Posted on 08/02/2010 7:16:04 AM PDT by SeekAndFind
In the races for both governor and senator, the GOP is doing its best to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory.
If Colorado is a bellwether of national political fortunes, as many believe, then Republicans will be . . . well, they’ll be screwed.
Unless some unlikely and unforeseen things happen, any chance of the GOP’s retaking the governor’s mansion in November was eradicated last Monday when erstwhile Republican Tom Tancredo announced that he would jump into the race on the Constitution party’s ticket. That party’s platform includes, among other, um, robust right-of-center positions, retaking the Panama Canal.
Tancredo had earlier issued an ultimatum to the ethically challenged Republican gubernatorial candidates, Dan Maes and Scott McInnis: If whichever of them won the August 10 primary was not, at that point, leading the Democratic candidate, Denver mayor John Hickenlooper, in the polls, he would step aside and let a GOP committee chose a stronger candidate. If the two did not accept Tancredo’s ultimatum —and they didn’t — then he would enter the race himself as a third-party candidate. Of course, by not waiting until the primary was decided to launch his own candidacy, Tancredo has, in all probability, ensured that no credible candidate would risk his or her reputation wading into a three-way race.
The road to Tancredo’s one-issue candidacy (the one issue being his ego) was paved by a tin-eared state GOP establishment that chose to bankroll a stale contender in a year begging for new faces and ideological earnestness. When one thinks of conservative renewal, one does not think of McInnis, a former six-term congressman whose lobbying, lawyering, and ethical tribulations (paying his wife for a campaign that did not exist, for instance) should have disqualified him long ago. Unsurprisingly, the most notable characteristic of McInnis’s candidacy has been his miraculous talent for generating absolutely no excitement among conservatives.
As if these inherent flaws weren’t enough, voters soon learned that McInnis had pocketed $300,000 for “musings” on water policy he had written for an ersatz think tank backed by Republican donors. By “written,” I mean plagiarized. And when McInnis attempted to shift culpability to an 82-year-old researcher — whom he hadn’t credited in the first place — it simply reinforced the perception that the Republican old guard was not only ideologically weak but corrupt as well.
Once the GOP establishment had scared off any inspiring contenders, the alternative came in the form of an unknown self-proclaimed business whiz named Dan Maes. Even before McInnis imploded, Maes had secured the top line on the primary ballot at the GOP assembly in May on the strength of the protest vote. But apparently, an unknown candidate isn’t by default a competent, chaste, or even conservative one. Maes is suspect on all three counts.
Though Maes’s pitch for office was rooted in his acumen on financial matters, it turns out he was pulling down less than the average journalist’s yearly pay — so, not good. Or put it this way: Through some dubious accounting (for which Maes paid the largest campaign-finance fine ever in Colorado), he put in for $42,000 in expenses, and that was his best payday in years.
Enter Tancredo. Exit Republican chances.
With a cache of impressive young conservative talent available in Colorado, it is difficult to comprehend how the GOP could have turned off the activist base so quickly. It takes a special kind of hubris to believe that everyone will always fall in line.
A similar dynamic seems to be at work in the Senate race. Many conservatives remain suspicious of Jane Norton — former lieutenant governor, supporter of the contentious Referendum C tax increase, and sister-in-law of super-lobbyist Charlie Black. But, unexpectedly, it is upstart candidate Ken Buck, supported by Jim DeMint and the tea party, who has really started to struggle.
Buck, the Weld County district attorney, has stumbled since becoming the frontrunner, facing his own ethics questions and making one unforced error after another. Earlier this summer, Buck let loose a clumsy joke about being a candidate without “high heels.” He was responding to Norton’s statement that he wasn’t “man enough” to do his own negative campaigning, relying instead on ads by independent groups. The innocuous jab was transformed by Norton into an effective — if unfair — campaign issue: “Ken Buck may think a woman’s place is in the house. We know a woman’s place is in the Senate.” (Oy vey.)
Then a tape emerged of Buck asking a Democratic operative if he could “tell those dumba**es at the tea party to stop asking questions about birth certificates [i.e., Obama’s] while I’m on the camera.” Right or wrong, the comment wasn’t helpful to Buck’s campaign.
Then again, despite perceptions, the Princeton-educated lawyer and former Justice Department prosecutor is often less reflexively tea party and more nuanced on issues than Norton. What he isn’t is hand-picked by the Republican establishment. That alone seems to be enough to hamstring a candidate in this state.
Either Norton or Buck still has a good shot at taking down whoever winds up being the Democratic candidate — the primary contest is down to mealy-mouthed incumbent senator Michael Bennet and progressive challenger Andrew Romanoff — but both have been needlessly battered.
The GOP started this election year with the clear upper hand in Colorado. But because of gratuitous infighting, dreadful party management, and incompetent candidates, it may end up losing two winnable races.
A bellwether? Probably not. A lesson? Yes: A dysfunctional relationship between grassroots conservatives and establishment Republicans can undo a sure thing in a hurry.
— David Harsanyi is a columnist for the Denver Post.
We CANNOT leave the future of this country in the hands of the idiots at the GOP.
So whatcha gonna do? Vote third party?
Where are all the Tancredo worshipers from a few years ago?
The morons at the RNC insist on running like-minded ethical nincompoops. Any wonder why their fund raising is in the tank? Idiots.
What a mess. Freepers said yesterday that the two (R) candidates are ethically challenged.
And, as Harsanyi says of the third alternative: “The road to Tancredo’s one-issue candidacy (the one issue being his ego).”
You have to blame, once more, the Republican establishment for supporting a tired old crook. The Tea Partiers have to take only lesser blame for failing to come up with a credible alternative in the small time given them to choose one.
To repeat. What a mess.
National Review loves open-borders RINOs like Marcos Runios. Jim Geraghty is doing all sorts of analysis on Crist versus Rubio. Never has he mentioned what is really happening - Rubio lost a ton of support when he said he is against AZ’s law.
One of the more petty pieces I’ve ever read ~ it’s the water isn’t it?
well said . Not many can find anything good to say about the Republican establishment but on th eother hgand the Tea Party isnt strong enough yet.
the GOP are useless with no communications at all.
They care more about PC than getting the truth out.
case in point.
Palin says Brewer has balls, (not that word) and then Karl Rove comes on and says it was tasteless.
WTH.
She speaks the truth and we have idiot republicans trying to be PC and play the gentleman’s card again while the left attack and say anything.
I think we fse a situation in Colorado much more like that of Virginia in 1952 when it was observed that Ike was winning the state EVEN THOUGH THERE WAS NO REPUBLICAN PARTY AT ALL!
Some stalwarts went out and founded an active and very real Republican party and began winning elections. Today we have the Governor, Lt. Governor, AG, and control of the House.
Colorado could catch up in a couple of decades I'm sure.
I’ve been angry at the GOP ever since they anointed McInnis.
zzzzzzzzz read some history. This grousing NEVER wins elections unless of course one roots for the other side. There’s nothing wrong for demanding higher standards but forcing people out... making the tent smaller... won’t work.
When a population no longer votes based on morals or conservative ideology and an election is determined by who runs the best “campaign” regardless of what they stand for, we then have no hope of ever returning to a higher standard.
That would require a higher-level organization, which Tea Partiers are apparently aggressively proud to eschew, much to their own detriment.
the GOP are useless with no communications at all.
They care more about PC than getting the truth out.
case in point.
Palin says Brewer has balls, (not that word) and then Karl Rove comes on and says it was tasteless.
WTH.
She speaks the truth and we have idiot republicans trying to be PC and play the gentleman’s card again while the left attack and say anything.
why is the GOP not down here and getting Grayson, Wasserman, Crist and making this state a red state for the election?
No they are useless who thinks that 3 days before an election they should get out the vote but of course ignoring that our state had early voting for over a week
We will lose to obama in 2012 if we do not stop pre-paid credit cards for donations.
early voting to stop the far left voting many times again
stop illegals
stop ACORN like groups
Close down Soros
and get the truth out about obama, his past, his radical association
confront this corrupt media and ask them on live TV why are you not telling the truth to your viewers.
Am I the only one who is fed up of playing defence to these idiots and then only responding instead of getting out there first?
But at least it can be said of them that they are able to fight their war--dishonest and malicious as it is--in unity.
And, given the source of their inspiration--The Father of Lies--it can be counted on that, like him, they will NEVER give up in their relentless pursuit to control lives and decieve souls.
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