I’m not going to nuance why it happened or their explanation, it happened, so they are going to have to live with it. It happened, but there is a huge difference between it representing one person at the Colorado headquarters, the entire Colorado GOP staff, the entire national GOP establishment, or everyone who has ever voted republican or talked with a republican in our country's history. Besides not allowing that Tweet to taint President Lincoln's legacy, I don't think it should even taint the entire Colorado office. People do dumb things, and that is the entire explanation - one person did a dumb thing.
There are real problems with the GOP establishment, but this Tweet is not indicative of those problems.
I agree with most of your statements/position on this. Except for this:
People do dumb things, and that is the entire explanation - one person did a dumb thing.
Lying about it after they deleted it was, in my opinion, worse. Had they said, "We apologize for the previous tweet, which does not represent the entire CO GOP." -- that would have been honest, and respectable. But to claim that it was an unauthorized user.... nobody is buying that. It was an Authorized user who believes what they wrote, and they did a dumb thing, an unauthorized tweet. But it wasn't an unauthorized user. Nobody is buying that. And they should have simply owned that someone who is authorized to use the account is #NeverTrump.