Primaries: System worked

(Denver Post, Aug. 17) “The system worked.” On an August day like this one, back in 1974, plainspoken Gerald Ford gave one of the classic tributes to the openness and resilience of our American form of government, as he assumed the presidency from a disgraced Richard Nixon. Tuesday’s party primaries, sorting out family feuds among the Republicans and Democrats, lacked the historic import of a White House resignation. Yet I thought of President Ford’s words as the returns came in, opening a new chapter in Colorado politics. The people have spoken, and power will change hands accordingly. No one is entirely happy, which must mean things came out about right. TV images from Beijing and Tbilisi dramatized a contrast that Americans too often take for granted. Here elections matter and law prevails. Here we settle disputes with ballots, not bullets. Here ordinary people can make an extraordinary living, keep most of what they earn, and spend it mostly as they choose. Here dissent is protected, as is worship, as are the individual and the human spirit. What a system – and it works!

On primary night, I particularly watched eight races, three for the US House and five for the Colorado General Assembly. The results, it seems to me, gave quiet proof of just how well our system works. See if you agree.

Congressman Doug Lamborn in Colorado Springs won a tough rematch with two fellow Republicans he’d beaten in a 2006 primary, Jeff Crank and Bentley Rayburn. Although it galled some of us that they challenged him again, imagine a regime where they weren’t allowed to. God forbid.

In Arapahoe and neighboring counties, where I live, Secretary of State and Iraq veteran Mike Coffman dominated his GOP runoff against Wil Armstrong, Ted Harvey, and Steve Ward. He’ll succeed Rep. Tom Tancredo, assuming a November victory over Democrat Hank Eng. Time-tested and literally battle-hardened, Coffman is my party’s Michael Phelps. This gold was well earned.

Meanwhile in Boulder, Jared Polis, the young Internet tycoon, edged my former Senate colleague Joan Fitz-Gerald for the Democratic nomination to replace Mark Udall in Congress. Will Shafroth ran third. Polis put $5 million of his own money into the race, but with full disclosure, why not? The man linking arms with him, running mate-style, was his roommate. Voters were apparently comfortable with that. A free society adjusts.

Legislative primaries also provided object lessons. Businessman Rollie Heath bested CU Regent Cindy Carlisle to become the Dems’ state Senate nominee in Boulder. She had turned on university president Bruce Benson during his confirmation. Heath, having lost big for governor in 2002, will now start over, lower on the ladder. I applaud that, having done the same a decade ago.

Political second acts aren’t easy to pull off. Former state Rep. Lauri Clapp won a GOP Senate nod in Littleton, where Steve Ward is retiring, but Democrats hope to swipe the seat. Dems canned Rep. Rafael Gallegos of Antonito at his assembly; he then failed at petitioning; Edward Vigil took the primary. Colorado Springs Republicans on Tuesday fired Rep. Douglas Bruce for one too many ego trips, preferring soldier Mark Waller.

In a class by herself was Rima Barakat Sinclair of Denver, personable but so absorbed with her Mideast origins that it seemed Palestine might be her one issue if elected state representative. My Republican radio partner Joshua Sharf, though his chances are uncertain this fall, took her in the primary. What a system.

“This country is screwed up as never before,” a retired Army nurse lamented as we hiked down Mt. Shavano just before the primaries. Nonsense, I told her. Storm-tossed as America is, we the people with our voice, vote, and virtues can make any needed course correction and weather any gale. In my book, Tuesday proved it again.

Progressive groups remolding Colorado

(Denver Post, Aug. 3) Happy Colorado Day. August 1 was the anniversary of our admission to statehood in 1876. Many now regard this as a dusty bit of historical trivia, irrelevant today. It’s not. Colorado was only allowed by Congress to become one of the United States on the condition that its form of government would be “not repugnant to the principles of the Declaration of Independence.” This is a good time to see how we measure up to that standard, sort of like taking a physical on your birthday. The principles to be cherished are that we’re all created equal, that our rights are God-given not manmade, that government must therefore be limited not unlimited, and that tyranny whether from monarchs or majorities is an ever-present danger.

What this means is that the power of the state, its laws and taxes, commands and prohibitions, police and jails, meet boundaries in our lives and liberties which they may not trespass. Not everything is political. If someone believes everything IS political, even the CO2 we exhale, even men’s and women’s restrooms, he’s crossways to the Spirit of ’76, 1776 and 1876 both. That’s why Colorado Day still matters.

A study text for this year’s self-examination was provided by the Weekly Standard, a national conservative magazine, in its July 21 cover story by Fred Barnes, “The Colorado Model: The Democrats’ Plan for Turning Red States Blue.” The Dems’ electoral winning streak here since 2004 isn’t just cyclical, Barnes contends. He thinks they’ve invented a whole new way of doing politics, potent and ready for export.

Maybe it’s that or maybe it’s routine stuff overhyped by Republicans as “an excuse for their tailspin,” in the article’s words. But the darker implications of Barnes’s analysis deserve attention no matter which party you favor – since a competitive and open political system is in everyone’s interest. If he is right, a lockdown for one side could happen in Colorado.

What the Standard calls “the Colorado Model” consists of a single, shadowy power supply with a seven-way delivery system that molds public opinion and ultimately moves votes. The Democratic Party itself plays little role until election day. But ostensibly unrelated outside groups churn out a permanent campaign every day year-round, like turbines driven by a river of undisclosed money from rich liberals.

Voter attitudes in our state are constantly pushed leftward, as Fred Barnes tells it, by such silent partners as (1) the Bell Policy Center crunching numbers, (2) Progress Now mobilizing activists, Colorado Ethics Watch (3) investigating and (4) litigating, (5) Colorado Media Matters scolding PC violators, (6) the Center for Progressive Leadership training cadres, and (7) ColoradoPols.com rousing the blogosphere. It’s some machine, and its end product is Democratic dominance.

Conspiracy theory? Hardly so, not when it’s all done in the daylight (financial disclosure excepted). Not when the liberals boast of what they do and we conservatives extend grudging admiration. Some of us founded the Independence Institute two decades ago in the belief that the battle of ideas ultimately determines the battle of votes. The other side’s “Colorado Model” takes the same premise and has trumped us for now. Fair is fair.

Where a problem may arise is in the sophisticated and coordinated scale of this new swarm offense from the left. Inside their echo chamber, with the mainstream media naively cooperating, how can you be sure what’s true? How much power do you want Tim Gill, Pat Stryker, George Soros, and a few other zillionaires to have?

If by leveraging the liberties of limited government, the zealots of unlimited government were to entrench themselves in power, what freedoms would remain for the rest of us? What antitrust law restrains the progressive cartel? Happy Colorado Day.

American Hope 2050: A Manifesto

With conservatives heavy-hearted all across the country about their choices and chances in the 2008 campaign, we in Colorado can relate. Our lean times started several years ago. The answer lies in looking not just to next November, but to a longer horizon: even to mid-century. Will America remain the hope of the world as these decades unfold? Conservatives tend to believe it will; liberals dissent. Long before hope became a cheap thing, a racket on the left, it was a noble thing on the right, as Lincoln and Washington well knew. The latter wrote: “The preservation of the sacred fire of liberty and the destiny of the republican model of government are staked on the experiment entrusted to the hands of the American people.” That’s the real meaning of hope in our tradition. CHARTING THE CONSERVATIVE COURSE TO 2050 By John Andrews Chairman, Backbone America Former President, Colorado Senate

Contents..........

Hope: Cheap or Noble? A Senator's House of Cards Yesterday: The Colorado Comedown Today: On Borrowed Time Tomorrow: On Tiptoe for the Future The Pole Star: American Hope 2050 The Passport: Contrast and Cohesion The Course: Protective, Confident, Proud The Compass: Strong Accountability Nobly Save or Meanly Lose?

“We shall nobly save, or meanly lose, the last best hope of earth.” – Lincoln

“Be always ready to account for the hope that is in you.” – St. Peter

With conservatives heavy-hearted all across the country about their choices and chances in the 2008 campaign, we in Colorado can relate. Our lean times started several years ago. I’ve concluded the answer lies in looking not just to next November, but to a longer horizon: even to mid-century. Will America remain the hope of the world as these decades unfold? Conservatives tend to believe it will; liberals dissent.

This essay draws lessons from the Colorado comedown and proposes as our new beacon: “American Hope 2050.” I conceived it when Barack Obama hadn’t yet debased the word with his phenomenal but ultimately phony campaign.

Long before hope became a cheap thing, a racket on the left, it was a noble thing on the right, as Lincoln and Washington well knew. The latter wrote: “The preservation of the sacred fire of liberty and the destiny of the republican model of government are staked on the experiment entrusted to the hands of the American people.” That’s the real meaning of hope in our tradition.

Winning in politics and public policy involves four “I’s.” You need ideas, individuals committed to them, institutions to project them, and issues as a vehicle of change. I’ve limited this discussion to the first element, ideas. Get those right and the rest will follow. Get them wrong and nothing else matters.

A Senator’s House of Cards

Smart cards, coded with magnetic data strips, not only can pay your bills or unlock your hotel room. They now also serve as keys to legislative power in Washington. Congressmen use them to access voting machines on the floor.

Such technology isn’t yet used at the Colorado General Assembly. But one day in 2003, all 99 of my fellow legislators were presented with a “voting smart card” anyway, compliments of Senate President John Andrews. On the front were our state flag and the vision statement: “A Better Colorado for the 21st Century: Freedom, Responsibility, and Opportunity.”

On the back, instead of a magnetic strip, was my five-point test for good legislation: less government, lower taxes, personal responsibility, individual freedom, and stronger families.

Essential for gaining the Senate President’s support for your bill, I told colleagues, would be its fidelity to these criteria:

(1) Does the bill reduce the size of government, lessen regulations, or elimi-nate unnecessary programs?

(2) Does the bill promote individual responsibility in spending, or reduce taxes or fees?

(3) Does the bill encourage responsible behavior by individuals and families and encourage them to provide for their health, safety, education, moral fortitude, or general welfare?

(4) Does the bill increase opportunities for individuals or families to decide, without hindrance or coercion from government, how to conduct their own lives and make personal choices?

(5) Does the bill enhance the traditional American family and its power to rear children without excessive interference from government?

We borrowed the card idea from former Florida House Speaker Tom Feeney, who’s now in Congress. Our Colorado version drew appreciation from Republicans, offset by Democratic leader Joan Fitz-Gerald, who grouched to reporters: “Why would I care?”

Yesterday: The Colorado Comedown

That year and next, before term limits retired me, our legislature in partnership with Gov. Bill Owens accomplished much for the conservative agenda. We curbed health care mandates and union power, expanded charter schools, controlled spending, passed parental notification, enacted education vouchers, and drew permanent congressional districts.

An activist state Supreme Court struck down the last two, however. And Republican defections blocked passage of judicial reform, right to work, curbs on eminent domain, restraints against illegal immigration, a color-blind civil rights act, and an academic freedom bill. The smart card message was sadly lost upon some on my side of the aisle.

Then abruptly our time was up. The 2004 elections saw a Democratic legislative sweep for the first time in 40 years. In 2006 Democrats took the governorship as well. Colorado went from red to blue overnight, shattering the complacent assumption among conservatives in our state that there’s always next year. Now our policy gains are being erased week by week.

Other states have since had the same rude awakening. So have Republicans in Washington. The seduction of power, family feuds, short horizons, a tactical mindset, and nostalgia for bygone glory days – for the GOP these have proved to be not the makings of that permanent majority so recently dreamt of, but the recipe for a political comedown.

Now my Senate gavel gathers dust, and our smart card, that little conscience for the politician’s pocket, is just a souvenir. A season out of power distills humility and sharpens concentration. To get back in the game, I believe conservatives need to cut the nostalgia, quit feuding, recover our principles, and see the far horizon again. We can then connect anew with the American people on that basis – the basis a Madison or a Lincoln could approve, the basis of a confident, capable New World conservatism.

Today: On Borrowed Time?

That heady time we remember as the Reagan revolution of the 1980s, with its second wave, the Gingrich revolution of the 1990s, was an era of huge electoral victories and remarkable policy achieve ments, mixed with plenty of disappointments, betrayals, and failures. It was also a time of many goals unreached and reforms unrealized.

To complete Reagan’s revolution is a worthy aim for conservatives in coming decades. But we stand no chance of doing so while looking in the rearview mirror. Talk of “finding the next Reagan” is fantasy. We must work on finding our own soul as persons and patriots, and our bearings as a conservative movement. From this will come the needed impetus, including statesmen equal to the hour, for reviving the Reagan revolution and completing it.

The old age that overtakes nations and pulls them down should concern us. Weariness, softness, self-indulgence, self-importance, arrogance, smugness, a sense of entitlement, dull habit, overweight, laziness and boredom, grievance and complaint, the blurring of imagination and memory -- everything we deplore in someone over the hill is equally a danger to societies as the years mount.

Well into her third century, how is the United States of America doing? Has she seen her best days? Are we on borrowed time against the societal and political entropy observable in history elsewhere? Perpetuity is not guaranteed for the “empire of liberty” foreseen by the Founders. It will fade unless we conservatives conserve it.

Tomorrow: On Tiptoe for the Future

George Washington, John Adams, Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, and all of America’s founders understood this. They looked to the far horizon, built and prepared accordingly. So did Abraham Lincoln, the seer of distant danger and promise in his greatest moments from the Lyceum speech to the Second Inaugural. So did Ronald Reagan, prophet of the shining city on a hill whose best days he insisted are not behind her. Those heroes will none of them come again, but what is that to us? Our task is to follow their example and live up to their legacy.

For us to keep faith with America as they did means being grounded in yesterday, the best of timeless truth and historical experience, as well as being on tiptoe for tomorrow, the still unseen possibilities of discovery and the human spirit. A conservative movement that meets this standard will both advance politically and hold its integrity. Conservatives who settle for less will neither win the people’s trust nor deserve it.

Americans in this century confront decisions and dangers unimaginable to earlier generations. Implacable enemies, impatient rivals, multiculturalism, secularism, globalization, and technology present tough new challenges for the United States in the coming decades.

We’ll need more than precepts on a pocket card if we are to succeed. Navigating our way forward will require four essentials. I’ll call them a pole star, a passport, a course, and a compass. Consider each and see if you agree.

The Pole Star: American Hope 2050

Conservatives must have one bright political beacon, high, fixed, and clear, in order to stay on course and bring majorities with us. We could do worse than to take for our pole star the idea of “American Hope 2050.”

In that simple phrase is packed a lot of evocative power. To begin with, the very mention of America now poses a stark litmus test between left and right. They are not sure at all about America’s goodness, and we are sure. So let’s assert that goodness.

America as the hope of mankind was an article of faith from the Founders through Lincoln to Reagan. Today it too is stridently denied, not only by demagogues abroad, but also by intellectual elites in our own country.

Now is our chance to identify the conservative movement with that spirit of hope. We do so not in the gauzy sentimentality of progressivism, Obama-style, but in fidelity to America’s founding principles as embodied in our Declaration of Independence and Constitution.

Let our pole star be the practical hope of a better life for all, achieved the American way and across the span of this new American century, shared generously with all peoples of the earth who wish America well, guarded prudently against the depredations of any who wish us ill. The mid-century dateline, 2050, sets a long horizon and speaks of sturdy optimism, stewardship for the needs of America’s children and grandchildren, foresight to a hopeful future. Political success in the present is a by-product.

American Hope 2050 is the right fight for us to be in. “We shall nobly save, or meanly lose, the last best hope of earth,” said Lincoln. That stark choice confronts our generation as it did his. Which will it be?

The Passport: Contrast and Cohesion

Thinking about the passport we’ll carry as conservatives in the new century means sorting out our identity, our credo: what we stand for and who we are. In Colorado the past few years, working to recover our morale and mend the rifts after a series of bruising defeats, I have found it helpful to first set a sharp contrast between the prevailing notions of progressivism and the wiser “small R” republican worldview. The latter still enjoys a natural majority, even amid the flux of trendy attitudes in a state that is now politically purple at best.

My next step in defining the passport is then to remind “big R” Republicans just how easy it is (or should be) for us to remain unified as a party, despite all our intramural disagreements.

One version of the contrast exercise goes this way: Conservatives favor reason, liberals favor feelings. We favor experience, they favor theory. We favor theology, they favor sociology. We tend to realism, they tend to utopianism. We favor the personal, they favor the collective. We favor the family, they favor the state. We favor the market, they favor the government.

Conservatives favor freedom, liberals favor equality. We emphasize responsibility, they emphasize excuses. We trust elected legislators, they trust appointed judges. We favor the United States, they favor the United Nations. We favor human beings, they favor the earth. (After a reporter asked me for ten points, I jotted this list of twelve; it could easily have been 112.)

The unity exercise grew urgent after the Colorado GOP split bitterly over a 2005 tax increase. My list this time was 20 points – too long to reproduce here, but aimed at showing fellow Republicans how many reasons there were apart from taxes (No. 21) to prefer our party rather than the Democrats running state government.

Our shared beliefs on issue after issue – from rights and law to free enterprise and private property, from defense and sovereignty to education and morality, from health and welfare to energy and environment – all make it imperative, I pleaded, that we not cede power through disunity over any one issue to opponents who reject our beliefs entirely. In a two-party system, better to stick with the party that agrees with me 80% of the time than to dump them for spite and be saddled with the others who agree me none of the time. The logic was unassailable; even so our side lost the next election. This passport problem still needs a lot of work.

Course: Protective, Confident, Proud

The course we present to voters is what charts the way toward American Hope 2050. It follows logically from the passport and the pole star. Let’s make the case to our fellow citizens that in these troubled times, where you stand politically is a function of where you stand on America – and we believe that after looking at the alternatives you will stand with us. The alternatives are sharp. Time and again in political contests for a generation past, and today more than ever:

** One side, ours, is more protective of America in a dangerous world.

** One side is more confident in the American people to use freedom responsibly, and

** One side is more proud of America without apologies.

This is true hands down. The evidence is overwhelming. We as conservatives, mobilized politically through the Republican Party, hold this huge advantage over the liberals and the Democrats. If we’ll just map the future in these terms when candidates face off or policies are debated, the future is ours.

Do you agree (our side should ask) that enemies are out there, evil is real, many wish us ill, and government’s first job is to protect its people against those threats? Then follow our course: we’re the side that is consistently stronger on defense abroad and tougher against crime at home.

Do you agree that individuals and families are mostly capable of making their own decisions, that enterprise and voluntary association are usually the best problem-solvers, that taxes and regulation should be minimal, that centralized power is suspect? Then come with us: we know you’re not children; we honor your dignity.

Do you agree, finally, that America is noble and good, self-improving though imperfect, special in history, the hope of the world? Then follow our course: we feel no embarrassment for God and country, faith and flag.

Protective against enemies, confident in liberty, proud and patriotic – ask if the liberal is okay with that course heading, and then watch how he squirms, how quickly the qualifiers cloud his answer. I usually encounter a “but” in the first ten words of a liberal’s reply. The left will not, cannot, take our line. A solid majority of Americans will.

The Compass: Strong Accountability

The same entropy that ages a person or a society can stall out a political movement or an administration. Ask ex-Speaker Dennis Hastert.

Ask President Bush or any second-term White House. My lesson in how circumstance or expediency can subvert good intentions came as a young Nixon staffer 35 years ago.

The republic is disserved when conservatives split the difference with liberals in the name of “governing.” We fail our trust when losing-more-slowly gets redefined as “winning.”

Without a steady compass, in other words, the beacon ahead and the map in hand aren’t enough.

Suppose, then, we were to stipulate that a human community (nation, state, or city) that is genuinely and vibrantly conservative is one that has…

** A constitutional politics

** A market economy and

** A social order balanced between duty and liberty.

And one that also is…

** Culturally cohesive and confident

** Morally rigorous and

** Religiously devout.

I call these the conservative leading indicators. Let them be our standard by which to measure policy in the moment, and by which to hold ourselves accountable over time.

Will the accountability hurt sometimes? Yes, that’s the benefit of it.

Nobly Save or Meanly Lose?

This politico’s perspective on American Hope 2050 obviously differs from what a political scientist or political philosopher might offer.

My unacademic metaphor of pole star and passport, course and compass, reflects a lifetime of stump speeches and a naval boyhood. Middlebrow and practical, nothing pretentious.

Yet scholar and politician alike can remember Goldwater and the landmark year of 1964. That was 40-some years ago, a generation plus. Intrepid conservatives navigated us from then to now.

From here to 2050 will be another 40-some years, one more eventful generation. Much is entrusted to us. May we warrant a “well done” from our descendants at mid-century.

How to improve Congress

(Denver Post, July 20) Welcome to the shrink’s office, Mr. and Ms. Voter. It says here you got fed up with the Republican Congress after years of overspending and scandals and laxity in foreign affairs, so at the last election you fired them. But surprise; the other guys have done no better. Gas prices are outrageous, the economy is anemic, troop levels in Iraq are up not down, and the defeat that Reid and Pelosi predicted over there is turning into victory. The Democratic Congress you hired so hopefully in 2006 has a 9% approval rating as the 2008 election approaches. How’s that working for you? In this funhouse of unintended consequences, Coloradans will try again to make the right choice for our seven members in the US House. Before you conclude a coin flip might do as well as an informed vote, consider there’s a good chance we’ll like the next Congress better than the last few, if we really shuffle the lineup.

I’ll illustrate with my own congressional district, the safely Republican 6th CD in Denver’s south suburbs, represented since 1998 by Tom Tancredo but now wide open as he retires. I’ll corroborate with the safely Democratic, Boulder-based 2nd CD which Mark Udall is vacating to seek a US Senate seat.

But the logic applies everywhere. The only way to improve Congress is to shake up its stale roster with fresh talent, young blood, a new kind of players unburdened with old habits. If you keep doing what you did, you’ll keep getting what you got. (Rockies and Nuggets management, call your office.)

The GOP primary race to succeed Tancredo in the 6th is a four-way scramble among Secretary of State Mike Coffman, State Sens. Ted Harvey and Steve Ward, and businessman Wil Armstrong. All have solid resumes, and their conservative credentials differ little. But if I was looking for an impact player, someone who could become on the Hill what John Lynch is for the Broncos, I’d give Armstrong the edge.

The mediocrity that is Congress-as-usual, no matter which party is in charge, doesn’t result mostly from scoundrels with ill intent. It results from decent men and women with a shallow outlook and mistaken goals. Too many in the House, R and D alike, are career politicians for whom advancement has become an end in itself. Voters need to change that personnel profile, or we’ll never change how the place works.

With ballots for the Aug. 12 primary already in the mail, Wil Armstrong’s three rivals all make the same me-too pitch: “I’ve legislated,” they say. “I’ve governed.” They have, and ably so. But his rejoinder, which trumps them in my book, is that “I’ve created jobs, met payrolls, and innovated in the marketplace.” Local Republicans said in a recent poll they’d rather send an entrepreneur to Congress than a career politico by 85% to 6%.

The clincher for me is hanging onto the Secretary of State’s office, which Iraq veteran Mike Coffman won narrowly over arch-liberal Ken Gordon just 20 months ago. Conservatives cringe at the thought of Gordon or former Denver Clerk Rosemary Rodriguez being named the state’s chief election officer. We hope Coffman stays put.

As for the successor to Udall in CD-2, I root for Internet tycoon Jared Polis to win that Dem primary over former Senate President Joan Fitz-Gerald and environmentalist Will Shafroth. Same reasoning: the most accomplished individual with the least political baggage is likeliest to help bring change in a Congress that’s literally dying for it.

But whoever you like and wherever you live, don’t sit out this summer’s primary. Please get involved, donate, volunteer, study the candidates and the issues, make your vote count. It matters so much to Colorado, and to America.

Ritter strikes out on energy

(Denver Post, July 6) Where is “Far Side” cartoonist Gary Larson when we need him? Two prehistoric inventors stand before the tribal elders, beaming proudly. Og has discovered fire, and Zor has invented the wheel. But the ruling Democrats turn thumbs down. “Begone,” they order. “No good will come of those things.” I exaggerate, of course. The elders would decree taxes and regulation, not a ban. Dems aren’t cavemen, after all. Yet if you follow the logic of liberals like Bill Ritter, we’re headed for a future with less fire and fewer wheels. Their distaste for the obvious energy sources that keep America rolling and the lights on is that intense.

Following a sweaty commute on Gov. Ritter’s bike-to-work plan, you can spend the day in one of Mayor Hickenlooper’s minimally air-conditioned office buildings. After dining at ethanol-inflated food prices that evening, you can join our green leaders in one of their voluntary switchoffs, a darken-the-city display of pity for the planet.

That’s the sacrificial approach, the future as guilt trip. Barack Obama has warned: “We can't drive our SUVs and eat as much as we want and keep our homes on 72 degrees at all times, and then just expect that other countries are going to say OK.” As the loyal convention host for Obama, Ritter is in a sweat himself over those bad ol’ fossil fuels. Let’s count the ways:

With gas prices at $4 and climbing, the governor wants a huge tax increase on Colorado oil and gas production. That’s one. His Oil and Gas Conservation Commission is set to impose new rules that will make it even harder to get energy out of the ground. That’s two. And he’s saying no, in concert with Democratic Sen. Ken Salazar and Senate candidate Mark Udall, to developing our oil shale. That’s three, an energy policy strikeout.

Everyone knows the alternative-energy litany. “Wind, solar, biomass, hydro,” we chant. “Fuel cells, perpetual motion, Kryptonite,” we add in hope of an extra indulgence from the Gaia priests. I have nothing against all that stuff (though I’ve sometimes rooted for Lex Luthor against Superman). It’s simply a matter of cost-benefit and timelines. That stuff is tomorrow, whereas oil and gas – and nuclear, which Ritter sidestepped on "Meet the Press" last week – are today, if Colorado keeps its backbone.

Two short summers ago, Bill Ritter took the state by storm as a pro-business Democrat. Taxpayers and consumers soon learned otherwise. Part of his soul is owned by the unions and the rest by Earth First. How else explain his ballot proposal to more than double the severance tax on petroleum, a mainstay of our state’s economy both in employment and at the pump?

The tax hike takes a divide-and-conquer angle by targeting a single industry which many currently scapegoat, and proponents say it would boost business in general by boosting higher education.

But chambers of commerce have seen through the ruse and refused their support, while university presidents are lukewarm. Their need is operating funds, not the scholarships that Ritter is vaguely promising. Nor can state bureaucrats dispel his vagueness without violating campaign finance laws.

Bottom line: the severance tax petition looks doomed with a month to go; don’t waste your time signing. Take time instead to attend one of the commission hearings on those draft regs to impede oil and gas drilling with more red tape. Big turnouts so far indicate significant citizen pushback.

Perhaps Democratic tribal elders won’t get their way after all. The dread of environmental guru Amory Lovins that it would be “disastrous for us to discover the source of clean, cheap, abundant energy, because of what we might do with it,” may not prevail. Most of us, you see, really want to keep the fires burning and the wheels turning.