On this fiery episode of Rush to Reason, Andy Pate fills in for John Rush and welcomes Eli Bremer for a hard-hitting conversation about socialism, looting through legislation, and the decline of blue-state America. The two take aim at what Andy calls “voting as looting,” unpacking how progressive policies in New York and California are driving away producers and wealth. Then, they turn the focus back to Colorado—why Republicans keep losing, how unelectable candidates sink the party, and why vetting, pragmatism, and electability must come before vanity politics. Eli exposes the chaos of “Rhino Watch” and the damage fringe
SPEAKER 13 :
This is Rush to Reason. You are going to shut your damn yapper and listen for a change because I got you pegged, sweetheart. You want to take the easy way out because you’re scared. And you’re scared because if you try and fail, there’s only you to blame. Let me break this down for you. Life is scary. Get used to it. There are no magical fixes.
SPEAKER 12 :
With your host, John Rush.
SPEAKER 13 :
My advice to you is to do what your parents did. Get a job, sir. You haven’t made everybody equal. You’ve made them the same and there’s a big difference.
SPEAKER 01 :
Let me tell you why you’re here. You’re here because you know something. What you know you can’t explain, but you feel it. You felt it your entire life. That there’s something wrong with the world. You don’t know what it is, but it’s there. It is this feeling that has brought you to me.
SPEAKER 10 :
Are you crazy?
SPEAKER 13 :
Am I? Or am I so sane that you just blew your mind?
SPEAKER 10 :
It’s Rush to Reason with your host, John Rush, presented by Cub Creek Heating and Air Conditioning.
SPEAKER 11 :
Actually, it’s Andy Pate, party of choice. And welcome back to Rush to Reason, Denver’s Afternoon Rush, KLZ 560. I am Andy Pate, filling in for John Rush on the line right now. We got Eli Bremer. Eli, you’re the most hated man for Rhino Watch, and that makes me jealous. I just want you to know.
SPEAKER 01 :
How do I get Ryan to watch?
SPEAKER 11 :
How do I get them to hate me as much as they hate you? Because I feel like I must not be a good enough person that I’m not hated enough by them.
SPEAKER 03 :
Well, you know, as one of those deals, I do professional consulting for a living. You’d have to pay me a lot of money to get that figure for me. But I think Donald Trump made the rhino wall of shame this week because he endorsed Jeff Hurd. I know. It was beautiful. I think it’s probably high time. It meant Donald Trump is a never-Trumper rhino, and that’s the most logical way to approach this, because how could he possibly endorse Jeff Hurd if he’s not a never-Trump rhino?
SPEAKER 11 :
Oh, yeah. Well, I think it’s patently obvious that Trump is a never-Trumper. I mean, because he went for Jeff Hurd. By the way, later in the hour, we’re going to be talking about what makes a great GOP candidate, especially here in Colorado, and what makes a bad one. And I think we’re going to have to talk a little about Jeff Hurd and what makes him a great one. But first, let’s talk about a bad candidate who’s about to win, and that is Mamdani in New York. Now, I’m just going to tell you right out, Eli, this is not voting that’s happening today in New York. You probably think it’s voting. It’s not. It’s looting. OK, this is going to be a this is citywide mass political suicide. But yeah, but I mean, this is look, the reason he’s being voted in is one reason, one reason only to steal from people. That’s it. All of his voters, a big majority of New Yorkers want him to steal more money than is already being stolen from producers and give it to them. And, you know, Let’s be honest. This has always been the message of the Democrat Party. We are going to steal for you and make you feel good about it. Make you feel that you deserve to have us steal for you. That’s our big selling. That’s our big sales pitch. That’s how we get people to vote for us. I’m speaking as a Democrat right now. Mamdani has taken that to levels never before imagined. All he’s going to do is looting. This is looting. And you don’t have to carry a gun. You don’t have to carry a knife. You don’t even have to throw a brick. All you do is cast a vote. What do you think?
SPEAKER 03 :
Well, this is, you know, the age old saying is that democracy is two foxes and a chicken voting on what to have for dinner. Right.
SPEAKER 11 :
And they simply outnumber you.
SPEAKER 03 :
Yeah. And that’s why America has been great, is that we’re we’re not a straight line democracy. We are a republic. Democracies digress into what you just said. It’s organized theft. It’s looting. And that digresses very quickly into authoritarian authoritarian regimes. What’s amazing to me.
SPEAKER 11 :
Yeah. I’m sorry. Before you run on from that, you know, it really gets me like, how can everybody that I know, I mean, everybody’s been a kid. Were you a kid? Were you ever a child?
SPEAKER 03 :
I’ve been accused of that. Actually, my wife would tell you I might still be one at heart.
SPEAKER 11 :
Oh, okay, got it, got it. Okay, well, every kid knows what it’s like, except for the alphas on campus, right? All the other kids know what it’s like to be ganged up on now and then at school, right? You get ganged up on, you’re in the out crowd for the most part, whatever. Nobody likes being ganged up on, and yet the moment they can do it with their vote, they feel good about it. They want to be the majority voting themselves somebody else’s money.
SPEAKER 03 :
And that’s what we’re seeing. And frankly, Andy, I don’t know for sure if Mondami’s going to win. I think he probably will. Oh, he will. Early voting was about four times as much as it was four years ago. So it’s sort of unclear who’s showing up at the polls. I’m looking at the returns right now. They’re saying Virginia’s too close to call. That was a 10-point spread in the polls. I’m assuming Mondami’s going to win. And frankly, I think maybe it will be good if he wins. Because socialism, and that’s what he is, he’s a socialist communist, they’re really two sides of the same coin. And we have to apparently, as a nation, periodically remind ourselves why this is such a bad idea. And, you know, you asked if I was a kid at one point. As I like to say, I’m raising one child, my wife’s raising two. My son is 10, and I just act that way. But periodically with my son, we let him get into some trouble and face the consequence of it, because if we continually tell him not to do something… and he doesn’t face a consequence of it, then he will continually not learn not to do it. And I was talking to a friend of mine yesterday who’s a Democrat. Yes, I have Democrat friends. In fact, she wanted to talk to me because she had someone very close to her who she used to bounce political ideas off of who was a Republican, and she wanted a common-sense Republican to talk to. So we were talking about this, and she said, you know, I’m really interested in your perspective on New York. And I said… Look, Mondami is calling for the collectivization of grocery source. I got my undergraduate degree in economics, and we studied a lot of what’s called transition economics from communism to capitalism. So I have a pretty good familiarity around this space. In world history, whenever food distribution has been collectivized, it has led to mass starvation. Yes. Every single time. And I said… I am opposed to collectivization of food resources, not because I don’t want people to be fed, but because I want people to be fed. And every time that the socialists have taken over and collectivized food resources, it has led to starvation of the poor. I don’t like starving poor people. I think it’s immoral. Free market capitalism figures out how to get food to them. Socialism figures out how to starve them. One hundred percent of the time. So I think New York’s going to have to kind of live through this. I think they’re going to need to clear their system with the nonsense of prosecuting Donald Trump last year. I know my friend Grant Cardone, who’s a famous real estate investor, pulled billions out of New York after that. Billions. And I think when Mondami’s elected, which I suspect he will, but I don’t think it’s a done deal, I think they’ll see tens or hundreds of billions of dollars flee the city. At a certain point, we’ve got to quit rescuing the liberals from themselves. California is in the same boat. And we just need to tell people, guys, look, our founding fathers set up the country to allow states to be kind of petri dishes for governments. And we can see that progressivism and liberalism and socialism fails. And there’s a reason everybody’s moving to states like Texas and Florida. You know, Republicans and conservatives know how to govern, and Democrats and liberals and socialists drive everything into the ground. So we just may have to keep emphasizing that.
SPEAKER 11 :
Yeah, well, obviously, it’s like your son again. You’ve got to let him fail and let him learn from those failures. By the way, your son is consulting legal advice. I think he’s suing you, just so you know. He’s pretty upset about that. He’s a very aggressive kid.
SPEAKER 03 :
Go ahead. Yeah, he’s outside riding a scooter. He wanted to watch TV. I said, it’s a nice day. You can go ride your scooter. Last year after Halloween, my wife calls me one day and says, did you know our son was at school selling candy? I said, yeah. And she said, you know he’s not allowed to do that, right? And I said, of course. She said, why’d you let him do it then? I said, because he told me with certainty he was allowed to do it. And he had been telling me things that he wasn’t lying. He doesn’t lie. But he was telling me things that he wasn’t really checking in on. He just wanted them to be true. And I wanted to teach him a lesson. So he got called to the principal’s office. And ever since then, he has been very careful about making sure when he represents that he knows something to be true, that he actually knows it to be true.
SPEAKER 11 :
So he was the kid’s dealer of candy on the playgrounds.
SPEAKER 03 :
Well, and look, as an entrepreneur myself, I totally respect that. And now I’m going to rat out, I’m not going to be allowed to stay at my house tonight because my wife, when she was his age, got caught selling paper hats at school and kids were giving her their milk money for paper hats.
SPEAKER 11 :
How long did your wife remain in organized crime? Well, she just got out of elected office, so I think there are people… Well, really quick here, Eli, I think the big thing that they’re going to learn in New York is something that I don’t understand why anybody could not learn it, okay? OK, from each according to his ability to each according to his need. That’s the foundation of the Democrats. That’s the foundation of socialism and communism. OK, that is what he’s selling. This is a day of looting. That is what’s happening right now. They’re not votes. They’re looting. OK, and here’s the big thing that gets me. Everywhere it’s used, people flee. OK, they run from every communist socialist nation to come here. And you can ask any American this and they know this. People on the left, right or middle. Hey, folks, are people fleeing here to go to communist socialist nations or are they fleeing there to come here? OK, they’re coming from there to here. OK, what about red and blue states? Are they fleeing red states to move to blue states? No, they’re going from blue states fleeing to red states. Okay, what about urban areas versus suburban and rural areas that are redder? Okay, are they running from the rural areas into the cities or are they running from the cities out to the rural areas? Whoops, there they go again. So you have the arrow going the same way each and every time. Communism is a system of economics that people flee every time it’s used. And I guess they got to learn that again in New York.
SPEAKER 03 :
That’s a 100%-ism. We don’t have to think about it. We don’t have to try it again. We can know this. Communism fails every time. Free market capitalism has succeeded every time. And I was explaining this to my friend yesterday. If I ask the liberal, tell me what the, you know, rank order these three things in what is worst to best. Slavery slash racism, fascism, and socialism. they would say slavery slash racism is by far the worst evil faced in humanity. And then fascism is next, and socialism is probably a net good. I did some research on this. Slavery in America was, the numbers I read are out, 6 million people. So assuming all of them, everybody there was killed, you’ve got 6 million victims. Then you have fascism that killed in the tens of millions. and socialism has killed hundreds and hundreds of millions right and so from a survivability point of view you actually have it upside down and and they’re all bad okay let’s let me be really clear here well yeah but that’s the whole point what you’re doing is you’re taking something that is utterly horrible like slavery and saying look we can all agree this is utterly horrible well this economic system you guys say you like has killed far more It’s demonstrably worse. You have a better chance of surviving slavery than socialism from a statistical point of view. And I’m just going to get really crass here and say the reason is in slavery, at least there is another person who is a vile person who owns a slave who has an interest in your well-being and productivity. In socialism, it’s a faceless government. Yeah. And so in either in either case, you’re actually a slave. But in one, you’re a slave to a human being who who, you know, will generally make decisions that are better for you than a government. And again, both are important. OK, but I’m right. It’s amazing to me that they see slavery to the government as as a good that should be brought. I mean, can you imagine, Andy, if they if you had a candidate who is in New York City saying, I want to bring back slavery? They would rightfully be thrown out and shunned from society. And yet you have a candidate who is saying, I want to bring communism and socialism, which is arguably 10 to 20 times as dangerous and as destructive as slavery. Democrats are like, yeah, let’s let’s try that one on for size. What could possibly go wrong?
SPEAKER 11 :
Well, tell you what, let’s take a break when we come back, because Eli Brammer, for those who don’t know, also knows his housing. OK, you know, housing, you know about where people live and what they’re going to do. I want to talk about the rich in New York. What are they going to do next? So we’ll talk about that after the break. Up next is Flesch Law. Kevin Flesch. That’s F-L-E-S-C-H. He’s the lawyer your opponent doesn’t want to face. Call Flesh Law at 303-806-8886 or you can go to fleshlawfirm.com.
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SPEAKER 11 :
And welcome back to Rush to Reason, Denver’s Afternoon Rush, KLZ 560. Okay, Eli Bremer on the line. Eli, you know real estate, okay? What are the rich going to do to leave New York? How do they pull that off?
SPEAKER 03 :
They’re going to do just about everything they can. I’ve got a friend who is a major real estate investor who’s pulled out a ton of money from there. But I think what you’re going to see is people who can are going to start moving out. You’ll probably see the vacancy rates go up. in terms of business occupancy, because I think Mondami, assuming he gets elected, is going to try to tax these businesses. He said he wants to tax the wealthy. So they may try to offload their real estate holdings there. Frankly, if you’re a smart real estate investor, you probably plan on this, and you’ve probably already started selling off your assets. It can get as bad as San Francisco, where vacancy has become so bad that you literally cannot give away downtown real estate in parts of San Francisco because it’s not worth the taxes.
SPEAKER 11 :
This is getting to what I was wondering, though. I mean, would you buy into New York? I mean, who’s going to buy the property from them? Are they going to be just selling at a massive loss across the board?
SPEAKER 03 :
I think that that’s likely to happen. Now, a lot of real estate is about depreciation, and so if you sell, you have to recapture that depreciation. However, at the end of the day, there will be some buyers. There’s a saying in real estate, you make the money when you buy, not when you sell. So you may see some bottom feeders that come in and say, hey, we’ll start buying up these assets. But one of the things you have to be really worried about, and I know this went into Grant Cardone’s thinking when he pulled out of there, was what happened with Trump was the judiciary system went full on politicals. And they basically said, we don’t care what the law is. We are going to find Trump guilty. We’ll figure out for what later. And then we’re going to try to find him out of existence. And so I think some of this has been priced into the market, and I think some of it is going to get priced in soon. I’ll be stunned if Mondami wins if we don’t start seeing the bottom fall out of the real estate market there, and if we don’t see some pretty mass exoduses. I mean, let’s be really clear. What he’s calling for, the policies he’s calling for, will lead to mass starvation because they have every single time. So either he is going to fail at his policy or his policies will fail.
SPEAKER 11 :
The big difference is he is counting on America to cover it. He is counting on the fact that New York, no matter how badly he runs, New York is not an island in the South Pacific. It’s not on its own. So somehow, some way, Americans will be taxed to support his lunacy.
SPEAKER 03 :
Well, and this is where, you know, what the plan is, is it’s okay to have idiotic policies. They, you know, at some point down the road, there will be a Democrat president, there will be a Democrat House and Democrat Senate. I adore most of what our president has called for. I understand why he’s called for the elimination of the filibuster. I think if we eliminate the filibuster and what the president has said is, The Democrats will do it anyway. He may be right on that. But when the Democrats get back in control, what they’re going to do is try to vote our tax dollars to go bail out California and New York. But I’m looking at – I’ve got Fox News on in the background. I’m looking at some of the exit polls, and people in California and New York, based on the exit polls, think that their states are dumpster fires. And I’m thinking – Has it occurred to you, there’s some smart people there, okay? Has it occurred to you that if you keep on doing the same thing again and again, I mean, the condition of New Jersey’s economy, 2% viewed as excellent, 36% as good. You know, so the vast majority, almost two in three people view their economy as bad. And, you know, yet we may not win the governor’s race in New Jersey. Again, this comes down to I think that the New Yorkers are just going to have to – they’re going to have to hunker down, and they’re going to vote socialism in, communism in, and I think that we need to stand firm and say you guys are going to have to fix this yourself. We can’t bail you out of this one.
SPEAKER 11 :
Okay, let’s pivot from New York because I think New York is gone anyway, so be it. And I agree with you. I think actually New York is going to look very bad for the Democrats in 26. As it starts to implode and their tax base moves out, I think it’s going to look bad. But let’s look at Colorado here for a moment. We have a primary. Okay. And obviously it’s way too early to know, gee, who are the best ones? Who are the worst ones? Nobody’s been vetted yet. We don’t know. Okay. But what kind of candidates are going to win here in Colorado? And here’s what I mean. My biggest concern, Eli, is that too many Colorado Republicans use the worst possible measurement for choosing a candidate. The worst reason, the dumbest thing you can possibly do, and I’m talking beyond dumb, is to basically say this, whoever agrees with me the most, that’s who I like. OK, so I’m just going to look down all their all their policy positions and I’m going to say which one agrees with me the most. And everybody else is a rhino. OK, this is the one I want. And if you do that, don’t get me wrong. I love being principled and advancing my principles, but I’m one voter. If you look in the mirror right now, you are one voter. And I’d like everybody to look in the mirror right now and count the votes. It’s one. And if you only want the one who agrees with you the most and you’re not thinking about electability, that is the dumbest strategy I’ve ever heard of. What do you think?
SPEAKER 03 :
100% the electability matters. And you’re not principled if you select someone who is as close to you as you can find. You’re vain. That’s vanity. Principled is in saying, I am going to find the most conservative person who can get elected. Now, a great example of this is President Trump just endorsed Andrew Cuomo. Andrew Cuomo is a raging dumpster fire, but he’s not a communist. Right. And and, you know, let’s follow Trump’s lead and say, you know, you have to decide the people who can reasonably get elected. Curtis Lewa has zero chance of getting elected. Right. And so he should have dropped out. It should have dropped out. Trump did the pragmatic thing, and he came out and said, of the two candidates, I’ve got a terrible candidate, and I’ve got one that’s even worse. So let’s go with the terrible one.
SPEAKER 11 :
Okay, but what do you say to people who say, but what about my principles? Sliwa aligns with my principles. You’re telling me to vote against my principles.
SPEAKER 03 :
Not in the least. Voting is about an intelligent decision to advance our conservative principles. And so what you should do is vote in such a way as to advance your principles. And that is by supporting the candidate who is closest to your views that has a reasonable chance of getting elected. Because otherwise, you know, you’re not making a statement. You’re throwing your vote away. So I think it’s very important to start by being pragmatic. And guys, we live in a state. I just did some polling here. We’re a D plus six state. That means that Republicans have to overcome a six point disadvantage right from the get go for our statewide for statewide offices. And by the way, I think it’s worse than that.
SPEAKER 11 :
I think it’s worse than that because I believe that the unaffiliated in Colorado lean left.
SPEAKER 03 :
No, actually, this was our polling. Now, I’d like to point out, so this was actual polling I just did. So this included unaffiliated. OK, so really include all the unaffiliated. Yes, we start six points down. OK, now, if I look at the last election, we lost the governor’s race and the Senate race, I believe, by 19 and 17 points respectively. 19 and 14. OK, so so that means that we started at a disadvantage and then we found new and creative ways to dig holes for ourselves. Right. And that’s what we’ve got to be really careful not to do. So we have to find ways to go from down by six up. And what Colorado Republicans have historically been doing is finding ways to go from down by six down. And as we start selecting candidates for this upcoming cycle, that is what we need to keep in mind. It’s not even that we’re not entitled to win. We’re starting a touchdown down at the start of the game. Right. And that’s what we’ve got to overcome. Yes.
SPEAKER 11 :
Well, I think people are being very foolish with this. I always say this. Vote to advance the most liberty possible in that setting. Okay? And like you just said in New York, the most liberty possible in that setting is Cuomo. Because he is the number two candidate in the race, right? And the other one is absolute communism. And so you vote for that. But if you vote for Sliwa, the Republican, what you’re doing is casting what we call a protest vote. Well, votes aren’t meant for protests. That’s why we have a thing called the secret ballot. They’re not meant for protests. You want to protest, carry a sign. You want to protest, write a letter, okay? But if you want to vote, you’re making a mathematical decision to contribute to the math with your one. And they’re not doing that in New York. I think the Republicans, every Republican who votes for Sliwa is making a strategic mistake.
SPEAKER 03 :
I think you’re correct. And, you know, that being said, it’s important, you know, if we go back to Colorado, it’s important to start looking at these candidates. And before you fall in love, uh, you know, do your homework and, and their homework should, you know, it should include what are their positions, but you should also ask the questions, you know, are there going to be any issues that arise with this candidate? Do they have, you know, have we, are we sure that they’ve been honest and truthful with our background? Uh, you know, if you go back, uh, back to 2010, Or sorry, 2012, we had Matt Arnold was running for Board of Regents, and it turned out he’d lied about having a master’s degree. You know, these are the kind of things we can really trip up candidates. So it’s important, you know, as we get started to ask questions, has the candidate been vetted? Have they submitted to a professional background check? Do they have a plan to raise the kind of money? This is probably a $25 to $30 million governor’s race and maybe double or triple that for the Senate if it becomes competitive. Do you actually have plans to raise money? So this is what I want to see as the crop of candidates pops up is those are the questions that smart voters should be asking because it’s really easy for someone to tell you what you want to hear and get you excited. But what we really need to do in this state, we’re starting a touchdown down. We’ve got to take candidates who have a good chance of winning in this state, or at least a realistic chance of winning.
SPEAKER 11 :
Okay, what about somebody like Marx? And then we’ll take a break here because, obviously, Marx is totally unvetted. Now, the upside, of course, is that he has a huge name recognition right off the bat. He has throngs of people who follow him and support him, and that’s a very good thing. Of course, those will be motivated voters in the general election. That’s a good thing, but we don’t know anything about it. And this is a guy who has run nonprofits. I mean, this is somebody who has not been vetted. What do you think about that?
SPEAKER 03 :
Well, the same answer I’d give to anyone is, particularly a candidate who’s never run before, this is for everybody, needs to submit to a professional vetting. You sometimes find out stuff about yourself you didn’t even know was out there. I was talking to my friend Heather Wilson at one point, who was a congresswoman from New Mexico, and she was running for the Senate, and when she went through vetting, they found that there was an unfinished legal deal, and it had to do with like a moving violation uh that they had to get cleaned up um so it’s i would always ask anybody one of the first questions you should ask a candidate uh whether they’re running for congress or senate or governor is you know it’s great thank you for talking to me about this has your campaign team submitted to formal vetting have you have you mitigated any of these problems because this boils up a lot, especially in a state like Colorado. The reason it’s kind of a big issue here is that a majority of the candidates who are going to run and potentially, by the way, Andy, a majority of candidates who are going to be really interesting to be electorate have probably never been elected before. And so one of the things I’m going to be looking for is making sure that we don’t have any unforced errors with our candidates. And, you know, if you look back again to the 2010 election of Dan Mays, who was the winner of the caucus by quite a bit, he won the primary. And then it turned out, again, he had major resume issues. And I think he got 11 percent of the vote statewide. So I think it’s great that we’re seeing some new blood get in. I’m excited to see new people step up to the plate. I would caution folks, make sure we’re asking the tough questions. Don’t just look for points of agreement. See if they’ve got their campaign set up. And then ask the tough question, have you, you know, have you submitted to vetting? Have you had your background check done? Has an independent entity looked at this? And when I ran for the U.S. Senate, we had it professionally done. And, you know, they ask you all sorts of tough questions. You know, are there going to be allegations of affairs? Have you ever had financial mismanagement issues? Things like this that the Democrats will 100 percent exploit in campaigns. And so as we are likely to run some more untested candidates, that’s something I’m going to be watching for.
SPEAKER 11 :
Okay. Well, let’s take a break. When we come back, I want to talk a little bit about the – Well, I’m going to talk about Rhino Watch and their effect on the state central committee and their effect on the party here in Colorado. Up next is Roof Savers. Hey, sun and hail have been pounding your roof for the past six months, so is it ready for winter? Dave Hart can fix your roof when things go wrong, but he can also make it last 5, 10, even 15 years longer with this special treatment. Call Dave at 303-710-6916.
SPEAKER 05 :
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SPEAKER 11 :
And welcome back to Rush to Reason, Denver’s Afternoon Rush, KLZ 560. Talking to Eli Bremmer here. Eli, let’s talk a little bit about Rhino Watch really quick. For those who don’t know what Rhino Watch is, they’re a publication here in Colorado that is, I don’t even want to call it the far right because I don’t consider them to be more right wing. They are the more aggressive, angry, they’re the rage brigade here in Colorado. They are the Matt Gaetz types. Okay, I guess that’s the closest I can say. They rabidly support former state chair Dave Williams, and they relentlessly attack anybody in sight who doesn’t match their purity test and calls them rhinos. And they are basically right now trying to back every candidate. We were just talking about electability. They back the most unelectable candidates imaginable in district after district. Now, the reason this is important, because you’re probably wondering, well, why is a crazy group like that important? Because I just went to the state central committee meeting a couple months ago, and it was about 60% rhino watchers. OK, they’ve taken over the SEC for the most part. They’re running the party in our state. Now, thankfully, for the time being, we got Britta Horn and her leadership team, you know, holding back the tide for now, at least for this two years. But I’m telling you what, they are very powerful. And it’s because of the caucus system, which we’ll mention in a moment. Here’s my question to you, Eli. How much damage are they causing the party in Colorado?
SPEAKER 03 :
Oh, well, Andy, they have caused quite a bit. Thankfully, Britta Horne is sort of standing in the gap right now there. And I think maybe it’s time for us to label them the accurate term. This is the establishment. Yeah. And, you know, they’re they’re unelected. They’re self-appointed who want to control the system. You know, they’re not conservative. These were the never Trumpers of 2016. You know, now they’re once again, they’re they’re very upset that that President Trump is the leader of our party. as endorsed Jeff Heard. So it’s really not about conservatism or something like that. This is the establishment that you sort of hear about, and they’re very corrupt. They can’t win elections, but they sort of feel like they’re entitled to donations for their candidates, and then they want to take that money. And we’ve seen that time and time again. So the reason they’re destructive is they continually try to drive the Republican Party into the ground. Like I just said, I did some polling. We’re starting six points down. We’re starting a touchdown down. And, you know, the Colorado Republican brand in this state is not good. And that’s what a lot of the polling I saw showed was that we have an image problem here. One of the questions I asked in the poll was, thinking ahead would you like colorado to be more like florida or like california and and a small majority of our state actually chose florida over california um when i asked about do you think that men belong in women’s sports uh about i think 50 percent of the by 50 percent spread the population said that’s utterly wrong um and yet you know we’re still six points down that’s a brand problem and we have a brand problem because people don’t take us seriously You know, if I were comparing, I’d say Republicans in Colorado are sort of have become a little bit of the same laughingstock that Democrats in New York have. We can’t get our act together. We keep on driving ourselves into the ground. So that’s why this is important. We need these folks to knock it off. We need them to quit trying to cancel the primaries. That’s their perennial deal. They want to have total control. They want to choose the candidates because they don’t trust you to do it. And they don’t really care if we lose.
SPEAKER 11 :
Yeah, they want to cancel the primaries because they can’t win them. And this is why, folks, the caucus and assembly system here in Colorado, bottom line, is the only reason these people have power. Okay, caucus and assembly are attended by less than 1% of Republicans in Colorado. That means a very small but highly organized and motivated group of activists can overrun them. OK, that group, that little rhino watch group of activists cannot overrun a primary. It’s too many people, but they can overrun caucus and assembly. So they want our candidates chosen through caucus and assembly, which they can overrun and which has helped them overrun the state central committee, but not through primaries, which they can’t. I mean, is that a pretty easy summation?
SPEAKER 03 :
Yeah, that’s absolutely correct. And frankly, the tactics they use are despicable. They go in, they’ll use nasty slurs and assault people. I mean, these have become physically violent events that normal people just don’t want to go to. I actually polled this in my most recent polling, Andy, and what I discovered was that the vast, vast, vast majority of Colorado voters want to see reform to our ballot access and election system. It’s about a 55 or 60 point spread, if my memory is correct, of people who want to get rid of the system. So what you have is this small elitist establishment group. that believes they should control it. And the vast majority of Coloradans want to see more choices on the ballot. They want to have it not be picked by party insiders. And yet the party insiders, of course, are the corrupt party insiders.
SPEAKER 11 :
I know, but these people, the Rhino Watch, they call themselves the outsiders. They look like they say, we’re the grassroots. We’re the outsiders. We’re against the establishment. I mean, they misuse every term because they can. And it’s just like, my goodness, guys, You guys are nothing but insiders and activists who want to have as few Republicans involved in choosing our candidates as possible.
SPEAKER 03 :
Yeah, when I was running for the Senate, my consultants came in, and they said, well, so we know the establishment will be up against you. And I said, well, you have to get your terminology correct. In our state, we call the establishment the grassroots, and we call the grassroots the establishment. Right. And my consultants were Donald Trump consultants, okay? These were some of Trump’s top consultants. And they looked at it and said, You got to be joking. I said, no, no, you just have to understand that the establishment here has convinced everybody that they’re the grassroots. And it’s, you know, opposite stay in Colorado every day.
SPEAKER 11 :
Well, really quick before we go to break. What is it in your words, in the words of Eli Bremmer? Because here, look, I’m going to tell you right out. The candidates supported by Rhino Watch, if they were to become the candidate in, say, District CD3, for instance, and Heard was out, the replacement would be Hope Shepelman, who would lose the general election in a landslide. OK, if they were to get their candidate in in District five, they might lose that. They would definitely lose District eight. OK, they would lose the House for Donald Trump if they got their candidates in. I mean, that’s guaranteed. And I’ve actually shown people I don’t have time right now, but I’ve broken down the numbers as to why that’s true with John on air. And he’s like, absolutely. This is incontrovertible. They would have they definitely would have lost three and eight and they’d probably lose five. Now, here’s my question. Why? Why are their candidates so unsellable to the market known as Colorado?
SPEAKER 03 :
Well, it started back with vetting. You know, Hope Scheffelman, who is the state party chair, you know, the favorite of the establishment that calls itself the grassroots, her personal life is a disaster. Let’s remember, this is a woman who filed a false police report because she got in a squabble on Facebook, got caught, and then her response was to file a false police report.
SPEAKER 11 :
Yes, she claims to have been stalked by a person she can’t prove exists.
SPEAKER 03 :
She’s a recovering drug addict whose struggle with addiction, and a lot of people do, but politics is probably not a good place to go with that. And she has decided that politics is her salvation and that people should just flock to her. Now, the Democrats support this. Again, we don’t have to guess. In CD3, the same district, she aligned with the Democrats to the extent, let’s take a walk back in time, Hope Shepelman was reposting Democrat ads against Jeff Hurd. Yes. And the Democrats were taking out paid ads, and Hope Shepelman, the vice chair of the party at the time, was reposting them. So the reality is they’re not conservatives. They’re saying—I’ve always called them the Pharisees of politics. They say how righteous they are, but when Jesus came in, he called the Pharisees whitewashed tombs. In reality, these are just people who all they care about is the power. Their lives are a disaster themselves. That’s why they don’t want to submit to vetting, because they can’t pass basic vetting. And so they just want to be anointed and hope nobody checks their background, and somehow they’ll take office. But look at what happened with – we had a candidate that this happened with in New York, George Santos, who people didn’t check his background, and then he wound up in jail because he was a total fraud. So, Andy, all this stuff sort of winds up together. And whether it’s about vetting or questioning this corrupt establishment under Rhinowatch, it’s just very important as we head into election season to be very careful, very thoughtful, and do our research and not be too emotional about it.
SPEAKER 11 :
Honestly, I’m going to sum it up this way for me. I agree with everything you just said. And I would add, I think they sell rage and I don’t think rage sells. Okay. I think rage sells great within your base of activists because they are motivated by what motivates you. But if you want to sell beyond your base to the unaffiliated voters in Colorado, they don’t share your rage. They’re not mad about what you’re mad about. You got to win them over. And I don’t see these candidates of theirs being able to win anyone.
SPEAKER 03 :
Well, that’s fundamentally true. And if you look at most of them, they’ve had struggles in life, you know, just generally with success. Right. And so they’ve turned to politics. There’s a saying, politics is theater for ugly people. And I think sometimes that’s true. And so we don’t need the people who are just showing up and want it the most or the angriest. We need people who are inspired who can win. And I’ll point out, we got two great examples in the state with Jeff Hurd, who won a really tough race out in the third district, and Gabe Evans, who barely pulled one off in the eighth. And it is only because of Colorado and only because of those candidates that we have Speaker Mike Johnson instead of Speaker Hakeem Jeffries. That’s how important. Those are both excellent candidates. We had nothing come out on them during the campaign because they’d been well vetted. You know, there were no secrets that they were hiding that were going to come out. You know, I was I was helping out Herschel Walker’s campaign when it came out that he had had a number of abortions that he hadn’t disclosed to his campaign staff. There’s another high profile one where I was working with with the guy running that campaign. And it was just devastating.
SPEAKER 11 :
Right. The lack of vetting cost him the election.
SPEAKER 03 :
Yep, we’ve got to have great, compelling candidates. We have to make sure that they’re being honest with us, and we have to get behind the ones that don’t necessarily align with us the most but that have the best chance of winning.
SPEAKER 11 :
Okay, when we come back here, we’re going to have just a few minutes left, and I want you to talk about the Caucus program here in Colorado, the Caucus and the Assembly, and maybe talk about what we could do better. Up next is Ridgeline Auto Brokers. Most dealerships want max profit for the big score because they think you’re only going to buy one car there. Well, Ridgeline hopes to sell you several cards, so they want you thrilled with your deal. The more value, the less hard sell. Find Ridgeline Auto at klzradio.com.
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SPEAKER 12 :
It’s time to leave your safe space. This is Rush to Reason on KLZ 560.
SPEAKER 11 :
And welcome back to Rush to Reason, Denver’s Afternoon Rush, KLZ 560, Andy Pate filling in for John Rush. Online, we got Eli Bremer. Eli, what do you have left for us?
SPEAKER 03 :
Well, I think it’s going to be an interesting night tonight. I’m surprised that Virginia hasn’t been called. The early results show the Democrat winning by 10 points. But that’s typically the early results are coming in from the more urbanized areas. Northern Virginia, around D.C., they’re all government workers. And Virginia, sorry, Richmond. So I think it’s encouraging that that race has not been called. I doubt that the… that that uh winsome sears there is going to win uh it was a tough hill to climb ironically the ncaa came out against a black female immigrant yep uh who would have been you know who would have made history by being the first black female governor uh but you know they’re not really for the advancement of colored people as much as the advancement of socialism um you know i think it’ll be interesting to see what happens in new jersey i think uh I think that the Republicans have run a great race there. That’s a good race to look at. Colorado is a little more conservative than New Jersey, and yet we clearly have a chance to win there. Mikey Sherrill ran not a great race, and I think that’s either going to be close or the Republicans are going to win. So, you know, I think this will be a good night for the Democrats overall in terms of the number of races they win. And that’s largely going to be the map. So if you look at it and Democrats win everything, well, they probably should win everything based on the map. So the liberal media is probably going to spend that that it’s some rebuke of Donald Trump. But when you put. New Jersey, Virginia, New York, and California on the ballot, they all vote Democrat. The question is how much Democrat. Exactly. So I think let’s take a grain of salt with this. If the Republicans take off any of those seats, if Prop 50 fails in California or we win one of the governor’s races, then I think the Democrats are in real trouble. But don’t panic otherwise. The map is not designed for Republicans tonight.
SPEAKER 11 :
Okay, looking forward here, let’s look nationally. You’ve got a minute left. I think we’re going to see an economic boom in 26. What does that mean for the midterms if it happens?
SPEAKER 03 :
Well, I think it’s likely that Republicans perform better than expected. All this gerrymandering clearly is going to have an impact. The impact might be a net zero eventually. We just may see more Republicans coming out of red states and more Democrats coming out of blue states. But overall, the Democrat Party is in the toilet right now. It’s a great opportunity for Republicans. I think President Trump, the sequel, in my opinion, has been even better than the first one, which is, you know, it’s rare. You’re a movie critic. You know how rare that is.
SPEAKER 11 :
Yes, I do.
SPEAKER 03 :
I think he’s doing a great job. I think he’s I think his positives are more positive and his negatives are less negative. So I think he’s also going to lead us into a much better economy. Interest rates are going to come down. And I think Republicans should be looking forward to a good midterm election.
SPEAKER 11 :
Eli Bremer, I totally agree, and thanks for joining us tonight. I am very excited. I’m very excited, and I’m hoping that we can turn around Colorado and get it away from the rhino watchers and put it in the hands of good people like you. Thank you, sir.
SPEAKER 03 :
All right, thanks, Andy. Let’s make Colorado great again.
SPEAKER 11 :
Let’s do it. Okay, folks, that is it for today. Hour 1 is going to replay next, and I’m going to be back on Friday with three movie reviews, and Hour 2 is going to be courtroom movies. You’re going to have a lot of fun with Luke and Tanner. Until then, drive safe, God bless, and thanks for joining us at Rush to Reason, KLZ 560.
