Politicker bills itself as "Inside Politics for Political Insiders."
One has to wonder when they put up something like this:
By every important measure that matters (namely campaign wins and losses) Colorado is not a red leaning state. Sure the Republicans enjoy a numerical advantage registration wise. But that didn't help Pete Coors beat Ken Salazar, or Bob Beauprez beat Bill Ritter, or it didn't prevent the Democrats from capturing both houses in the legislature and 3 of 7 US congressional seats.
Colorado's a Democratic state right now.
Their observation about election outcome is correct, but one third of the story at best. Since they, and their primary reporter, Jeremy Pelzer, are late arrivals on the Colorado scene, we wonder if they know the history. We are referring to how the courts gerrymandered the legislature and congressional districts to favor the Democrats; the part played by the four millionaires after campaign finance "reform" hurt Republicans and helped Democrats; how Ref C divided the party; and the decision by values voters to sit out two elections.
The claim that Colorado is blue without mentioning any of this suggests that before Politicker claims to be an "insider," they need to learn some history, or at least show they know it.
On the other hand, Politicker did report that Mark Hillman is our new National Committeeman. That was information that we expected to find elsewhere, and couldn't. Several bloggers came out for Hillman, but none reported the results. The major papers didn't seem to think it important.
Once again, though, Politicker reported it in a very strange way. The fact that Dave Schultheis finished third seemed to impress them as much as Hillman's win. As we have written before, Schultheis is an excellent tactician for a minority party but would have been as much of a disaster as Doug Bruce if he had become our National Committeeman.
Congratulations to Mark Hillman and also to Leondray Gholston who did well.
Speaking of Doug Bruce, we saw him at the 5th CD assembly. He did get credit for writing TABOR when Jon Caldara made his announcement about the lawsuit. The man has done great things for Colorado. It is a shame that he goes out of his way to be uncooperative with the rest of the Republican delegation.
That was a segway to some good advice from Best Destiny. Recall that we were concerned when the Denver Post reported (correctly, it seems) that Republican legislators were doing high fives at the assembly. Michael at Best Destiny offers this advice:
Republicans MUST NOT go out in public and seem too giddy about this. They should talk about checks and balances, and limiting the governor's ability to act unilaterally, and the majority's clear disregard for the Constitution.
But if they seem like they're just glad to have the money taken back by the general public, it'll be a lot harder to convince the electorate that it's not about handicapping the schools. We've seen the Dems win with just such arguments, before--and this time they have Douglas Bruce in the legislature as a target for their ire.
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