Dear editor:
My wife and I moved our family to this great state of Wyoming a year ago. Admittedly, we moved from the state I grew up in - Colorado. We attended the University of Wyoming in the 2010s and came to call Wyoming our adoptive home.
While we had to leave for our jobs, we knew that we would end up back here. Last year we were grateful to finally make that a reality. For full disclosure, I served as chairman of the College Republicans at UW as well as chairman of the statewide Wyoming Federation of College Republicans.
In that experience and through other work that I did while at UW, I familiarized myself with Wyoming politics. I consider myself to be a Coolidge-style, conservative Republican.
Having lived in a state with a functioning Democrat party wielding a supermajority in the state assembly, I know how damaging leftist policies are and understand the functionality of a Republican in a challenging district moderating their positions (or themselves just being a moderate).
As Thomas Sowell writes in Knowledge and Decisions, "Some leading abolitionists condemned Abraham Lincoln as being … no more a defender of the Union than Jefferson Davis ... Rejection of a social optimum cannot mean something better than this optimum will be achieved."
With that said, a party that allows too much abstraction or leniency of its tenets is without definition.
In a state wherein elected leaders can lean into conservative positions, it was peculiar to see some candidates in Republican primaries seemingly moderating themselves.
Disavowing charter schools, promoting suspect and vague rhetoric like "healthcare access for all" (does "healthcare" include abortion? Taxpayer funded gender transitions for adults? For minors?), increasing taxes- even modestly- to grow the state bureaucracy, and keeping reliable Wyoming energy at arm's length while elevating green energy do not seem to be popular views in this state.
Here, Republicans should proudly embody conservatism with the support of a majority of their constituency. I thought that the overwhelming election of Rep. Harriet Hageman was supposed to have been a bellwether for that stance.
To those who say that we are already no better than Colorado - trust me, it could be much worse.
To those who say that occasional political consolation won't lead to Colorado-style leftism - it certainly can.
If now-reliably blue Colorado fell so quickly, we should be wary. Further, we should give credence to policies that address issues seemingly involving national narratives.
Even if Wyoming might feel isolated from that fray, there are voices here that would gladly adopt such narratives. They look to, as Vladimir Lenin coined “probe with bayonets: if you find mush, you push.”
In Wyoming, we have the opportunity to bolster our conservative bona fides by holding the line on most if not all political issues.
While making sure that we are mindful of social optimums, we need to hold fast to conservative beliefs and continue to build this state, maintaining the values that made it so appealing to my wife and I to move back to.
Sincerely,
Andrew Server
Cheyenne
