The Colorado Index

James Dobson's Successor

The Denver Post has an interesting article on Jim Daly, successor to James Dobson at Focus on the Family.

Nowhere does it mention politics.  It does suggest that Daly will be more open to working with others than Dobson has been.

RIP Dr. George Tiller

My sympathies are with his family.  

I also extend my sympathies to the many well meaning social conservatives who recognize that their cause is always hurt and never helped by these kinds of acts of violence.  Ben DeGrow and John Andrews are good examples who spoke out immediately.

The Radical Religious

After three weeks of walking precincts, I am getting an education of the kind that isn't available elsewhere.

I've decided that political scientists have it wrong.  For years, they have lumped much of the Republican party into "the religious right."  It is a definition that I have accepted, even for myself.  I am religious but my faith is grounded in pre-Roe teaching which never mentioned abortion and hardly mentioned homosexuality.  My religion is a live and let live religion.  It is not an angry religion.

This past year I attended a performance at a major church in Colorado Springs.  The opening remarks observed that there were many "angry Christians" in this town.  I was surprised that that would be said openly in a church, but it was.  The remarks were met by applause.

By walking precincts, I think I am beginning to get a handle on the number of what I am going to call the Radical Religious.  I think it is about 5%, and that is in a heavily conservative district.  The vast majority of what we think of as socially conservative voters actually are conservative and consistently vote for conservative issues and candidates that support them.

The Radical Religious have become so radicalized by abortion that it is hard to call them Republicans, although to a person every one I have met has been a registered Republican.  In no way can they be called conservative.

I am a lifelong Republican in the Ronald Reagan big tent tradition and yet I cannot find any political value that I share with these angry Christians, these Radical Religious.

I have been told by more than one member of the Radical Religious that they don't care how high taxes go.  They want to keep their vote "right with God."   They can't claim to be fiscally conservative if they openly admit that they don't care if our government produces a fiscally conservative outcome or not.

I am a retired military officer.  I support the military.  I support candidates who support the military. When given a choice in 2008 between a pro-military Republican and an anti-war activist in HD-17, the Radical Religious proved again that they would never support a Republican that didn't conform to their single issue.  They would AND DID want to see the anti-war activist elected over a Republican in the district that includes Fort Carson, no less. I have yet to find a single member of the Radical Religious who is remorseful about that outcome. They can't claim that they share pro-military values with me.

I am a small government Republican and have been all of my life.  There is nothing small government about the solutions that the Radical Religious propose when it comes to their issues.

Having owned a small business for 12 years and possessing two business degrees, I am, as you would expect, pro small business.  Most Republicans are, but not the Radical Religious. Time after time they have tried to destroy, and usually succeeded in destroying the candidacies of Republicans who have owned businesses.  People who are in a business that interacts with the public and want to stay in business have found that they can't both stay in business and toe the line that the Radical Religious expects of candidates it will support. The Radical Religious are anti-business.

I am pro second amendment.  When the Radical Religious supported Bill Ritter, who as Denver DA had a long history of gun control advocacy before the legislature, over Bob Beauprez, I was amazed.  I very likely made 5,000 phone calls for Beauprez from his DTC headquarters.  There were several days when I was the only volunteer there.  I turned on the lights when I got there in the morning and off when I left.  I can't count the number of times I was told "I am a values voter.  I didn't vote for Coors and I won't work or vote for Beauprez."  The Radical Religious can't claim to be pro second amendment when they prefer that a gun control Democrat wins over a gun rights Republican.

It might be that the Radical Religious and I agree on the Courts, but the tactics they are using are self destructive. They don't care if they hand the appointing and confirming powers over to the Democrats, meaning that we will never have a conservative court system that follows the Constitution and the law.

Ronald Reagan was a big tent fiscally conservative Republican.  Every time a member of the Radical Religious sees a tent, he tries to steal the poles.

Why would we want to call any member of the Radical Religious a part of "the base" when they are so often so willing to see Democrats elected who share none of our values?

Again, I am writing about a very small but well organized and extremely vocal group of people who claim to be Republicans.  The register as Republicans, but can never be made to care about promoting broad Republican values except under their terms.  

Most social conservatives are not in this category or the country would be in deep trouble.

Certainly the social conservative politicians who I have come to admire and call my friends are not in this category.

The Near Disaster That was Amendment 48

Compared to other amendments, there was very little agitation in the form of commercials against Amendment 48.

I think that some on the left might have been hoping it would pass.  My theory:

First,  the left controls the courts and could control the negative (from their view) aspects of  Amendment 48.

Second, and much more devastating, is the possibility that the passage of Amendment 48 would have opened up an unprecedentedly effective form of Gerrymandering.

Once a fertilized egg was declared a person, that “embryo/person” could be counted for purposes of apportionment of the state legislature. All that would need to happen to give Democrats permanent control of the legislature would be for a dozen well placed fertility clinics to be established in strategic locations. 

Those clinics could collect and store unwanted embryos, essentially forever.  Amendment 48 would have required that they not be disposed of, though it didn’t require that they be used.

Under the “one man, one vote” version of the Constitution, those newly defined “embryo/persons” would be entitled to be included in any apportionment of the state even if the Federal census didn’t count them.

Further, there wouldn’t be an easy way of checking on the viability of the embryo/persons.  If a fertility clinic wanted to claim that it had 50,000 embryo/persons in its care, it is hard to see how that number could be checked.

I’m not saying that anyone would ever be allowed to vote these embryo/persons, although they would eventually reach voting age.  That wouldn’t be necessary.  I am saying that in a dozen or so districts, it would be possible to have a few thousand birth/persons and fifty thousand embryo/persons.

No Republican legislator opposed Amendment 48, although some were lukewarm.  It would be hard to see how, if Amendment 48 had made it into the Constitution, any could have objected to this scheme.

I didn’t write about this possibility before the election out of fear that the Democrats who hadn’t thought of this would try to hijack the issue and promote one of the most ill-conceived initiatives ever to make the ballot.  It was a near miss.