A leftover from last weekend's (depending on your point of view) delightful or disastrous Battle of Colorado that I waited to comment on until the inevitable other shoe dropped, which it did today.
Meet Larry Wayne Lindsey, the absolute epitome of Trumplicanism, which is to say, white, male, angry, paranoid, and far from the sharpest knife in the ol' drawer. He apparently showed up at the Colorado State GOP convention Saturday to cast his vote as a State delegate for Donald Trump and was denied both entry and the opportunity to cast said vote. He was, naturally, incensed and, naturally, jumped to the conclusion that this was a "GOP establishment plot" to "suppress the Trump vote" in order to "steal the election" for that "GOP establishment stooge"....Ted Cruz.
Not so naturally, he didn't punch out any Colorado GOP poobahs, but he did symbolize what's going to happen to the Quicken Loans Center in Cleveland this summer by burning his Republican registration documentation and, like his cult leader, made the rounds of cable news programs yesterday.
I guess that's the updated answer to the question of how an angry white guy gets his fifteen minutes of fame since Falling Down debuted twenty-three years ago.
And, naturally, there was one slightly mitigating factor in Mr. Lindsey's story that he left out in the midst of this whirlwind media tour de force of avenging justice: He was not, in fact, the State delegate that he thought he was:
In fact, according to a series of conversations with party officials, while Lindsey did show up to his precinct caucus and was elected as a delegate to the county assembly, he never showed up to the county assembly, or, at the very least, never signed in for his credentials. On Facebook, he erroneously claimed he’d been elected as a delegate to the State assembly from his precinct caucus, something that is not possible under the rules in Douglas County.
“Since Mr. Lindsey did not attend the County District Assembly he was not elected to be a delegate to the State Assembly, nor could he have been, so there is no way that he would have been listed as a delegate to the State Convention when he tried to check in on Saturday morning,” Tanne Blackburn, chairman of the Douglas County Republican Party, explained in a press release. [emphases added]
Oops. So Mr. Lindsey didn't do his homework and due diligence, assumed that he had been elected a State delegate at his precinct caucus instead of just a county delegate, never showed up at the county assembly, and thus never became a State delegate at all, and thus was entirely justifiably and properly turned away in Colorado Springs last Saturday morning. He wasn't shafted by the "GOP establishment elites" in some deep, dark anti-Trump/pro-Cruz "conspiracy," but screwed up his own self....
....and, naturally, rather than smacking himself upside his own head for his own blunder, or otherwise sheepishly accepting responsibility for his own mistake, he followed the chickenshit example of his cult leader, and made slanderous BS excuses instead.
Parenthetically, spare me the "politics shouldn't be hard" whining, Trumplicans. If you live in Colorado and you want your State's GOP nominating process simplified, or its former primary election reinstated, follow the Director's sterling example and GET INVOLVED and try to change it from within. And part of that is learning and understanding and abiding by the party process rules as they are currently written. Any political party can promulgate whatever rules they want to govern their own processes. They're not obligated to make it, and you're not entitled to have it made, easy-peasy-lemon-squeezy for you. If, as is transparently obvious, you just want to use the Coloradio Republican Party's delegate selection rules and process being "too complicated" as another Trumparanoia excuse instead, then you'd probably enjoy having a beer with Mr. Lindsey.
Of course, if the Trump campaign had been any more on the ball about delegate wrangling than he was, they might have been able to fill in the gaping gaps in his knowledge, but alas for them both, they were as lazy, ignorant, and presumptuous as was Mr. Lindsey.
Which brings us to today, and the start of his grudging walkback bundled with his newest BS excuse: It was all the nefarious doing of shadowy Cruz operatives:
[A] sign-in sheet from his county’s March 19th assembly, the second step of the process where delegates were elected to the Statewide assembly, reveals that Lindsey never showed up to that meeting, and an alternate signed in for him instead.
Lindsey admits he may have missed a meeting, but claims that his point person for navigating the party processes was among the many Cruz supporters who deliberately tried to mislead him on several occasions, including on dates and times of meetings....
No record of the woman Lindsey named as his point-person — Jan Morgan — exists among the Colorado Republican Party’s listings of activists and operatives, and a GOP spokesman said they haven’t been able to confirm the person exists. Lindsey couldn’t provide their contact information, and couldn’t remember the last time he spoke with her. [emphases added]
Next, I imagine, he'll claim that "Jan Morgan" was her COVER name, one of a whole army of Cruz spooks, all masters of disguise and subterfuge, like Scarlet Johansson in Lucy....
....whose mission was to "squash democracy" and "thwart Trump" against the "will of (a third of) Republican voters" - even though it appears that Mr. Lindsey is the only such complainant:
That sounds like … a lot of subterfuge to disqualify one county-level delegate, especially when (to my knowledge) no other pro-Trump delegates to the State convention in Colorado have claimed elaborate shenanigans designed to deter them from attending key meetings. Lindsey himself writes, “Apparently, there was no lack of knowledgeable counsel available for Cruz supporters, since it seems only Trump supporters had problems with the rules.” He attributes that to some sort of conspiracy (“Since I don’t believe in coincidence, it reeks of something more”), but what’s the likelier explanation? That Team Cruz was running an elaborate con targeting all manner of Trumpists at a granular level — and somehow it only worked on Lindsey — or that Team Trump didn’t have its own act together enough to provide proper instructions to its supporters in the State on how to become delegates? Remember, no less than Paul Manafort told Meet the Press this weekend that the campaign wasn’t playing in Colorado. [emphases added]
Occam's Razor, Trumplicans (That means the simplest explanation that fits a given set of facts is usually the correct one). And really, don't you think that Cruz's operation was vastly more concerned with winning as many national delegates as they could than going to even greater trouble and efforts to diddle Trump delegates out of voting? Especially when Trump's Colorado ground game was nonexistent by their own admission?
And the punchline you've all been breathlessly waiting for: a Republican Party official DID remind Mr. Lindsey to attend his county assembly meeting:
In addition to previously revealed information, one elected official says he personally talked to Lindsey about the importance of going to the county assembly — and has the phone record to back it up.
State Representative Patrick Neville (HD-45) represents Castle Rock, the county seat of Douglas County. Neville’s website describes his political position. “I am a principled conservative with a passion for protecting life, liberty and the Constitution,” he writes, listing among his core beliefs:
*The size and scope of the government must be decreased.
*School Choice is a Civil Right.
*I am 100% Pro-Life with no exceptions.
*The Business Personal Property Tax should be eliminated. Fees should only be collected for their intended purpose, not used as a r revenue stream for politicians.
*Colorado needs to reject ObamaCare by repealing its health [cartel] program and promoting cash services. [emphasis added]
Yeah, sure sounds like an "establishment RINO elitist" to me.
Republicans pick who they want to run for HD-45 at the county assembly. In the weeks leading up to the county assembly on March 19th, Neville called delegates to ask for their support at the county assembly. According to phone records, he had an eight-minute phone call with Lindsey on March 15th. Neville says that they talked about his positions and areas of shared concern, as well as the importance of showing up at the assembly. Indeed, that was the main purpose of the phone call — to ensure delegates showed up at the county assembly and voted on the HD-45 race. Neville was surprised when Lindsey didn’t show up. (Neville ended up winning the nomination by acclamation.) [emphases added]
There appear to be two possibilities: Either Larry Wayne Lindsey (1) has undiagnosed early onset Alzheimers or dementia (the latter of whose impact upon short-term memory I saw firsthand with my late mother, so I'm serious as a heart attack about this), in which case I hope he gets it diagnosed and treated to the maximum extent of modern medicine, or (2) he's a bleeping moron who should shut up and go away, posthaste.
But he's a Trumplican, which confirms what a forlorn hope that really is.
No comments:
Post a Comment