The Colorado Index

Confusing the Ideal With Reality - O Again

A new blogger wrote the following on October 3d:

Last night, I made the mistake of watching C-SPAN as the Senate voted for the woe begotten bailout plan. I find it amazing that we did not conduct a second American Revolution after C-SPAN was created and enabled Americans to see the staggering ignorance and incompetence of their elected officials on a daily basis. Senator Kay Baily Hutchison of Texas, unbelievably a Republican -- if that has any real meaning anymore, gave a speech saying that she and all her colleagues heard overwhelming opposition to the bailout plan from the people. However, she went on to say that she didn’t think the people understood all the improvements the Senate added to the bill and how vital it really was. What patronizingly insipid bloody rubbish! The U.S. Senate may have a difficult time understanding basic economics, but the people seem to be doing just fine.

On October 6th, he wrote in favor of "O":

Governing Philosophy:

For those of you who might wonder how I came to these decisions, I have a simple legislative philosophy. First, I do not believe the state constitution should be amended save to express guaranteed rights of our citizenry or to give fundamental structure to government entities. The constitution is no place for simple policy or tax plans, which may need to change drastically over time. Those should be limited to the Colorado Revised Statutes, which can be changed as needed by the legislature.

Second, I do not believe the people should be amending even the statutes lightly. The legislature exists to provide a forum for all interested parties to debate and express their opinions about policy. Through that forum, the senators and representatives can consider all available information and modify legislation based on that insight. The people do not have that advantage. In any ballot initiative, the only opinions we hear are from groups well funded enough to advertise extensively. Also, the people cannot modify or amend a ballot initiative as the legislature can with a bill. This means we must simply accept or reject what is offered to us on the basis of what is often limited or faulty information. As such, ballot initiatives should be used only to express clear, broad policy. Anything else, such as specific tax or revenue plans, should be left to the legislature. If our vote is needed, they can ask us for it through the referenda process. This is why we believe in a representative government rather than direct democracy in the first place. If you are concerned about such things, write your district senator or representative. At the state level, they ALWAYS have time to meet with you in person about it if you wish.

Normally, I would want to encourage a new conservative blogger to blog away, but this guy is confusing the ideal with what is real and doesn't seem at all aware that that is what he is doing.  In the process, he wants the voters to dilute a very important right on his say so.  His law degree, he thinks, gives him extra credibility for his uninformed opinion.

Mr. New Blogger, allow me to burst your bubble. 

I became a political activist when I discovered that my legislator would a) pretend in writing to have read a letter when he hadn't; b) put his finger in my chest and tell me that he was too busy to learn about and work on any issue excepting "life" and "illegal aliens."  He didn't have time, he emphasized with his finger in my chest, to read my letter and he wanted to make that very clear to me.  Five minutes later, I was an activist.  Your theory that state legislators are available to common, non activist citizens with problems is, put politely, hogwash.

Mr. New Blogger, your assertion that legislators have more information than voters is equally flawed.  Why don't you ask your legislator what the good points and bad points of Senate Bill 54 were.  That bill is one of the most anti-public bills that passed the legislature this year and yet every legislator voted for it, most out of total ignorance as to what it did.  Let's you and I debate the merits of that bill and you tell me how that could have happened.  As a starting point, pull up my testimony before the House Judiciary committee and tell me why, when I spent three minutes doing nothing but listing the anti-public parts of the bill not a single legislator asked a substantive question about any point I brought up.

Mr. New Blogger, your assertions, separated by three days, that the Congress is imperfect enough to incite revolution and yet the state legislature is so perfect that the public should vote away their rights fails any reasonable logic test.  In the blogging world, you have to be consistent or people won't care what you write.  Your positions don't meet that simple test.

Note:  Under normal circumstances, I would provide links.  I'm quite confident that the word will get back.

Colorado Blogger at the Republican National Convention

Some months ago, I was unofficially asked by email if I wanted to be the Colorado blogger at the Republican National Convention.  I declined and recommended two bloggers, Ben DeGrow and El Presedente, in my place.  They don't know that and will find it out here.

El Presedente has been selected, and I offer him my congratulations and best wishes.

I wasn't really the right guy to ask as I don't own a laptop and hate both the keyboard and the mouse setups on laptops.  I can't and won't do mobile blogging.  The fact that I try to keep my blog focused on Colorado politics also entered into the decision.

Perhaps the major obstacle was the cost of the trip.  I'd have had to buy a new computer, pay air fare, find a hotel room, and pay for all of the things that convention delegates pay for.  That was the downside.  The upside was that my blog would have been exposed to more people.  While that is a big upside, it is not a $5,000 upside.

That brings me to the purpose of this essay.  El Presedente is asking for financial help for his trip, and I think it is very important that he get it.  Volunteer conservative bloggers are now competitive with the left wing bloggers who are almost all subsidized.  When a volunteer blogger is willing to spend his own money to help the conservative cause, Republicans who are in a position to give him a meal or a place to stay ought to be willing to help.  My guess is that if offered the opportunity to sleep on the couch of a delegate's hotel room for free, he would take it.

Republican politicians are becoming more aware of the power of blogging and bloggers.  Republican donors who have maxed out on McCain and Schaffer can help them both by sending El Presedente a few hundred bucks.

Show Horses vs Work Horses

It was good to see that Bob Schaffer stopped by Samsphere.  It is about time that politicians began to publicly acknowledge and court bloggers. 

I had to laugh, a month ago, when a Mark Udall staffer was claiming that I was being paid by Bob Schaffer to blog on Schaffer v Udall.  In the time that I wrote on that blog, I probably wrote at least 600 posts.  When I volunteered at a local event that both Bob Schaffer and Ross Kaminski attended, Bob didn't have any idea who I was and commented when I told him that I wrote for Schaffer v Udall "Oh yes, my staff shows me that blog sometimes."

On the other hand, relentless self promoter Ross Kaminsky, who professes to support Bob but has probably written fewer than six posts on the Senate race, was on a first name basis with Bob.

It is hard to blame Schaffer for being ignorant of the work being done in support of his campaign.  Candidates are forced by campaign finance laws to spend too much time away from the campaign.  Even so, it would have been fun to have been a fly on the wall at Samsphere to see if Bob Schaffer now knows what Schaffer v Udall is and who writes for it.

If there is a lesson there, it is that politicians need to figure out who the show horses are and who the work horses are.  Eventually the work horses get tired of watching the show horses bask in the candidate's attention while they are ignored.

Others, especially those in a position to promote the work of one blogger over, and sometimes at the expense of another, need to learn that lesson as well.

Speaking of Schaffer v Udall, I am still paying a price for the work I did there.  El Presedente, the guy who wrote less than five per cent of the posts but who wanted to set name calling policy for the rest of us is exacting revenge for my quitting.  He is the Colorado Editor of Blog Net News and has the power to order the blogs on its blogroll.  For three weeks, The Colorado Index has been relegated to either the bottom of the list or second from the bottom.

My readership hasn't declined at all, so it clearly doesn't matter.  It also didn't go down when he immediately removed Colorado Index from his blog roll.  I wouldn't want him to change a thing, but I do want others to know what a small person he is.

The High Cost of Ceding the High Ground

Yesterday, Politicker's Jeremy Pelzer provided us with an interview with Mark Udall.  One of the questions was:

The NRSC and the Schaffer campaign have given you a couple of nicknames, like "Boulder Liberal" and "U-turn Udall." And I was wondering if you had a nickname that you would suggest for yourself as an alternative to these.

Mark Udall's answer:

Coloradans, I think, are averse to labels. They know there's more to public service than just labels. I think that's the politics of the 1990s, which the Republican Party was pretty good at practicing back then - people have seen through it. My label is I'm an "independent Western Democrat."

The simple facts are that Mark Udall's campaign has resorted to name calling on multiple occasions.  The campaign manager called Bob Schaffer "Big Oil Bob" in a signed fund raising letter.  Mark Udall described the senate he wants to join as filled with "extremists."  He used that word three times in that context in a fund raising letter that he signed.  Taylor West, our favorite Mark Udall punching bag, err... spokesperson, managed call Bob Schaffer an extremist twice in one week.  In the same week, she called Dick Wadhams a "top below the belt attack dog" and then claimed that the Mark Udall campaign was above name calling (as Udall implies above).  There isn't just a little hypocrisy there, but Jeremy Pelzer was too star stuck to notice.

Jeremy Pelzer could have pointed out, as we did, that Mark Udall has called Boulder his touchstone.  One old left wing windbag tried to claim that Udall was talking about "Boulder County," and not Boulder itself. Instead, he pretended to ignore the fact that the event attendees were from Boulder, itself.  Politicker might also have pointed out that over 40 left wing blogs and msm outlets have called Mark Udall "extremist," "reliably left wing," and "liberal."  Again, it isn't conservatives calling Mark Udall various forms of "lefty," it is the msm and the liberal blogs.

It was not a good outing for Politicker or Jeremy Pelzer.  He didn't have his facts, or misrepresented them, and he let Mark Udall slide.  There was not a single followup question.  We will have more to say another day. 

El Presedente of Slapstick Politics, a blogger who is himself addicted to name calling, does a review of the essay.  Because he helped John Randall cede the high ground on name calling, he is in no position to point any fingers and doesn't.  On Schaffer v Udall, he reviews the Pelzer interview and observes, not with a bang, but with a whimper:

Some boilerplate, but Udall mainly takes the high road, until the small swipe at the end.

Exit question: Udall dubs himself an "independent Western Democrat"--do you buy it? Is Udall just as "mainstream" as Gov. Bill Ritter or Senator Ken Salazar claimed to be in their elections?

That is the very high cost of ceding the high ground and why I no longer write for SvU.