After losing his bid to fill the congressional seat in the Colorado district ditched by Rep. Lauren Boebert (R-CO) — Ron Hanks is tossing a lit match at the GOP tinderbox.
"I don’t take anything that happens personally. But what I do see is the Republican Party has basically made itself irredeemable,” the MAGA hardliner who served as a combat veteran for 32 years told The Independent.
The choice of words was curious as it harks back to former presidential candidate Hillary Clinton's nose-pinching remarks disparaging MAGA and Trump's base of supporters back in 2016.
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“Just be grossly generalistic, you could put half of Trump’s supporters into what I call the basket of deplorables, right” she said to laughs and claps.
She considered those who fit in the basket and saluted Trump's rhetoric on social media to be "irredeemable."
The candidate who ran on his Jan. 6 attendance bonafides in the state's 3rd district was outdone on Tuesday with a double digit loss by a newcomer to politics in attorney Jeff Hurd, who Hanks likened to an "empty suit" who was backed by the “establishment” Colorado Republican old guard.
Each was vying to replace fellow GOP lawmaker Boebert, who fled for more conservative pastures in the 4th district seat that had been vacated by retired Rep. Ken Buck (R-CO) where she took a primary victory.
But Hanks appeared to fear — even relish — that the Republican Party will likely meet certain doom.
“This party should fall,” Hanks said. “This party should collapse. We are so infiltrated with people that have impure motives that we can’t trust people in our own party. It’s like having the enemy wearing our uniform in war.”
For Hanks there was just no sunny side to admire now that his campaign fell short.
He claimed it's also proven in the numbers.
“And so I think we’ve set ourselves up here for a Republican party that can’t redeem itself, and that’s just cold analytics,” said Hanks.
And worst of all, it could lead to more divide in an already fractured country.
“Right now, we’ve got a government that we don’t own, that we can’t control, that we cannot even get a foothold into — and I guess we have to remember the goodness in this, because if it gets to civil war... it’s going to be hard to know who’s on the wrong side.”