Boebert Beat: Carpetbagging to Colorado's 4th District and Eventual Obscurity

It was two days after Christmas, and all through the House, Lauren Boebert was scheming, with the smarts of a mouse.

Or maybe it's better to refer to her strategy as one of a rat, like one from a sinking ship — the foundering S.S. Gun-Mom. But what's really sinking is Boebert's re-election campaign in Colorado CD3, where she's in her second term of serving only her own financial ends and power fantasies.

So in a December 27 emailed announcement and (of course) a primped-up video made in her own kitchen, Boebert cheerfully announced her plans to abandon her current district and pin her hopes of staying in the U.S. House of Representatives on running for the CD4 seat being vacated by Ken Buck.

The video, which is pure Boebert bullshit, is chock-full of misinformation, distraction, false claims, hypocrisy and disingenuousness — making it hard to look at through a wide-angle news lens. So we thought we'd take a shot at annotating what she's saying bit by bit, mixing in some of the already-posted blunt responses to her move, as a way to offer a complete breakdown of Boebert's carpetbagging.
Boebert's video, which is curiously bereft of firearms, begins with her sending Christmas wishes to her constituents. They carry all the forced happiness of something terrible coming, sort of like divorcing parents who waited until after the holiday to tell the kids they were splitting up. "I hope [the holidays] were full of laughter and joy," she says. "After all, joy is not just a suggestion. It is our battle plan." What a weird thing to say — but very Lauren Boebert. Turning the idea of joy into a mandatory thing is, by itself, contrary to the nature of joy itself. But including it in some sort of aggressive attack scheme? On whom? For what? How do we weaponize joy? Is there ammo? Do I have to load my joy?

Perhaps Boebert senses that she's already gone off-track, because she re-orients herself immediately: "Let's get right to it. Today I am announcing my candidacy for the 2024 Republican nomination to represent Colorado's 4th Congressional District." She doesn't come out and say it, but this isn't just an announcement that she's running for office. It's an announcement that she's running from the office she currently holds and doesn't think she can win again. That simple fact — that implicit in the running for CD4 is the abandonment of her current constituency in CD3 — undercuts all the lipstick smiles Boebert musters for this appearance. It's certainly not something that voters in either district will easily forget, much less forgive.

Boebert continues by talking about how her decision is "the right move for me personally," which deserves a little more development because, if true, it poses a number of questions. To where in CD4 will she move? It's on the other side of the state from where she's lived, owned a business and represented at the national level. Are her kids going with her? And what makes this a good choice for her personally? It probably shouldn't be our business — after all, our reaction to most issues politicians face isn't "but how does this affect my representative personally?" But if Boebert is going to make the point, it probably needs some explanation.

She also calls it "the right decision for those who support our conservative movement," saying: "This is the right move for Colorado. This is the right move for us." Again, no mention here of CD3, the district she's been "fighting so hard" to represent in the U.S. House for over three years now. So to whom is Boebert referring when she talks about "those who support our conservative movement?" Who is "us?" This doesn't even feel like a message aimed at Colorado voters, let alone her own (current) voters. She seems to be talking to anyone watching FoxNews or Newsmax.

"Since the first day I ran for public office," Boebert continues, "I promised I would do whatever it takes to stop the socialists and communists from taking over our country." Well, no. Specifically, she swore to represent CD3, which she's now leaving after having accomplished very little except to embarrass residents of that district every so often. Sure, she did that by talking about socialists and communists, which she's constantly shown that she understands in terms of their buzzworthiness, but at no other level.

"That means staying in the fight," Boebert grins, because fighting turns her on. Her and what remains of her support base, which apparently is fine with uninformed representation so long as the aggression is as naked as possible.

"But it also means not allowing Hollywood elites and progressive money groups to buy the 3rd District, a seat that they have no business owning," Boebert says. "I will not allow dark money that is directed at destroying me personally to steal this seat. It's not fair to the 3rd District and the conservatives there who have fought so hard for our victories. Of which I'm incredibly grateful." Okay, there's a lot here, and as usual with Lauren Boebert, it's a confusing word salad of lots of different attacks and a clear misunderstanding of basic concepts. The attack on dark money would be legit were it not for the fact that she's clearly labeling it as the wrong dark money. She's making the quiet part loud: Secret funding is fine, as long as it's secretly funding me. Somehow, she's also taking the race for Ken Buck's seat — which he's vacating in part because of a political world much like the one Boebert has helped to create in Washington — personally. And then the questions just pile up: Does anyone have the right to "own" a House seat? Who is this collective "we" to which she keeps obliquely referring? What is she considering "our victories," and for what, exactly, is she grateful?

Perhaps sensing that she's battled up a conversational hill she can't hold, Boebert retreats to her private life. "Personally, this announcement is a fresh start following a pretty difficult year for me and my family. I had never been in politics before, and I'd never been through a divorce...I've made my own personal mistakes, and have owned up and apologized for them. It's tested my faith, my strength, and my abilities both as a mom and as a congresswoman. It's been humbling and challenging, but it's also given me a lot of perspective and helped me grow." That's a nice little speech, if you can forget that the big stumble — her public fondling and assorted behavior unbecoming a political leader at Denver's Buell Theatre — happened only three months ago. As a mom, she should know that saying "sorry" is rarely enough to right a wrong, especially one that reveals the pernicious attitude with which Boebert has consistently governed, if indeed we can use that term in a Boebertian context. And really, Representative Boebert — humbling and challenging experiences that offer perspective and help one grow? That's high school. It's not national government.

But still, she continues: "I cannot put into words how grateful I am for everyone who has steadfastly stood alongside me in the 3rd District and across America. The relationships we have cultivated over the past few years are deeply cherished and unbreakable." Again with the "we," and also: If they were unbreakable relationships, Representative, you wouldn't be attempting the district switch.

"Twenty twenty-four is going to be tough," she continues. "We cannot lose the 3rd."

Here's a moment of unintended honesty from Boebert, which might have made her campaign managers want to cut the scene and start again. But the message is clear: Colorado's most controversial state rep is leaving the 3rd because she knows she's going to lose it. That's quite the campaign slogan for her run in the 4th, which she rambles on to claim is "hungry for an unapologetic defender of freedom with a proven track record of standing strong for conservative principles." Here's the rub with that line: CD4 had that in Buck. Like his politics or not, he stood up for what he believed to be right, and he was for the most part an old-school conservative the likes of which are getting squeezed out of the new slavishly MAGA GOP. He's on record as saying that Republican leadership can't face the real problems America faces because it's "so fixated on vengeance for contrived injustices." Buck is a guy who was in the poorly named and far-right Freedom Caucus who suddenly found himself outside the oppressive idol-worshipping party he'd helped to create. 

"We have to protect our majority in the House," Boebert rails. "Win the Senate, and win the presidency. President Trump has made it very clear that when we take back the White House, he needs our conservative voices heard loud and clear."

How Boebert admitting defeat in the 3rd and taking a risky move to the 4th is in any way working toward the GOP maintaining control of the U.S. House is unclear. Colorado Democratic Party Chair Shad Murib's take is that “Lauren Boebert can run, but she can’t hide. The good people of western and southern Colorado didn’t wait for an election to beat Lauren Boebert — we scared her straight and chased her out of her own district. With this carpetbagging move, Lauren Boebert has shown herself to be everything she claims she isn’t: a typical swampy politician looking for a reason to call Washington, D.C., home. She’s a loser in CD3, and she’ll be a loser in CD4. Coloradans won’t buy her bullshit in 2024.”

Boebert is clearly betting otherwise, though arguably against the House. Her former opponent in CD3, Democrat Adam Frisch, promises that Boebert's surprise move won't change the campaign he's been running, which he characterizes as an effective alternative to the "angertainment" put forth by Boebert's representation.

"I love Colorado's 3rd," Boebert says, promising to keep representing that constituency as hard as she can for the remainder of her term. "But I also spent years living on the Front Range and years representing rural America. The 3rd and the 4th Congressional Districts comprise nearly 85 percent of Colorado’s footprint and have less than 20 people per square mile. Rural America deserves a strong voice that fights for their freedoms." Granted, every single American has rights, but those stats suggest that her base might be comprised more of empty land than actual people. It at least explains how so much of Colorado's political map might look red but the state votes more blue.

Starting in with the misinformation, Boebert says: "The American people are struggling with groceries, inflation, credit card debt and other monthly expenses that were fueled by Biden’s spending spree," misattributing working-class financial worries to the only guy working to fix them now.

"I know all too well how damaging the liberals have been to our entire state," she claims, perhaps forgetting to add "and most of my voters can't pad mileage reports or misuse campaign donations to pay their bills!"

After promising to move to the 4th in 2024, she launches into her tried-and-true straw man targets: the "Aspen donors, George Soros and Hollywood actors," and invites them to "go pound sand," which is a folksy way of telling someone to fuck off — you know, like CD3 was just getting ready to do to Boebert herself.

But Boebert breathlessly promises that — somehow — "Republicans will hold the 3rd, and I'll represent the 4th, and Republicans will be stronger for it." Again, somehow. She goes on to rattle off a litany of issues she wants to work on to "get the country back on track" (some of them real), but notes that she's not been schooled on all of them, like water issues, the economy, inflation and energy policy.

Sneering at one point, Boebert says she plans to "stop woke-ism," which is a political term that's long outlived its usefulness as anything but a dog whistle for "be against this, my minions of ignorant anger."

After four minutes of whatever-that-was, Boebert sums up her spiel. "I did not arrive at this decision easily," she says, claiming it took "a lot of prayer, a lot of tough conversations and a lot of perspective" to convince her that "this is the best way I can continue to fight for Colorado, for the conservative movement, and for my children's future and for the future of this great country." Which is pretty much admitting what seems clear: This is all about keeping her sweet D.C. gig.

At the end of her video, as abusers will — and much like Trump tweeted on January 6 to the rioters and insurrectionists he'd gathered in his name to attack the U.S. Capitol (when Boebert proudly exclaimed "Today is 1776!") — Boebert tells the world that she loves us.

So maybe that's the battle plan for joy. Or whatever.