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, theyll be screwed.
Unless some unlikely and unforeseen things happen, any chance of the GOPs retaking the governors mansion in November was eradicated last Monday when erstwhile Republican Tom Tancredo announced that he would jump into the race on the Constitution partys ticket. That partys 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 Tancredos ultimatum and they didnt 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 Tancredos 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 McInniss candidacy has been his miraculous talent for generating absolutely no excitement among conservatives.
As if these inherent flaws werent 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 hadnt 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 isnt by default a competent, chaste, or even conservative one. Maes is suspect on all three counts.
Though Maess pitch for office was rooted in his acumen on financial matters, it turns out he was pulling down less than the average journalists 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 Nortons statement that he wasnt 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 womans place is in the house. We know a womans 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., Obamas] while Im on the camera. Right or wrong, the comment wasnt helpful to Bucks 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 isnt 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.
Fringe politicians are seldom up to the greater good.
I remember Ross Perot well. I also remember that Nadar helped prevent a President Gore. Look through history, third parties have a rich history of defeating the people who support them. At this point the only hope the Democrats have is to rile up “real” conservatives into doing stupid things like running a third party. In fact, it should be obvious they will put big money into this as well as send out their minions on web sites such as this.
From reading the article it doesn’t look like Tancredo will do as much damage to Republican chances as they’ve already done themselves. What a mess.
All are excellent points.
Why is Tancredo suddenly a non-starter?
Um.... I hate to be the bearer of bad news, big tenter, but your way has brought us to today. It didn;t work. I once believed it myself. We invited in lots of independents and middle of the roaders and it blew up our party. We are now in the minority to Leftists who make up only 20% of the US population. No Big Tent over there! Nope! Just dictatorial control my a lunatic minority. Big Tent... blahhhhh.
We had just the opposite thing happen in the Pennsylvania Senate race. The asshat GOP Murtha loving chairman tried and failed to recruit Tom Ridge and other RINOs to take on Pat Toomey. He is running a splendid campaign in a state where Rick Santorum couldn’t even break 42% in a contest against the dumbest man in the U.S. Senate in 2006.
You'll find a lot of folks here on FR that thinks it is our duty to fall in line no matter who the Republicans nominate.
You'll find a lot of folks here on FR that thinks it is our duty to fall in line no matter who the Republicans nominate.
RE: Rubio lost a ton of support when he said he is against AZs law.
So what is Charlie Crist’s stance on the Arizona Law ? Is he for it ?
I think the Republican party in Colorado
has gone the way of the Whigs.
I’ve heard this line before, but seriously. Immigration isn’t going to kill a candidate.
Prove it’s the reason for his decline and maybe I’ll take notice.
It’s just a convenient excuse for one-issue people who think everyone else agrees with them.
I’m for the Arizona law, but come on.
Clinton's vote total in '92 was just 21% of eligible voters.
>So whatcha gonna do? Vote third party?
Yep. If the winner is going to be a corrupt liberal, his party affiliation doesn’t matter that much.
The idiot Libertarians have been spared by their own ineptness from ever having to actually govern, otherwise their pristine image would be just as soiled.
Vote for the most conservative candidate who has a chance to win, period.
Tancredo jumping on the pro amnesty Mitt Romney's bandwagon instead of Fred Thompson's did not help him, especially since Romney was involved at the time in his second major scandal involving his 11 year use of illegal aliens.
As far as I can tell, the State GOP in Colorado is clueless and nearly 100% useless. And I really mean useless. Not actively messing things up by backing the wrong candidates, but simply not active. Practically non-existent and practically moribund.
For example, I sent them some money with the express intent on getting on some mailing lists. Supposedly I was to receive an “official” Colorado GOP Party Member card. Never got the card. Never got on an email list (maybe they simply don’t have any), and never heard back from them. I expected at least to have them get back to me to hit me up for more money, since presumably they would have thought they’d found a live one. Zip. Zero. Nada.
Like in 1968, when a third party candidate split the Democrat vote and carried 5 states, allowing Nixon to win. It wasn't Republican votes that (Independent and former Dem)George Wallace siphoned off.
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