Truth hurts in 'Standard' cover story

If it wasn't for the honor of it, I'd rather have walked. Lincoln's account of the man's reaction to being ridden out of town on a rail is exactly my reaction to seeing the woes of our state's GOP proclaimed on the front of a national magazine. Fred Barnes of the Weekly Standard and Fox News, one of the best political reporters out there, takes a hard look at Colorado Democrats' recent successes and their national implications in this week's Standard cover story, "The Colorado Model." What he sees won't cheer up my fellow Republicans, but it's a picture we need to face unblinkingly.

I talked to Barnes for an hour on July 1 during his time on the ground here, and the story quotes me a couple of times. This one appears at the end...

"Colorado is being used as a test bed for a swarm offense by Democrats and liberals to put conservatives and Republicans on defense as much as possible," says Andrews. The initial results of that test are favorable.

And this one a bit earlier...

"The bitterness of Coors-Schaffer in '04 still exists," says John Andrews. "The bitterness of Referendum C persists. And the bitterness of Marc Holtzman versus Bob Beauprez in 2006 persists." Moreover, Andrews says, "I'm not sure our party has learned the lessons it needed to learn. Republicans and conservatives missed our moment to be the next wave of the Reagan revolution at the state level. We didn't seize the center, and we didn't seize the imagination of Colorado voters."

Such reality is tough medicine for my side to swallow -- but if we're to regain our competitiveness against the opposition juggernaut this year and into 2010, we need to choke it down the sooner the better.

Energy: Goldmine for GOP

As the shock waves from $4 per gallon gasoline impact every segment of U.S. society the decades-old taboo against even discussing new offshore oil drilling has been decisively shattered. This wholly unexpected development now offers an extraordinary political opportunity to John McCain and the Republican Party, but only if they have the courage to boldly seize it. The 1981 federal ban on new offshore drilling was a remarkable victory for the radical environmentalists who have long been a dominant element in the Democratic Party. However this Petroleum Prohibition era has only been sustained because the Republican party meekly went along with it even during the years they controlled both the Congress and the White House.

Now mounting public anger and frustration and the resultant rapid shift in opinion polls have suddenly transformed the political dynamics of energy policy.

In the space of one week both President Bush and Senator McCain announced support for offshore drilling- sort of. Previously Bush had ignored this option and McCain had flat out opposed it. While they now favor a reversal of the 1981 ban, they’ve tried to straddle the issue by saying that ultimately individual states should decide on drilling.

This tepid Republican support for new drilling is welcomed by Democrats who genuinely fear the political consequences of the Republicans making this issue a high priority and sticking with it right through to November.

As opposition to drilling is a hot button liberal issue Obama had to oppose lifting the federal ban. Disingenuously he claimed that new drilling wouldn’t lower gas prices and insisted that a “windfall profits” tax was the best option. He’s betting that a continued demonization of “Big Oil” will prevent the people from seeing that failed government leadership is the real villain of the piece.

The companion strategy to new drilling is a dramatic build-up of U.S. nuclear capacity beginning with a demolition of the absurd approval process for new nuclear plants. Democrats are badly split on this issue. Those who obsess on global warming and the carbon emissions, they see as the cause are newly responsive to nuclear as a “clean” alternative. Obama’s history is pure anti-nuclear but in an effort to bridge this Democratic divide he has lamely promised that as President he would commission a “study” of the subject.

Greatly damaging to Democrats has been the torrent of discussion and new information on energy issues. The public is learning things that had been de facto “unmentionable”: the vast size of untapped U.S. oil reserves both land and sea, the superb safety record of new drilling technology, the stunning success of France with nuclear power, and the pathetic track record of so-called “alternative” sources of energy.

Democratic Congressional efforts to push a “windfall profits” tax or demonize “speculators” have collapsed even at their own hearings where the GAO and the Congressional Budget Office poked large holes in both ideas. At last Congress seems to be catching up to the public in understanding that the real problem is one of supply falling way behind demand.

Democratic disunity and growing public awareness and frustration on energy give Republicans a golden opportunity to seize control of the debate on domestic policy. Energy is clearly the hinge on which the future of the U.S. economy is now swinging. It also couples naturally to national security which is McCain’s great strength.

The only thing that seems to be preventing McCain from embracing and fully exploiting this emerging new political dynamic is a stubborn adherence to long held views (e.g. ANWR) and fear of being called a flip-flopper.

Douglas Mac Arthur famously said that the very best campaign plan is outdated following the first day of battle. Great leaders improvise and adapt as conditions on the ground change.

McCain and every other Republican candidate should ride this issue not briefly or half-heartedly but aggressively and continuously. The power of this issue can super-charge McCain’s chances of victory and dramatically improve Republican chances at every level.

Even more importantly this single issue represents a once in a generation opportunity to utterly transform the future prospects of America’s economy and its national security.

In throwing off the self-imposed shackles of the past and liberating the immense latent power of the U.S. economy we shall again validate the prophecy of Ronald Reagan that “It will always be Morning in America”.

Energy: Clueless in Colorado

As if paying $4-plus for gasoline isn't bad enough, some of Colorado's political leaders seem bound and determined to spread pain at the pump to the cost of heating our homes this winter -- and for decades to come. Ours is a beautiful state with an abundance of natural resources: silver and gold lured early pioneers, mountain vistas and ski slopes keep visitors coming year after year, and abundant energy sources fuel our economy and our way of life.

Not long ago, political leaders of both parties understood that the energy sector is vital to the economic health of our state and actively worked to utilize those resources while applying responsible protections for the environment.

Unfortunately, energy has now become a political football. Republicans play the traditional role of advancing affordable energy development, while Democrats try to freeze traditional energy sources to make alternative energy economically competitive.

According to Fortune, our junior senator, Ken Salazar, "has emerged as the Senate's leading oil shale opponent," fighting for a moratorium against further development. Never mind that Shell invested millions in oil shale research: "Salazar's efforts have essentially pulled the rug out from under (it)."

Oil shale reserves in the Green River Formation, which underlies parts of Colorado, Utah and Wyoming, are staggering. A Rand Corporation study calls it the largest known oil shale deposit in the world with 1.5 to 1.8 trillion barrels of crude oil.

Nearly half of those deposits -- 800 billion barrels, triple the known crude reserves in Saudi Arabia -- are recoverable using existing technology, if only Salazar and company would get out of the way.

With gas prices soaring, Salazar's wannabe senate sidekick, Boulder congressman Mark Udall, called a news conference last month to tell Colorado families that high gasoline prices aren't going away so we need to be more fuel efficient.

File that inspirational note next to Jimmy Carter's fireside chats about economic "malaise."

Udall's plan to do something about soaring gas prices is a confounding concoction combining economic illiteracy and wishful thinking:

** Crack down on price-gouging. Straight from the far-left playbook of MoveOn.org, liberals rant against price-gouging, fully aware that evidence of actual price-gouging is scarce as hen's teeth.

** Stop "subsidizing" the oil and gas industry. Udall wants to eliminate tax credits that U.S. oil companies receive for taxes paid to foreign governments, and he would eliminate a tax deduction for domestic production. This amounts to penalizing American companies when they bring their overseas profits back home and for creating jobs to produce oil in the U.S.

** Move away from corn to cellulosic ethanol. Ethanol mandates contribute to price distortions, but the technology for turning corn into fuel is years ahead of research on switchgrass. The lesson from our ethanol experience should be that politicians are ill-equipped to predict where technology and economics will converge.

Udall boasts of his sponsorship of a bill to allow U.S. companies to engage in exploration off the coast of Cuba, but his bill is mere window dressing. In nearly a year since its introduction in the Democrat-controlled Congress, Udall's bill hasn't even been scheduled for a hearing.

To make matters worse, Udall and Salazar team up with Gov. Bill Ritter to stonewall against responsible energy development on the Roan Plateau. Meanwhile, Ritter still expects the energy industry to provide more tax revenue.

Roan Plateau contains an estimated 9 trillion cubic feet of natural gas ‹ enough to heat every home in Colorado for 20 years. Bureau of Land Management would allow drilling on no more than 1 percent of the plateau's surface at any time.

Yet Salazar, Udall and Ritter want to stall the process (which began in 1997 under President Clinton), impose even more restrictions, and then tell the bidders where to drill first. If any of the three knew so much about energy exploration, he could be making a fortune as a geologist.

Say what you will about oil and gas producers, but remember that they don't get paid if they don't produce. If Salazar, Udall and Ritter get their way, Coloradans will be sitting atop vast oil and gas reserves but sending our money to the likes of OPEC and Hugo Chavez.

In Memoriam: Jesse Helms

"In a life full of accomplishments, probably the most significant single political act was his role in persuading a disappointed Ronald Reagan in 1976 to continue his primary campaign for the presidential nomination." That's Richard Greenfield paying tribute to the late Jesse Helms this week in the Connecticut Jewish Ledger. Welcome words of truth, if you were as disgusted as I was at the MSM slurs on Helms's memory after his death in the predawn hours of July 4.

Greenfield continues: "Fresh from defeats in Iowa and New Hampshire, Reagan was ready to abandon his effort. But Helms got him to stay in the race resulting in stunning victories first in North Carolina and then Texas. Arthur Finkelstein, a Helms adviser at the time said 'without Helms and Team Reagan there would have been no Reagan presidency and the cause of freedom in the world would have suffered greatly.'" Read the whole piece here; click to editorials in left column.

Another eloquent and fitting eulogy for Helms came from Newsmax.com columnist Phil Brennan, who said in part:

"Unlike Gulliver, he would not allow himself to be tied down by the mass of pygmies who surrounded him and shot their darts at him.

"Like St. Thomas More, when the winds of change blew against him, he seemed to say, 'Here I stand -- I will not be moved. You can slander me, you can kill me, but you cannot kill the truth.'

"Like another great Southerner, Stonewall Jackson, he lived the motto, 'Duty is mine, consequences are God’s.' And he did his duty as his Creator gave him the light to see it. And like Old Jack when he struck at his foes, he used everything he had."

Read the rest of Brennan's tribute here. America and the conservative movement greatly need not only more men and women of backbone like Reagan, but also more like Helms.

Who does Bob Tiernan like for President?

What's a poor atheist to do, with both Obama and McCain flaunting their church attendance yesterday, and an ordained minister, Leah Daughtry, chairing this year's DNC, a brazen invasion of the faith territory long owned by the GOP and James Dobson? Robert Tiernan's Colorado chapter of the Freedom from Religion Foundation is aglow with pride about its "Imagine No Religion" billboard downtown, but his God-deniers movement seems adrift with no clear political home in 2008. The John Lennon-inspired advertising sign is halfway through its two-month run on 14th Avenue west of the Civic Center. I missed the breaking news about it in early June; we were in Europe, touring empty churches and learning about the birth dearth among world-weary couples in that increasing religionless (except for Islam) continent.

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As illustrated in my snapshot above, the billboard sits right next to Denver's new, half-constructed Justice Center, and blocks away from the main congregating area for local homeless people. You wonder how Tiernan and company would make the case that crime would be less and generosity to the unfortunate would be greater, in their imagined world where nothing is either morally forbidden or commanded by a higher power.

You wonder how the FfRF crowd, as they call themselves, intend to vote this November. I'm betting they feel considerably more welcome in the Democratic Party, Daughtry's symbolism and Obama's faith-based mimicry of Bush notwithstanding.

You try to "imagine" the billboard staying up an extra month so that a poll of DNC delegates could be taken in late August. Would most of them be less disgusted by Bob Tiernan's atheist fantasy than I and my fellow Republicans are? I'm betting, again, the answer is yes.