Representative Lauren Boebert‘s rise to power came as a no-nonsense populist unafraid to tip sacred cows and stick it to the political establishment in Washington, D.C., allowing her to unseat a sitting congressman in 2020 and become an overnight sensation within the Republican Party.
However, the Colorado Republican, admits that unabashed attitude could have potentially cost her her House seat.
In an interview with Colorado Springs’ KRDO-FM on Friday morning, Boebert—who has already declared victory in her tight race against Democrat Adam Frisch ahead of a likely recount—admitted that her “loud” rhetoric over the last several years may have turned off many of the independent voters she needed to win as she struggled to secure a majority in a district Republicans were favored to win by double-digits.
“The only thing that I’m in control of is my voice to the voters,” said Boebert, explaining a lot of her anger on the hill was derived from her frustrations with being a member of the minority party in Congress with little say over policy. “And so certainly you get loud about these things that you don’t have the ability to change when certain parties or parties are participating in these very partisan politics.”
She added: “But now with Republicans in the majority, we can actually have a budget for the next Congress and begin to get our country back on track. And I am very open and willing to bring Democrats to the table to work on these policies. I’m sure there are many of them that want to budget and want to take care of our nation’s national debt and stop the wasteful spending to reduce inflation.”
But rhetoric, Boebert said Friday, likely played a key role in her relatively poor performance in Colorado’s 3rd District, which comprises the majority of the predominantly rural, western half of the state.
She has regularly lambasted Democratic colleagues on social media and on the floor of Congress, and made national headlines for interrupting President Joe Biden during his first state of the union address last year. She also has a history of inflammatory comments about the COVID-19 pandemic and has made allusions to several conspiracy theories throughout her career. She has also directly attacked colleagues, including labeling a Democratic member of Congress as a member of the “Jihad Squad.”
Throughout the campaign, Boebert accused Frisch not only of overtly negative campaigning—something Colorado’s Grand Junction Daily Sentinel noted both candidates were guilty of—as well as copping notes from the Republican Party’s platform this cycle.
“My opponent ran on the same policies I had been working toward,” Boebert said on Friday. “He ran on securing the border, protecting Second Amendment rights, increasing domestic energy production. Unfortunately, those were lies, and things that he doesn’t support, but these are the policies people in rural Colorado want to see. And so he was trying to deceive voters in saying that’s what he would stand up for.”
Voters were unable to see this, however, because of the animosity in today’s politics—which she said came largely from the other side.
“The big takeaway for me, and what I’ve heard from my constituents, is [Republicans] have the policies, but the temperature in Washington D.C. needs to be taken down a notch,” she said. “And I think we can do that with Republicans in the majority.”
Newsweek reached out to the Republican National Committee (RNC) for comment.
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