>> California destroyed Colorado
in the old days, Coloradans used to bitch about how the Texans arrived en mass and clogged up the ski slopes. Then the Californicators started arriving. Seen on a bumper sticker years ago:
“At least the Texans went home after ski season” (-:
All this complaining about Californians fleeing California for other states, when California used to be solid Republican and was invaded by miscreants from other states.
Example: a Texan that destroyed California, his name is Willie Brown. Texas can have him back, please.
As a conservative I asked myself: why would Coloradans be so stupid as to create bike paths when a huge chunk of the time the roads were not fit to ride bikes on? Why would they spend taxpayer dollars on gyms when there were already plenty of choices in the private sector? Why would such independent-minded folks tolerate covenant communities with all of the bylaws and limitations on what a person could do with his property?
One by one the gun ranges were bought up and turned into cookie cutter housing communities. Quaint little towns like Erie with a dirt road for a main street were turned into suburban wastelands. Longmont got a freakish urban neighborhood with roads named '100 Year Party Ct' and 'Neon Forest Cir'.
And there was really not much push back from the Coloradans. They just shrugged their shoulders and kept to themselves.
Partly it was because I got there when the economy was just recovering from a long bad spell and people were focused on getting a job, staying employed, and keeping out of trouble.
But now look at the trouble they're in because they just kept to their independent selves.
Also, the quasi-conservative independents loathed the social conservatives almost as much as the nanny state liberals. So there really was no coming together between libertarians and conservatives. Colorado has its own GOPe that won't let any conservative principles get in the way of making a buck. So sports stadium subsidization was strongly supported by the likes of the so-called conservative radio host Mike Rosen.
The only real ray of hope is the Independence Institute that spawned Tom Tancredo.