Andrews in Print

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Radio, May 21: Crunch time for Republicans

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Join us on radio every Sunday, 5-8pm on 710 KNUS, DenverTo listen online from anywhere, click 710knus.com ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- Our show this Sunday will look at the sea of troubles currently facing the Republican Party, and how the GOP can take up arms against them for a winning strategy this fall.

Coming off their test of strength at the Republican nominating assembly on Saturday, Colorado gubernatorial candidates Marc Holtzman and Bob Beauprez (represented by his campaign manager, John Marshall) will preview the August primary.

Coming off a very disappointing (to most conservatives) immigration speech by the President last Monday, with basement poll numbers for both Bush and the GOP Congress, State Rep. Dave Schultheis will outline ideas from the conservative legislators caucus he chairs, for better policies on illegal aliens and other issues.

What May Day really meant

(John Andrews in the Denver Post, May 7) Father Time, what a joker. A couple of decades can make old certainties laughable. Back in 1986, Congress and the president struck a bargain that was supposed to settle the immigration issue for good. Millions of illegal aliens were legalized, in return for tougher enforcement at the border and in the workplace. Sounds ridiculously familiar, doesn’t it? Those same 20 years did funny things to this Republican’s former disapproval of Democrat Dick Lamm. As Colorado’s chief executive in 1986, Lamm earned the nickname Governor Gloom for warning about such dangers as a potential “Hispanic Quebec” in the southwestern U.S. We at the Independence Institute called for an imaginary Governor Growth to rescue the state from Lamm, since I was sympathetic to open borders back then.

But today Dick and I are co-chairs of Defend Colorado Now, an amendment to cut off tax-paid services for illegal aliens, except in emergencies or when federally mandated. We’re campaigning for 100,000 signatures in 100 days to put this sensible measure on the ballot. He correctly foresaw trouble in the convergence of Mexico’s social and economic dysfunction with America’s political and cultural cowardice. My optimism was misplaced. Point to you, Governor Gloom.

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This Easter, Remember the Carpenter

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(John Andrews in the Denver Post, April 16) For irony, it’s hard to beat the bumper sticker: “My Boss is a Jewish Carpenter.” Some carpenter Jesus was, his hands not pounding the nails but pinned by them, his only remembered woodwork the criminal’s cross he died on. Nor was this sawdust preacher well-born; the Jews have been cruelly marginalized for ages. Who boasts of their boss anyway? Bossing others is much preferred. Being your own boss is better still. But that’s the Christians for you. They believe life is about serving, not ruling, and the one they follow on the path of service is that rejected rabbi whose death and rising Easter commemorates.

Even the verb on the bumper sticker has a twist. Christians worship Jesus as their king who “is” alive today and seated at God’s right hand, not just a great moral teacher who “was” important long ago. How un-modern of them. How stubborn and strange.

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TABOR Truth Tour visits Maine

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(John Andrews in the Denver Post, April 2) Devastation Prevarication. That might be, as Dave Barry used to say, a good name for a heavy metal band. But it’s no way to make public policy. Lies are being told in a number of states about Colorado's allegedly “devastating” experience with the Taxpayer’s Bill of Rights, TABOR, since 1992. Such nonsense needs to stop. “TABOR was run out of Colorado. Why now bring it to Maine?” So read the headline on a union flyer in Portland when I arrived last month for the TABOR Truth Tour, organized by local activists Mary Adams and Bill Becker. Their successful petition drive, giving Mainers a chance to enact tax limits next fall, has the spending lobby panicked. I brought testimony of how such limits are benefiting Coloradans.

Government school system is broken

(John Andrews in the Denver Post, Mar. 19) It was March 10, the day Jay Bennish was cleared to take his left-liberal agenda back to class at Overland High. Alan Colmes, the left-liberal counterpart to conservative Sean Hannity on Fox News, was declaiming upon Bennish’s rights as a teacher in a “government school.” Right then I knew that this hot controversy, despite its tepid ending, had accomplished something. They are in fact government schools, these institutions we euphemistically call “public education.” When even liberals admit it, clarity is a step closer. The bad news is that Cherry Creek authorities wimped out, providing citizens no guarantee that Bennish will stop peddling Harry Belafonte propaganda disguised as geography. The good news is that some long-ignored questions are now before us.

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