnon : roughly 200 votes. Crushed!!!

Laura Imer : roughly 500 votes.

Christy “Ruckus” Fidura : Over 1100 votes!!!

Kickass!!!

And THIS is how you kill a RINO! By Raising A Ruckus!

Score one for the good guys!

And yes, I have put my money where my mouth is.