Exploding toilets, fisting and now Adolf Hitler have all been featured in wealthy Colorado Springs Republican businessman Robert Blaha’s U.S. Senate campaign messaging.
His coarse aesthetic is similar to anti-establishment GOP pacesetter Donald Trump, although Blaha says he’s not borrowing from Trump’s play book.
Blaha posted to Facebook the following meme about what he calls the escalating war on the Second Amendment.
Whoever made the meme used the wrong form of “it’s” and butted Blaha’s website and red and white logo against a Swastika — not the most astute PR moves. Those aren’t the only clumsy things about the post, which seems to compare Blaha and pro-gun politicians to Founding Father Alexander Hamilton, and Blaha’s opponents who are gun control advocates to Hitler.
The candidate tells The Colorado Independent that seemingly obvious take on the meme is just plain off.
“All that post meant was that our country was founded on the principle of allowing those to be armed as part of the thoughts in forming the country, where other countries that have gone in a different direction did not have good results,” Blaha said. “That’s all that meant. There was no intention to say anything other than that… Frankly, those that have been in a position to protect themselves have always been in a better position historically than those who hadn’t. It’s really no more complex than that. Hopefully it got your attention.”
Attention is what Blaha desperately needs in the crowded pack of GOP Senate candidates. His strategy: “Our message is supposed to be straight from the shoulder and edgy. The bottom line is America is in disarray.”
Who’s to blame? The political class. Who can fix it? Outsider businessmen. It’s a familiar script and one he hopes will help him stand out from Jon Keyser, the little-known, former short-term state lawmaker and GOP establishment golden-boy, and from state Sen. Tim Neville, who has honed his conservative chops fighting abortion and gun control under Colorado’s Gold Dome.
Blaha doesn’t do what he calls “wind socking.” He won’t use polling. He won’t “keep sticking (his) finger in the wind.” He speaks from the heart in an unscripted manner, he said. And refreshingly, unlike Neville and Keyser, Blaha returns reporters’ calls promptly. As he tells it, he is not a polished politician.
For more about Blaha’s campaign, check out this renegade’s toilet exploding, doctor-fisting-patient ad, where his edgy branding clashes with his upbeat demeanor.
As for the Hitler meme, it is no longer on his website.
“I don’t look at my Facebook page much. I put my posts up. We’ve got a team that runs Facebook,” he said.
Maybe they took it down, maybe they didn’t.
“What I try not to do is look at Facebook or the comments. I say what I have to say, and then I move on down the road.”
