With Gov. Bill Ritter already positioning for a 2010 reelection bid, and Republican challengers lining up, here's a handy clipping service with weblinks on Ritter's media coverage, emailed to you regularly upon request. To sign up, send an email to Colorado Springs political consultant Patrick Davis.
Hillman: No 2010 candidacy
Republican National Committeeman Mark Hillman will not seek any elected office next year, he announced in a mass email to friends on Sunday afternoon. The former Senate Majority Leader and acting State Treasurer had been mentioned as a possible candidate for the GOP nomination as US Senator, Governor, or 4th District Congressman. He lost narrowly to Democrat Cary Kennedy for State Treasurer in 2006.
Mark is a close personal friend, a regular contributor to this blog and our radio show, and an outstanding conservative leader. We can hope to see him back in political combat, and ultimately in public office, one day soon. Here is the text of his announcement:
I have decided not to seek elected office in 2010. Much has changed since I last ran in 2006 - my wife and I have "settled down" in my hometown of Burlington and a six-month-old boy has drastically changed our priorities. Campaigning for statewide or federal office is very demanding and our party deserves candidates who are willing to make that campaign a top priority. At this time, that simply isn't a commitment I am willing to make.
I am truly grateful for your support over the years and if, in a few years, it turns out that another campaign is right for me, for my family, and for Colorado, I would be honored to again have your support.
In the meantime, I intend to work hard as your friend, as a conservative committed to limited government and constitutional freedom, and as your Republican National Committeeman to do all I can to help our candidates and our party succeed by returning to our roots and unifying around our core conservative principles.
Yours for freedom, Mark Hillman
Partisan in chief
Everyone knows that Barack Obama went to Columbia and Harvard Law School, where he was editor of the Law Review. And though he may lack real-world experience -- so-called "life experience" -- he certainly got a good education. Much was made during the campaign of Obama's thin resume and his lack of leadership experience. But in reality, Obama is like many in the Congress for whom government and public service is not a new phase of their career, it is their career. Obama didn't enter politics after a successful decade as a corporate lawyer, judge or businessman. Rather, he came to politics in his mid-30s after spending time working the voters and religious organizations of Chicago's South Side, all as part of a coordinated plan to be a politician. . His success -- becoming President of the United States at the tender age of 47 -- is unprecedented. But rest assured that if it had taken another 20 years, Barack Obama would have stayed in the United States Senate, preparing and planning for a run at the White House. So, you'll have to forgive Mr. Obama for not knowing much about the practical, business side of economics. You see, Barack has never had a proper job in a corporation, had to hire or fire anyone or had to look at his balance sheet and make tough choices about strategy. And, of course, that goes for a large percentage of those in the U.S. House and Senate -- many of whom have been there for decades and don't have much experience at running anything. Our political class is largely divorced from real work of the kind that most voters do, and of the kind of economic challenges that most voters face. For them it is either an academic or an ideological exercise: throwing money at the problem makes people feel like something is being done. And if you can satisfy your social engineering agenda and pet projects in the process, so much the better.
And so it is that the new President and the Democrats in Congres have pushed through a "stimulus" package that has goodies for every pet cause, from environmental protection to family planning. In the process it rolls back many of the practical effects of welfare reform, and makes what is only a down payment on massive new spending on health care, alternative energy and redistributive social programs. The left now has a blank check to redesign our social structure the way it "should be" -- on the basis of equality of outcomes rather than equality of opportunity. It isn't enough to provide a level playing field; vast sums will now be spent to ensure that those groups that have been historically oppressed now have the opportunity to get their just desserts. Call it justice, retributive style.
Retributive justice thus explains why decisions are now being made that defy both economic logic and historical precedence. Everyone knows that trying to stimulate the economy by using massive government spending while forcing banks to loan money to those who can't repay it is a recipe for an even greater disaster -- where the cure is worse than the underlying disease. And history shows clearly that past experience with this kind of centralized control of the modes of production and credit -- both in Japan in the 1990s and during our own Great Depression of the 1930s -- only makes things worse. Surely, those who now advise Barack Obama know these facts better than anyone.
And of course it doesn't matter, because what we are witnessing now is a march of hubris fueled principally by a desire to remake the nation in a kinder, gentler form, with social justice for all. Obama's choices on the stimulus package show clearly that, despite rhetoric to the contrary, he sees his role as partisan-in-chief rather than as a sober steward of a nation with serious, systemic problems. What Obama, Pelosi and the liberals in Congress have done now won't help the economy, but it will further the liberal political and social goals that they are so certain this country wants and needs. Eventually -- three, five or ten years down the road -- the economy will recover, albeit saddled with $ trillions in additional debt. But the social goals that this stimulus makes a down payment on will live on forever.
I wrote often of my fear of Barack Obama and the Democrats during the campaign. Turns out now that I wasn't nearly scared enough.
Sore winners should lay off Musgrave
Republican Congresswoman Marilyn Musgrave, targeted five years ago by the Tim Gill machine for the crime of defending traditional marriage and finally brought down last month, is the most relentlessly and unjustly smeared public figure I can recall in 35 years of Colorado politics. Since the election, amazingly, the smears have continued from the Democrat who defeated her, Betsy Markey, aided by biased or lazy reporting from the state and national media. The rap against Musgrave now is that she hasn't made a courtesy phone call to Markey, hasn't spoken to her supporters, and hasn't even thanked her own staff -- making her one of America's sorest losers, according to no less an authority than Newsweek.
These heinous offenses have been repeatedly alleged in the Denver papers, most recently this week with stories in the Post and the Rocky occasioned by Musgrave's campaign efforts in the Georgia Senate runoff. But they are baloney three times over. A stronger term occurs to me, but this is a family website.
First as to the allegation of ungrateful and ungracious behavior to her own side, longtime staffer Guy Short assures me that employees for both the campaign and the congressional office have been not only generously thanked but also financially looked out for. To the charge (quoting the Denver Post, but originated by the Fort Collins Coloradoan) that "she has yet to... publicly address her supporters or volunteers, many of whom had gathered at a restaurant on election night," Short told the Coloradoan editor in an email:
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"I don't know where you heard that Marilyn didn't thank her supporters but that is simply not true. She thanked her supporters election night at Jackson's Hole in Greeley and at the Fairfield Hotel in Greeley. She has made hundreds of phone calls thanking supporters and has written hundreds of letters thanking supporters."
But the most damning piece of spin against Musgrave, reflecting political ignorance and naivete at best or sore-winner spite and conscious falsehood at worst, is the suggestion from Markey's camp that the losing candidate has committed some unheard-of pettiness and snub by not getting in touch with the winner.
As Ben Marter, spokesman for the congresswoman-elect, told the Post: "The voters have spoken and it's customary to call your opponent to concede the race, but we're moving forward."
Wrong. I can find no evidence of any such Colorado custom in congressional and legislative races. Tom Tancredo, retiring this year from Congress, says no Democrat ever called him to concede or extend congratulations after his two state House and five US House victories stretching back to the 1970s.
Mike Coffman, newly elected to succeed Tancredo, received no call or contact of any kind from Hank Eng, the Democrat he defeated. I received no call from the Democrat who pummeled me with negative mailers but lost anyway, in our state Senate race of 2000.
Musgrave herself, according to Guy Short, is in the same situation as Tancredo -- never in a long string of elections for state House, state Senate, and Congress has her defeated Democrat opponent bothered to call.
You see, it's just not done that way. Presidential combatants do the concede-and-congratulate thing because it's in glare of national and world attention. I don't know what happens in all governor's races, but I personally went to see Gov. Roy Romer after he beat me on election night 1990. But at the congressional and legislative level -- memo to Ben Marter and Betsy Markey -- to say it's "customary" is just not so.
Formal declarations of conceding or refusing-to-concede have relevance only in disputed races with razor-thin margins, such as the month-long 2002 duel in CD-7 between Dem Mike Feeley and eventual Republican winner Bob Beauprez, or this year's drawn-out SD-26 contest where Republican Lauri Clapp was finally edged out by Democrat Linda Newell.
If the new 4th CD congresslady wants to show some class, she can give this subject a rest and tell her cheering section to do the same. Instead of the sly statement "we're moving forward" while fanning the grievance in same breath, they need to lay off the victim thing, give a no-comment, and move forward.
In other words, Betsy, get over yourself. Where is it written that the campaign's not over until you're genuflected to? Didn't mom teach you not to kick someone when they're down? Isn't the victory enough in itself?
Disclosure: I am a longtime donor and endorser for Musgrave's congressional races.
Campaign continues against Prop 8
Californians joined Arizonians and Floridians last week in approving a constitutional amendment affirming that "only marriage between a man and a woman is valid and recognized." However, the vote in its favor in this state was only 52.3 to 47.7 percent, or a margin of slightly more than a half million votes out of nearly 10.8 million votes cast. That means that a shift of only about 250,000 would have been enough to produce a different outcome. This explains, although of course it does not justify, the rush to the streets by supporters of same-sex marriage. The thousands of men and women who have been married since the outrageous 4-3 ruling by the California Supreme Court that "equal protection of the laws" requires same-sex marriage, have been frustrated in their desires and left in a kind of legal limbo.
This is not the fault of those who oppose the corruption of marriage but of those in the executive and legislative branches, as well as the judicial branch, who have led their fellow citizens down a treacherous path. It came close to working.
Proposition 22, the statute that affirmed marriage in 2000, won a whopping approval of 61 to 39 percent. Yet public opinion appears to moving away from common sense, which doubtless was the whole reason for passing domestic partners laws, that is, to prepare the public mind to approve what it had so recently disapproved.
But politics is full of surprises. According to exit polls, while a majority of white voters opposed Prop. 8, majorities of as much as 70 percent were obtained among voters of African and Hispanic descent. The most obvious explanation is the influence of the church, Evangelical and Roman Catholic respectively, in those communities.
Similarly, a statewide network of religions, including not only Evangelical and Roman Catholic, but Greek and Jewish Orthodox, and the Mormons, worked strenuously for Prop. 8's passage. However, the Mormons were singled out last week for the hatred of the mob.
From Utah, the headquarters of the Latter-day Saints, millions of dollars were spent promoting Prop. 8, and thousands of Mormons in California walked precincts, sent mailers and made telephone calls. Theological differences were put aside as many more thousands of people of different faiths united in an effort to save marriage.
It is not hard to understand why California’s measure attracted out-of-state attention. For if same-sex marriage takes hold here, it will be very difficult to keep it from spreading to other states, notwithstanding that 30 states now have constitutional provisions supporting marriage. We are, after all, the most populous and most influential state in the Union.
Those whose politics are left of center talk and act as if they have a monopoly on the virtue of tolerance. But leftists exhibit precious little tolerance for those who disagree with them. For years, the most respectable form of bigotry among them was anti-Catholicism. But one must add to that anti-mormonism.
Thus, it was no surprise that an anti-Prop. 8 mob chose to demonstrate its outrage in front of an LDS temple in Los Angeles. After all, in the closing week of the campaign, television viewers were treated to a particularly vicious ad in which two Mormon emissaries were shown knocking at the door of what turned out to be a married lesbian couple, demanding to see their marriage license and then ripping it up.
Characteristic of those with a paranoid mind is the belief that people who disagree with them are actually out to harm them, verbally or physically. Once they’ve convinced themselves of this, the next step is to strike out against them pre-emptively in order to avoid harm. In plain words, you demonize your critics in order to justify brutalizing them.
Lest this sound over the top, I have heard such persons call into radio talk shows and accuse those who oppose same-sex marriage of advocating violence, for to them to oppose someone is to hate them and ultimately to attack them directly. Yet, millions of Americans have been worshiping God in different ways in this country for more than 200 years without causing them to attack one another.
By my count, three lawsuits have already been filed in the courts to challenge the passage of Prop. 8, the most prominent one asserting that it was "improperly decided," whatever that means. But between mobs in the streets and bogus lawsuits, we’re in for a rough ride. It’s not time for Californians to put away those "Yes on 8" signs yet.