In an e-mailed fundraising appeal in support of Lang Sias, a GOP candidate for Colorado’s CD-7 nomination, former U.S. Rep. from CD-7, Bob Beauprez, writes:

I would also encourage all of you to visit Lang’s website and read his Navy performance evaluations, which he released several weeks ago in response to a defamatory e-mail attack on his record.  You’ll see poignant testimony to Lang’s courage, integrity, leadership and work ethic.

As I’ve pointed out before, it is very strange that Sias is promoting a “defmatory attack” on his record. It’s strange until you know that such a tactic is designed to imply that your leading opponent or his supporter is somehow responsible for that attack. 

In his autobiography, Courage and Consequence, Karl Rove says on page 77 that “Most elections are conducted among too many voters for an Internet smear or ugly flyer or whispered rumor to turn the contest.”

Taking a real or made up annoyomous smear and hyping it to gain attention and sympathy is  an old dirty trick. Most candidates and their campaign managers are too smart to use the ploy. Sias has been playing that card for several weeks, and now he’s sucked Beauprez into using it in a fundraising appeal. Shame on both men!

Meanwhile, conservative fellow blogger and Rocky Mountain Alliance member, Ben DeGrow, has written a long post questioning why Beauprez is supporting Sias. On the Peoples Press Collective version of his piece, a couple of commenters are wondering whether the strongly anti-abortion Beauprez, former Rep. Tom Tancredo and former CD-7 candidate, Jimmy Lakey, have a hidden social issues agenda and are promoting that agenda by backing Sias. Are they more worried about their social issues agenda than about beating incumbent Democrat, Ed Perlmutter. Apparently.

Ryan Frazier, the leading GOP candidate in CD-7, is as strong on the social issues as Sias is, according to DeGrow and others.