After Cliff Dodge resigned this morning as president of the Arapahoe County Republican Mens club to run Tom Tancredo’s gubernatorial campaign, another former president of the club and a former chairman of the Arapahoe County Republican Party, Nathan Chambers, declared that he thinks the GOP’s candidate, Dan Maes, is in over his head and unqualified to be governor of Colorado. Chambers is a highly regarded GOP activist and observer. Several Colorado editorial pages and conservative bloggers, including me, agree with Chambers.

But many elected Republicans and officers of the state and various county Republican parties are lining up behind Dan Maes despite questions about his ethics and competence as a businessman and candidate for governor. They are more concerned about the party and put the party above any concerns about a candidate’s competence and integrity. 

Mort Marks, a wealthy member of the Arapahoe County and state Republican establishment, backed both Scott McInnis and Jane Norton in yesterday’s primaries. They lost and Marks announced that he will support all Republicans, including Maes and U.S. Senate candidate, Ken Buck. Susan Beckman, an Arapahoe County commissioner and co-chair of McInnis’ campaign in the county, urged activists to vote a straight party line ticket. She irrationally demonized the Denver Post for exposing McInnis’ lies, plagiarism and incompetence. Blaming the liberal Denver Post and media was McInnis line of defense against his plagiarism scandal, but it failed to keep him from being tromped by some 5,000 votes in the primary.

While several people spoke up for Tom Tancredo at this morning’s breakfast, we clearly were out numbered by long-time activists who failed to get the message from Republican primary voters yesterday.

Simply put, more people who, like state GOP Chairman Dick Wadhams, consider McInnis “untrustworthy” voted against him than the people who, like Wadhams, consider Maes a “joke”, voted against Maes. I doubt many Republicans voted for McInnis or Maes or were enthusiastic about either guy.

One indication of the lack of GOP support for Maes and McInnis is that a huge 5% of people who voted in the GOP’s senate primary did not vote for either Maes or McInnis. Some of us could not vote for the lesser evil. We couldn’t vote for incompetence or men who are unfit to be governor.

The Colorado GOP leaders are badly out of touch with Colorado Republican voters. And they’re even more out of touch with independents who will decide the election. 

It will take a few credible polls to convince the GOP activists and sugar daddies who support Maes that he has no chance and that they need to get behind Tom Tancredo.