Colorado

With former Congressman Tom Tancredo's pre-emptive announcement today that he's running for the Republican nomination for governor of Colorado, we have to ask whether his nomination would not only help Nathan Dunlap's Gov. John Hickenlooper, but also hurt Rep. Mike Coffman (R-CD 6) win re-election over former state House Speaker Andy Romanoff in 2014?

And will Tancredo discourage strong, electable Republicans from running not only for governor, but also for attorney general, secretary of state, state treasurer and the state's General Assembly?

Coffman is in a tough race against Romanoff who is a smart, politically talented guy in a district that Democrats have Gerrymandered just for him.

Colorado's House GOP gave away control of that body in 2012 by blocking a civil unions bill that enraged Obama Democrats. 

Nathan Dunlap's Gov. Hickenlooper, who also is anti- guns and a tax and spend Obama Democrat, is looking more vulnerable every day. 

But if the corrupt GOP caucus system allows Rick Santorum Republicans nominate Tancredo and like-minded social issues extremists,  Hickenlooper may think that he's already been re-elected and that he is invulnerable.

With Tancredo's early announcement, he not only pre-empts State Sen. Greg Brophy, who reportedly is also considering running, he also is giving Obama Democrats all the amunition they need to recruit strong candidates to run for the state's House and Senate in 2014.

Because 2014 still is so far off, a lot can happen. So it's way too early to predict what will happen. But it's not too early to start vetting candidates and asking questions.

Former Rep. Tom Tancredo (CD-6) just announced that he is running for governor of Colorado in 2014.

And "Nathan Dunlap" Hickenlooper's temporary clemency for Dunlap who was scheduled for execution for killing four people 20 years ago makes the otherwise popular governor a lot more vulnerable than he was a few days ago. Indeed, John Hickenlooper has been making hard left decisions with the newly empowered and over-reaching Democrats who control the state's General Assembly.

So Hickenlooper is very vulnerable if the Rick Santorum Republicans in the state nominate a heavy-weight, non extremist candidate for governor, which seems a bit unlikely at this point.

I covered a couple of dozen or so appearances by Tom Tancredo during his save-the-GOP-form-itself-campaign against John Hickenlooper in 2010 for this blog. Search the blog for "Tancredo". I took my videos of his apperances down when I closed my YouTube account because of the privacy intrusions by its owner, Google (GOOG).

Former Rep. Tom Tancredo (CD-6) just announced that he is running for governor of Colorado in 2014.

And "Nathan Dunlap" Hickenlooper's temporary clemency for Dunlap who was scheduled for execution for killing four people 20 years ago makes the otherwise popular governor a lot more vulnerable than he was a few days ago. Indeed, John Hickenlooper has been making hard left decisions with the newly empowered and over-reaching Democrats who control the state's General Assembly.

So Hickenlooper is very vulnerable if the Rick Santorum Republicans in the state nominate a heavy-weight, non extremist candidate for governor, which seems a bit unlikely at this point.

Alison Felix, economist and branch executive of the Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City's Denver Branch offers a slide presentation on the Colorado economy vs. the rest of the country. It's a good overview.

Sen. Mark Udall (D-CO) is a leading spend and tax environmental extremist who is bragging about inflating the Defense Dept.'s budget with an amendment that will force it to waste billions on uneconomic green energy. 

In a letter to constituents, he wrote:

Last week, the U.S. Senate voted 62-37 in favor of my amendment to the National Defense Authorization Act of 2013, authorizing the Defense Department to continue its efforts to develop and use alternative fuels. I worked across the aisle to secure this bipartisan victory. Passage of this amendment, when signed into law, will ensure that our military has the resources it needs to develop and use advanced alternative fuels that bring down costs, improve mission capabilities and reduce the strategic vulnerabilities associated with a reliance on foreign fossil fuels.

Udall's up for re-election in 2014. Sadly, the GOP doesn't seem to have a strong challenger in the wings. So Udall can safely   promote unwise government spending and higher taxes to pay for that spending.

Sen. Harry Reid (D-NV), the incompetent and extremely partisan majority leader, will try next month to eliminate or sharply curtail the power of the minority Republicans to filibuster against bills and presidential appointees.

Colorado Senators Mark Udall and Michael Bennet are all for this power grab, which would allow the majority Democrats to pass bills with 51 instead of 60 votes. As long as the GOP controlled the House as it does now, nothing passed by the Democrats in the Senate and opposed by the House Republican majority would be enacted. But if Democrats or Republicans get control of both houses and the White House, party discipline would allow the majority party the power to totally change the country's laws on behalf of their favored few campaign contributors.

As Coloradans have seen when we've had one-party GOP or Democratic rule, bad, corrupt things happen fast. And that's what we face in 2013 and 2014 with Democrats in charge of the state Senate and House and governor's mansion. 

It takes extremists like Udall and Bennet to back Reid's grab for power. They are showing a total disrespect for Republican and independent voters in Colorado, not just in the U.S. Senate. America's political history of compromise in Washington means nothing to them.

They want Washington to operate like Chicago, New York, California and Illinois. In Chicago and those states, Big Government breeds corruption, and single-party rule makes corruption accpetable.

That's where Udall and Bennet are. Can Colorado Republicans do anything about it in future elections? Given the fact that the Colorado GOP is ruled by Rick Santorum, Bill Armstrong, Bob Schaffer and Ken Buck Republicans, I doubt it.

LINKS:

GOP warns of shutdown over filibuster, Politico.com, 11.25.2012

What should Republicans be for, I've been asked by a prominent Colorado Republican. In addition to sending him the reply below, I posted it on my Facebook page.

I think Republicans lost in 2008 and 2012 because the Rick Santorum social issues folks scared independents, young men and women and Hispanics to death. It's time to reassure, not scare voters.

Here's what's practical, if not politically possible: GOP governors, legislators and other officials should take social issues such as abortion and marriage off their political agendas. Small government's stay out of our personal lives. They enforce fair tax laws. They encourage private investment and job creation and they ensure national security and a safe and healthy environment.

The Denver Post, Democrats and Gov. Hickenlooper are showing their true colors. They  are spend and tax liberals who are willing to destroy private sector jobs in Colorado in an effort to preserve the jobs of ineffective teachers, unneeded school administrators and state employes who have little useful work to do. The Post endorsed higher taxes in an editorial this morning.

The Denver Post editorial page writer, Alicia Caldwell, continues to hype the findings of its panel of former members of the Colorado General Assembly. I posted the following in the comment section that follows the Post's defense of the panel's feckless findings:

With all due respect, the Big Government spend and tax Republicans and Democrats on the Panel fufilled the mission that the Big Government Denver Post editorial board gave them. 

The mission was to justify higher taxes, protect bloated government programs, call for increased spending on K-12 education and try to stop spending cuts in higher education, subsidies and tax credits for special interests and cuts in spending on transportation. 

Mission accomplished. The panel's report is credible only in the eyes of its members, a few Denver Post editorial writers, public employee unions, the Denver Metro Chamber and contractors and academics who slop at the public trough.

Even the Republicans on the General Assembly Joint Budget Committee appear to be protecting their contributors in the gimme community of government contractors. Frank McNulty, the Speaker of the House, a GOP lawyer, refuses to restructure and cut K-12 education spending and delay new spending on roads, bridges and infrastructure. He's even protecting the increase in the car tax, which the transportation lobby loves. However, Speaker McNulty said last week that higher education will take a spending cut this year.

Colorado continues to look like an Illinois wannabe.

Politicians have neither the skills nor the credibility to fix the state budget in ways that will encourage consumers to spend and businesses to grow in Colorado. 

What Hick and the legislature should do is hire Bain or some other strong management consulting company (not the big accounting firms) that doesn't work for state or federal governmental agencies to put together a turnaround plan. 

What the Post should do is hire two or three strong private sector economists, budget analysts and strategists to write a series of articles that show the public and the politicians how Colorado's laws and regulations can be changed. 

Show how the laws and budgets can be fixed so that Colorado won't follow Illinois, NY, California and other states into some form of default or bankruptcy. It is clear that the current editorial page staff doesn't have a clue.

Frankly, if you haven't figured it out already, I think the Post's panel did a tremendous disservice to Colorado. It was disingenuous and dishonest about what can and should be done. Maybe the panel's members just don't know any better.

Colorado House Speaker Frank McNulty said this morning that he backs Dick Wadhams for re-election as chairman of the Colorado Republican Party. McNulty told a breakfast meeting of the Arapahoe County Republican Mens (and women's) Club that Wadhams did a  very good job navigating Colorado Republicans through the 2010 elections. "Dick is the right guy to lead us through the 2012 elections," McNulty said. Wadhams has announced that he is running for a third two-year term as chair. A new GOP central committee will elect the state pary's chair on March 13.

In response to my question, McNulty also said that he opposes the Medical Marijuana bill (HB 1043), which would make it easier to grow, sell, prescribe and buy pot. He said pot legislation "will go through several iterations" in the 2011 session of the General Assembly.

In response to a question about cutting the car tax increase that was enacted last year, McNulty said cutting would be a symbolic victory and that he is focused on winning real victories, not symbolic ones. In other words, he's not going to make repealing FASTER or cutting the car tax until he achieves his major goals.

McNulty said that the top priority for House Republicans is to cut state spending and to reform job killing regulations on the oil and gas and other industries. His second and fall back priority, he said, is to stop the Democrat-controlled Senate and Gov. John Hickenlooper from increasing spending.

However, McNulty said, he is not for cutting spending on K-12 education.

Higher education is another story, he said. The most money in the state budget that can be cut goes for higher education, which will take a hit, McNulty said.

When I asked whether the legislature can take power away from the faculty in higher education so that they no longer can block cost cutting efforts, McNulty said that Republicans will try to give the top executives and boards of the state's universities and community colleges more power to cut costs by reforming civil service laws that make it very difficult for them to layoff people. 

I hope to post clips of McNulty's comments this evening.

LINKS:

Medical Marijuana (HB11-1043.

Former Interior Secretary and Colorado Attorney General Gale Norton no longer faces ethics charges by Obama Democrats, the U.S. Justice Dept. announced. The announcement deserves more attention than it will get from the media. LINK: Former Interior Secretary Gale Norton won't face charges, by Dan Berman.

President Obama and Colorado's Democrats in Congress apparently will agree to extend the Bush tax cuts and avert more Obama tax hikes only if Republicans agree to higher spending on extended unemployment benefits.

 Extending the unemployment benefits will ensure high levels of unemployment for years to come. Too many of the unemployed make more by avoiding low-paying jobs and staying on the dole. If the benefits were cut, unemployment rates would soon dip. How much they would drop if benefits weren't extended is hard to predict. At least I haven't seen any predictions on what would happen if benefits weren't extended.

Both Democrats and Republicans are playing to their bases in the deal that Obama announced last night, which is subject to approval by hard left Democrats who control Congress until next year.

Republicans are reasonably assuming that averting the Obama Democrats' tax hikes and new tax cuts that will be part of the deal will help the economy more than the additional spending will hurt it.

The tentative agreement to exempt estate, or death taxes, on the first $5 million in an estate and then tax the balance at 35% looks like a pretty good compromise, too. Of course, it would be smarter to completely eliminate estate taxes, but the redistributionists make that politically impossible.

Compromise has made America the wealthiest country in the world, and it's good to see a little compromise after two years of Obama's way or the highway.

Mark Udall and Michael Bennet voted for higher income taxes for those who make over $250,000, putting their belief in wealth redistribution out there for all to see. The two Colorado Democrats joined 51 other Senate Dems in voting for a prolonged recession when they voted on a bill that would extend tax cuts only for those who earn less than $250,000 a year. 60 votes were needed to pass the bill. Now the Dems and President Obama are settling down to wring as many concessions out of Republicans as they can before they vote to extend the tax cuts for everyone as demanded by voters on Nov. 2. Top priority for the Dems is extending unemployment benefits for the long-term unemployed. Distasteful as that will be for conservatives, they'll cave on the unemployment benefits to prevent the Obama tax hikes. That's politics, and if extending unemployment benefits will preserve the Bush tax cuts, so be it.

Colorado Republicans should read the Colorado Statesman's strong interview with Dick Wadhams, chair of the Colorado Republican Party. He says he's 50/50 on running for a third term. This interview looks like the beginning of his campaign for re-election, but it also could be the beginning of his a 2012 campaign manager's job search. InnerView with Dick Wadhams, by Ernest Luning and Jody Hope Strogoff.

Tom Tancredo says in a note posted on Facebook that he would be happy to register as a Republican in an effort to bring the Colorado GOP and fringe liberty groups together.

He suggests that Dick Wadhams, the chair of the Colorado GOP, and leaders of the liberty groups meet and try to seek common grounds. This strikes me as an exercise in futility. There always will be fringe groups, the major parties' candidates always will try to appeal to them up to a point, and both parties already are led and governed by politicians whose views are on the fringes of the mainstream voting public.

Rather than appeal to the small fringe groups, the parties are seeking to bring in the much large groups of independents. In 2010, the GOP won back a majority of independents after losing them in 2008. In 2012 both parties will fight over the independents, not the extremists.