The Blueprint is Alive and Well
Enter Democratic 527s with three mailers targeting Dean and the Tea Parties as “too conservative for Colorado.” You can read all about it on Ben DeGrow’s blog . Because they know Dean will be a conservative voice in the Colorado senate, they want to take him out in the primary. That’s how the Blueprint works.
It’s up to us, however, to defeat The Blueprint. Dean has a grassroots team that is working hard to make personal calls to every one of the 22,000 Republican voters in his district. But he needs money as well for radio spots and a mailer. He has the support of Sen Bill Armstrong, and State Sens Kevin Lundberg and Dave Schultheis.
1. Read all about Dean
2. Contribute to his campaign. You can donate up to $400 per person.
3. Spread the word.
Time is short. They’re working hard in District 6 but they need help. Tear up the Blueprint.
Tancredo Aims to be the Colorado Crist
Everyone knows that by running a third party ticket, Ross Perot gave us Bill Clinton and Teddy Roosevelt gave us Woodrow Wilson. Compelling as those third party candidates were, all they did was split the conservative vote. The last time a third party managed a win on a national scale was Abraham Lincoln in 1860 when the Republican Party replaced the Whigs.
The left knows this. Lacking a natural majority, the left can only win big when conservatives lose their way.
Think about it: when, in the history of the republic, was there ever a split on the left? Conservatives are of an independent spirit, fractious and opinionated. The left are true believers in the socialist utopia and they naturally march in lockstep. Their cause only advances when conservatives cannot unite. They talk about bipartisanship, they chide conservatives for not compromising, but they never compromise.
In the Florida senate race, Republican Marco Rubio barely leads newly-minted Independent Charlie Crist 35-33, with Democrat Meek trailing at 20%. (Rasmussen, July 21.) Crist would never have won the primary as a Republican; He’s been widely criticized for putting himself before party.
In Colorado, Tom Tancredo seems to have ambitions to become the Colorado Crist. The situation here is a little more complex and it won’t work the same way. No one can doubt either Tancredo’s or Maes’ conservatism so we will have two conservatives battling it out against the leftist Hickenlooper. That’s a scenario Pat Walk and the Democrats must be absolutely giddy about.
Here’s my assessment. The left is the left and they will march lemming-like off the cliff with the Looper. The Colorado electorate is roughly one-third each Democrat, Independent and Republican. (See Secretary of State stats for June.) But while Democrat is increasingly synonymous with the socialist left, there are three somewhat overlapping groups of voters who will decide: true independents, conservatives, and Tea partiers. Here’s roughly how that looks:
The boxes are roughly proportional to the numbers of voters in the 2.4 million Colorado voter pool. I have no statistics on the numbers of voters who consider themselves both Tea Partiers and conservatives, but recent polls show about one-third identify with the Tea Party movement and most of these are fiscal and constitutional conservatives. Nationwide, about 60% of voters consider themselves conservative, so the dark blue box under-states conservative voters.
How does Tancredo expect to win? The American Constitution Party has 1453 active voters–not much of a base. He is not supported by the Liberty Movement: an open letter signed by 21 of the states’ groups was released yesterday in opposition. Republican activists are not too happy with his last-minute entry into the race either, bypassing the assembly process–especially as he had considered then rejected a run early on. Social conservatives not strongly connected to the GOP and Independents? Independents are not likely to resonate with his far-right agenda and social conservatives can find all they want in Maes.
Maes is highly popular among Tea Party groups. If he can unite GOP stalwarts and the new activists, he can win. He’s neck-in-neck with the Looper already.
Tancredo cannot win. He can only allow Hickenlooper to steal the show.
On Negative Campaigning
Having written about negative campaigns in the last couple of days, I’d like to close the topic with a few general observations. I wouldn’t be the political scientist I am if I didn’t.
Why do candidates do it? The sad fact is, it works. The American public has said for a long time that they don’t like it. I’m sure your mother told you that if you had nothing good to say about someone, don’t say anything at all. Yet as one long-term activist told me, people take the negativity into consideration when they vote: perhaps a sort of “where there’s smoke there’s fire” attitude. It raises doubts in the minds of the voters. In geekdom, we call that FUD: fear, uncertainty and doubt and Microsoft marketing was known for it. People have a low opinion of politicians anyway–they’re ready to believe anything.
Further, people who are only peripherally engaged tend to treat both sides as if they’re doing the same thing–to be “fair.” My son was being picked on by a bully on the school bus. One day he’d had enough and hauled off and hit him. Guess what? They both went to the vice-principal’s office and both got punished. So the person slinging the mud ironically makes the person being trashed look bad too. A sorry mess indeed.
All of this supposes that the mud-slinging isn’t really fair, that it is something made up, taken out of context or exaggerated. As we’ve seen with political discourse generally, this is pretty common among lawyers trained to score debating points and the majority of our politicians are lawyers. But what if it is true? What then? Is that negative?
Truth is always a defense. During the 2008 presidential campaign, Barack Obama famously said he wouldn’t be “swift-boated.” What he meant by that was you weren’t allowed to judge him by the company he kept. Before 2008 that was called being railroaded, being condemned of guilt by association. But what does the term “swift-boated” really mean? John Kerry had misrepresented his military record and to bring that out was not negative campaigning but rather bringing the truth to light. In Obama’s case, he was able to twist the notion of negativity to make that rather than truth the central issue. We’re all paying for that sleight of hand now.
Generally negative campaigns work because voters allow them to. Only when people stop supporting candidates who engage in this behavior will they stop it. 2010 may be that time.
Norton campaign shows desperation
I would write “hysterical” but then I might be called sexist.
On Sunday night I received a campaign email from the Norton campaign entitled ” KEN BUCK TRASHES TEA PARTIERS: Buck Dishes Out More Profanity, This Time at Tea Parties.” It begins,
Today, Ken Buck was caught on tape again. After spending the week explaining his high heels comments, today Ken Buck is explaining why he said he was “sick of Tea Partiers.”
The reference is to a Denver Post article by Alison Sherry. I urge you to read the article because you will discover that what the Norton email says is not at all what is reported in the Denver Post.
First of all, Ken was not caught on tape today: this is old news. The tape was gathered surreptitiously by a Democratic operative (the Post’s words) on June 11.
Second, the phrase “sick of Tea Partiers” appears nowhere in the article or in the barely audible tape that accompanies it. So while the Norton email puts the phrase in quotes as if he said it, in fact he did not not.
Two lies in the first two sentences.
Again, do read the Post article. It makes clear that what Buck is complaining about is people asking questions about Obama’s birth certificate. He doesn’t believe it is an issue worth exploring. Does Jane? Does her criticism of him imply that she is a “birther?” I don’t really think so. The more serious question is the ethics of the Democrat operative secretly taping someone and then a fellow Republican using it to distort Buck’s image.
The email goes on to raise the “high heels” comment again, saying that he
…trashes the roughly 50 percent of voters who wear high heels.
Did I suggest you read the whole Post article? When you do, you will see that the whole context of that comment was a contrast between his opponent, who wears high heels, and himself, who wears cowboy boots with dirt on them. In context, the meaning is clear: he’s a hands-on, hard working guy while his opponent is not. If his opponent were a man, I expect he might have used the term “wing tips” or some other phrase for dress shoes. While one might or might not agree with the comparison, it is hardly sexist.
Does the email mean to imply that 50% of the voters are executive types who wear high heels? Maybe in Jane’s world, not in mine. There has been a lot of dirt thrown at Ken lately–I’d be surprised if there weren’t mud on his boots. And what about those shoes, Jane: would they be Pradas?
Ken–and all candidates these days–must be constantly on their guard. There are no unguarded moments, there is precious little time to relax. The establishment is desperate to hold on to power and will stop at nothing to keep it. They would do well to remember 1 Peter 5:8
Be self-controlled and alert. Your enemy the devil prowls around like a roaring lion looking for someone to devour.
No, Jane, No!
The negativity of the Norton campaign, which started back in April when Josh Penry was hired away from the McInnis campaign, has reached embarrassing heights.
I wrote a piece on April 22 with a question mark about the negativity; this time it’s an exclamation point. There seems to be no positive message left; it’s all about attacking Buck.
One of the authors of these attacks is Cheri Ofner of Colorado Springs, a long-time GOP activist. Writing to my blog as “Char” and sending emails as “Kremer Post,” she concludes that Buck “can’t win” and that therefore the Democrats hope that Buck will win the primary so Bennet can easily defeat him. Odd, then, that the left-leaning Denver Post has endorsed both Jane Norton and Michael Bennet; the Durango Herald has done so as well.
The chief attacks against Norton have been two: that she was foisted on Colorado by the Republican Senatorial Committee and that she supported Referendum C, the largest tax hike in Colorado history and a measure that all but gutted TABOR. Neither of these are personal attacks. The Ref C complaint is a policy position and the RSC complaint involves an endorsement which I suspect she sought. I hear the persistent rumor, on the other hand, that Sen John McCain recruited her to run. In either case, in a year with strong sentiment against tax-and-spend policies, against incumbents and against the GOP generally, these criticisms get to the heart of what this election is all about.
Last Thursday I was invited to a talk by Freedom Works. Freedom Works has just endorsed Ken Buck and the reason is largely Norton’s stand on Ref C. As speaker Russ Walker described it, when Colorado passed Ref C it destroyed all the work that Freedom Works had done to expand TABOR to about 11 other states. Think of the position this country would be in today had TABOR been enacted broadly.
True to form, Ms. Ofner showed up in her purple Norton t-shirt and proceeded to harass the speaker. He handled it well–better than members of the audience who repeatedly asked her to pipe down. With her purple shirt and bullying tactics, she reminded me of nothing so much as an SEIU thug. I don’t know what her intent was; suffice it to say she was not a good ambassador for Jane. On the other hand, Jane did force her way onto the dockets of the district assemblies, so maybe she was a good representative of the campaign.
This past week the negativity has reached new lows. Ken Buck–who likes to make a joke now and then and usually has a really good sense of humor–made a silly remark about high heels. The first radio report I heard said that Jane was not offended but that stand apparently didn’t last long. Within a day I got a campaign email from State Sen Nancy Spence who “was appalled” by the comment. Really, Nancy?
The next day Jane was out campaigning with former Sen Rick Santorum charging that the whole GOP is sexist. Really, Jane? Were you not present at the RNC-funded Republican Women’s Conference in Denver in November 2009, who’s whole purpose was to promote Republican women as candidates? Did you not hear RNC Chariman Steele endorse you? I was and I did.
The politics of gender belong to the left. On the conservative side, we support candidates based on principle, issue and record. Maybe Josh Penry can turn this fiasco into a job with the Democrat Party of Colorado, but playing the gender card can only hurt you, Jane.
The Invisible Candidate
We’ve had the Joe G the Stealth Candidate and in this most unusual of election years I got a robo-call tonight from the Invisible Candidate, Walker Stapleton.
He’s apparently running for State Treasurer but it’s hard to tell because I’ve never seen him. That shouldn’t be surprising as his Secretary of State filings from January through 1 June show no travel expenses other than a bit of mileage to a campaign consultancy in Denver.
At the candidate debate at Mr Biggs’ in March, he sent a stand-in to deliver a few words on his behalf. Too bad: he missed a lively debate between JJ Ament and Ali Hasan. Same for the El Paso County Assembly. He bypassed the State Assembly as well, apparently preferring the petition process to organizing any grassroots party support. His campaign finance reporting shows he used Kennedy’s petition services, as did Norton Gschwendtner. He seems to have gotten good value for money from them as his petition was successful and nothing was newsworthy about it.
He’s collected over $473,000 to the last filing on 7/14 and spent a little over $381,000 of it. It seems like a lot of money to me. I’ve been hearing his campaign ads on the radio claiming that since he runs a public company with shareholders therefore he is best suited to be treasurer. I’m not sure if I understand the logic behind that. It might be nice to hear him speak or at least know what he looks like.
I have not met any activist who supports him or even knows him; one person I talked to says that the name “Walker” comes from his relation to the Walker family that includes George Herbert Walker Bush.
I’ve been impressed by how approachable, friendly and responsive our candidates for office have generally been. I’ve been easily able to meet and talk to all the other candidates for statewide office. Does Stapleton think it’s a good idea to avoid public contact? Does he, like Joe G, think that he can buy an election? Why did he choose to bypass the rest of the primary process? Why does he want to run in the first place?
I am done with politicians I don’t know. I want honest people of principle and I’m going to look them straight in the eye and ask them questions. No one I haven’t met gets my vote.
I’m voting for JJ Ament for State Treasurer. He’s a man of principle I can get behind.
Political Motivations
Last week I wrote some posts about faulty logic in political discourse and yesterday I wrote about some of the fallout of Scott McInnis’ plagiarism. Some are saying that it is no different than the fine Dan paid over his finance reporting. Let’s see.
The story of Maes’ finance errors was reported by Leslie Jorgensen in the Colorado Statesman. The tone is a little anti-Maes but the reporting seems factual. Reading through the article, the thing that emerges is an underfunded campaign trying to take on too much work with too few specialized, paid staff. Campaign finance is complex, just like your income taxes. Have you ever made an honest mistake on them? I have.
There was also the unrelated issue of Maes being “delinquent” [quotes in original] in filing his in annual reports for his businesses. Sounds serious. I thought so, too, when I first formed an LLC. It turns out that the annual report is nothing more than a verification of who owns the company; publicly traded companies do file a more involved report but for an LLC it is pretty basic. Not really a big deal–unless you’re a Maes opponent looking to make a mountain out of a molehill.
Maes said the complaint was politically motivated. Attorney Erik Groves brought the complaint on behalf of Christopher Klitzke, his law-class student and paralegal. Groves himself was the subject of an ethics action for trying to influence the vote of a legislator in March2009; in July he left the lobbying firm he was working for to form his own law practice.
Was Groves’ complaint politically motivated? Could be. He certainly had an interest is Maes’ campaign filings, but why is speculation at this point.
Was the fine a big deal? Over $17,000 for a cash-strapped campaign is significant but consider this: Vice President Joe Biden’s campaign just got hit with a $219,000 penalty from the Federal Election Commission for some bad bookkeeping. His campaign spokeswoman Elizabeth Alexander responded:
Some repayment is commonplace after presidential campaign audits and the repayment ordered here is relatively small.
Let’s see the Looper try to use Maes’ mistake as a campaign issue.
Was Maes inaccurate in his accounting? Yes. He did own up to it and paid a fine. And that’s what we want: leaders who are not afraid to admit their mistakes and try to make it right. What we are tired of is the sequence of denials and blame-shifting that we get from politicians.
I was at the Elbert County Tea Party meeting Saturday and they held a straw poll. These are very independent, conservative people and not all of them are Republican voters. For governor, the results were Maes 96%, McInnis 4%.
I think that says it all.
Tempest over a Teapot
There has been a lot of hand-wringing this week in the Republican camp over the revelation of plagiarism by Scott McInnis. The facts are pretty well known: McInnis took $300,000 from the Hasan Family Foundation in return for some Musings on Water. That’s a lot of money for the amount of material he produced but if the Hasan foundation was happy with the product, who cares? Problem is, McInnis didn’t write the papers, he plagiarized. Making things worse, his campaign went to the author and asked him to sign a statement taking blame for the plagiarism. He rightly refused. The Hasan Foundation has asked for their money back and McInnis says he will return it.
The Ward Churchill plagiarism case comes to mind and anyone like me who has spent time as both student and teacher knows this kind of behavior is unacceptable. Some, including the Grand Junction Sentinel and the Denver Post, have called for McInnis to withdraw. McInnis has said that he is in it to win.
Meanwhile the pundits in the newspapers and talk radio are talking about who the Republicans should field to replace McInnis. Names like Penry (he started then dropped out), Benson (he never ran), and Tancredo (he too seems to have decided early on not to run) have been bandied about. The strategy is for McInnis to stay in the race—his win on Aug 10 is taken as a given—and then withdraw in favor of one of those.
Having received almost half the delegates at the state assembly I think he owes it to his supporters to give it his best shot. Dick Wadhams said, correctly I believe,
Hundreds of thousands of Colorado Republicans will vote in the primary election to determine our nominees for every office from county commissioner to U.S. Senator and Governor and that is how it should be.
In other words, the media does not run the Colorado Republican Party. Who does?
That is the real tempest in this story. That is the real question facing Republican voters on August 10. There is another candidate on the Republican primary ballot and he holds the top line, having gotten more votes at the assembly than McInnis. He’s businessman and grassroots favorite Dan Maes. This seems to upset and unnerve at least some establishment Republicans.
He can win. The first time he was matched against Hickenlooper on a Rasmussen poll, he tied the Looper at 41% each. On Saturday, Rasmussen showed Hickenlooper ahead of Maes 46% – 43%. He had gained 3% against McInnis, too. The Looper is viewed very favorably by 28% of voters and very unfavorably by 22%. (Count me in there.) Just 9% view Maes very favorably—but that’s the same percentage as view McInnis very favorably. In short, Maes is in the same position relative to Hickenlooper that McInnis is. It’s very early in the race and with 54% of informed voters saying McInnis should quit the race, it’s time to give Dan a chance.
Dan Maes for Governor!
I am pleased to have Don Rodger’s permission to post a slightly edited version of what he wrote in support of Dan Maes as the GOP gubernatorial candidate. I’ll have something to say on this topic as well, but Don says it very well indeed:
Rasmussen has Hickenlooper and Maes within 2%, hardly “tanking” in the polls or proof that he “blew it”. Many have accepted the error in [campaign finance] reporting for what it was, those that haven’t frankly can’t get behind him because they have another guy they still want to slip in the back door.
Maes can win, if the machine gets behind him. He already has all the motivated foot soldiers he needs as evidenced by him beating McInnis at State Assembly. Interestingly, the machine has been broke for a while now, losing Colorado, and can’t seem to cope or bring itself to rally behind the guy who won the top block because he doesn’t fit the broken model. Instead of getting behind him, people are struggling to knock him out. A self described “paid special case” obviously has an agenda of some kind that, if anyone really cares about, will be clear later and many serious people are just running around with their hair on fire over the “trouble” they find themselves in.
On Aug 11, the smoke will have cleared and maybe everyone’s hair will have been put out too. If Dan wins, the choice is yours: Get behind him and win or don’t and give Colorado to the Progressive extremists just waiting to turn us over to Washington. If he loses to McInnis the choice is, as the GOP was fond of asking in the Clinton years, “does character matter?” because that will be the argument against and is a conversation people should be having. Does McInnis then step down? If that’s the plan, he should today as it would be a slap to everyone who worked for him and really make the Party look horrible to many going into November.
The Party is at a cross roads with a lot of people energized for the first time in many years, if not for the first time ever. For many of those, this isn’t just politics, but a fight for the future of the Republic. Many came back to the GOP as it seemed to be the best place to fight back. The party can get itself together and show some unity; those in a position of leadership can start showing some real leadership and move forward or it can continue to flounder, lose the thousands that have come back to the Party to fight what they see as a real threat to their children’s futures, and slip back into barely holding on to the 31% that call themselves GOP.
This isn’t just politics anymore, but too many seem willing to play the old game. Do that at our peril.
Tea Party Patriots Advice
I received this press release from Tea Party Patriots on Wednesday and think it is worth printing in full:
Washington – Tea Party Patriots, the nation’s largest Tea Party organization with more than 2,000 affiliates, today offered the President and the Democratic Party advice on how they can halt their well-documented free-fall in national public opinion polls.
“The Tea Party is growing and our candidates are winning primary contests across the country,” said Mark Meckler, Co-Founder and National Coordinator of Tea Party Patriots. “All the Democrats need to do is listen to the American people about their concerns, and embrace the core values of the Tea Party Patriots.”
The Core Values of Tea Party Patriots are:
Fiscal Responsibility
Constitutionally Limited Government
Free Markets
“It’s not too late for struggling candidates to reverse their fortunes,” said Jenny Beth Martin, Co-Founder and National Coordinator of Tea Party Patriots. “It can be done with just a few simple policy changes that are widely supported by the American people.”
Meckler and Martin recommend that Democrats immediately:
Suspend stimulus spending and return the unspent money to the Federal Treasury. The stimulus is not working, in fact, it may be hurting. A better policy would involve lowering taxes and adopting other policies that support private sector hiring and spending. These are well-known job creators that stimulate the economy and prosperity.
Repeal ObamaCare. The American people hate this program. They have figured out that the president didn’t tell the truth about people being able to keep their insurance and their doctors. And, they don’t want giant government programs with thousands of new bureaucrats dictating their treatments. This program is killing the Democratic Party, and the sooner they ditch it the sooner they can get back into the good graces of the American people. More important, repealing it will save the United States from bankruptcy because ObamaCare is a financial train wreck!
Drop the Arizona lawsuit. Democratic governors met with the President this past week and told him that his lawsuit against Arizona was “toxic.” The Democratic governors are right. Arizona is trying to protect its people from violent drug criminals that are invading Arizona across a border that Democrats refuse to patrol and seal. Why should the people of Arizona risk their lives so the President can build the Democratic Party with more illegal voters?
We are confident that the Democratic Party can “feel the love” of the American people once again. All they need to do is quit passing legislation that destroys our economy, grows government and strips the American people of their liberty and freedoms. “It really is just that simple,” said Meckler.
Tea Party Patriots is a national grassroots coalition with more than 2,000 locally organized chapters and more than 15 million supporters nationwide. Tea Party Patriots is a non-profit, non-partisan organization dedicated to promoting the principles of fiscal responsibility, constitutionally limited government, and free markets. Visit Tea Party Patriots online at www.TeaPartyPatriots.org.
