Colorado GOP asked for it

"I'd hate to have us responsible for putting Obie in the big house," wrote Ken Davenport in reaction to a top analyst's prediction that Colorado may become the Florida of 2008. My reply to Ken was that I think the forecast by Stuart Rothenberg is spot on. If McCain wins the entire south, the entire midwest except the five upper states that Obama will probably take (MN, IA, MI, IL, WI), and the entire west except the coast (which Obama has in the bag) and except Colorado and NM, that will get McCain to 265 electoral votes. 270 are needed to win. McCain has to hold on to Florida, Virginia, Indiana, Ohio, and Nevada, plus take either Colorado or New Mexico to win. He will probably lose NM, leaving Colorado as the swing state. Think back over all the chicanery, all the back-stabbing by "moderates" against normal, healthy, courageous people just like Sarah Palin, all the missed opportunity, all the perfidious leadership, all the adultery, all the lying, all the other general moral confusion, and all the spinelessness and lack of any kind of consistent conviction or character by Republicans in Colorado over the last 10 years - all of it done because they thought nobody was watching, nobody could hold them accountable because they were rich and influential and famous, it would help their short-term political prospects and not really harm anything, they told themselves, even as it turned the political complexion of Colorado's legislature, governor's mansion, and congressional delegation exactly upside-down in terms of party composition and virtually destroyed GOP spirit and cohesion throughout the state. Now the White House and the political fortunes of the nation and, by extension, the world could ride on the ability of the Colorado GOP to hold the state for the GOP presidential candidate.

This is what Reagan meant when he said that character is built by a thousand little decisions made every day when nobody is watching and nobody is holding you accountable. The future fortunes of political parties and nations, to say nothing of families and individuals and eventually the entire world, ride on the choices of individual men and women, especially those holding government power, to know and do what is right in the present, even when nobody's watching and even when everybody is watching and it's not popular.

Powers helped save ALEC

Colorado has lost one of our toughest old Reaganauts. Ray Powers of Colorado Springs, who died Friday at 79, was the last in an unbroken string of Republican Senate Presidents from 1975 to 2001. Profiles ran this weekend in the Rocky and the Post. Sen. Powers was just taking over the gavel from Tom Norton when I arrived as a Senate freshman in 1999. Ray was a steady hand as a leader, consensus-builder, and legislative point man for newly-inaugurated Gov. Bill Owens. We didn't always agree on the issues, but he was unfailingly kind, fair, and helpful to me. I've never known a finer gentleman in politics.

Three memories of Sen. Powers stand out to me. First, his loyalty and skill in helping pass the Owens agenda. For the first time in a quarter-century, we had a GOP chief executive to propose conservative reforms and sign them into law when steered through the state House and Senate. Ray's fidelity to the Reagan worldview was critical in pushing through Gov. Owens' early successes on tax cuts, school accountability, and transportation, given that liberal Republican Russ George was Speaker of the House. Had the even more liberal Sen. Dottie Wham won her bid for President against Ray in November 1998, much of that might not have occurred.

Second, I was personally grateful for Powers' advice and backing when we narrowly passed the Defense of Marriage Act during the 2000 session. This statutory protection for traditional marriage (since superseded by a voter-approved constitutional amendment to the same effect) started as a Senate bill sponsored by Marilyn Musgrave, was killed in our chamber, then amended onto a different bill of mine in the House and sent back to us for concurrence. Though Ray was less zealous for pro-life and pro-family positions than I am, he stood strong with me while we steered DOMA through the shoals of antagonistic Democrats led by Ed Perlmutter and unconvinced Republicans such as Elsie Lacy. That's leadership; that's integrity.

And for context on both of the above points, I should point out that the 20-15 numerical majority our GOP caucus enjoyed during President Powers' tenure was functionally no greater than the bare minimum of 18 at any time -- and sometimes his "easy" vote count stopped at 14, with baling wire (familiar to Ray as a dairyman) necessary to pass the bill from there. To start with, Wham of Denver and Dave Wattenberg of Walden were mavericks with a McCain-style indifference to voting with their party.

Lacy of Aurora and the late Bryan Sullivant of Breckenridge, who came over from the House after Tony Grampsas' death a month into the 1999 session, weren't easy to corral either. Norma Anderson of Lakewood was constantly playing games across the aisle, and Ken Chlouber of Leadville, though a faithful team player, tended to shy from labor and social issues. On a bad day that left Ray and Majority Leader Tom Blickensderfer six down in the caucus and four down for a working majority. So their winning pattern was that much more impressive.

My final enduring memory of Ray Powers, and his greatest contribution as a conservative not just for Colorado but nationally, dates from the mid-1990s before he became Senate President. Ray was serving as board chairman of the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), which came on the scene in 1976 as a membership organization for legislators in the 50 states who shared Ronald Reagan's limited-government beliefs. ALEC had thrived for two decades as a vital counterforce in state capitals against the liberal-leaning, Denver-based National Conference of State Legislators.

But during Sen. Powers' chairmanship, mismanagement by the CEO drove the organization to the edge of bankruptcy. He stepped in as acting CEO despite severe health challenges he happened to be facing just then, stabilized the situation, obtained emergency funding, and recruited new management. ALEC wouldn't be here today, playing the hugely constructive role it does on issues from energy to health care, taxes to tort reform, if it hadn't been for Ray Powers' heroic leadership in its turnaround a dozen years ago.

It's not the kind of thing they erect statues for, but some of us on the right will never forget. At least there's an important thoroughfare on the east side of Colorado Springs, Powers Boulevard, named for him -- and I'll never drive it without a little prayer of gratitude for the man's quiet strength and undaunted courage.

'The Gods of the Copybook Headings'

Kipling's 1919 poem is perhap the best short defense of conservative realism against liberal utopianism ever written. I'm indebted to the late Vermont Royster, longtime editorial page editor of the Wall Street Journal, for citing this little-known classic time and again in his trenchant refutations of the latest progressive idiocy. Since it now seems I'm the one citing it time and again, here are all 40 wonderful lines for your enjoyment and my own convenient reference next time I need to quote the thing. The Gods of the Copybook Headings By Rudyard Kipling

AS I PASS through my incarnations in every age and race, I make my proper prostrations to the Gods of the Market Place. Peering through reverent fingers I watch them flourish and fall, And the Gods of the Copybook Headings, I notice, outlast them all.

We were living in trees when they met us. They showed us each in turn That Water would certainly wet us, as Fire would certainly burn: But we found them lacking in Uplift, Vision and Breadth of Mind, So we left them to teach the Gorillas while we followed the March of Mankind.

We moved as the Spirit listed. They never altered their pace, Being neither cloud nor wind-borne like the Gods of the Market Place, But they always caught up with our progress, and presently word would come That a tribe had been wiped off its icefield, or the lights had gone out in Rome.

With the Hopes that our World is built on they were utterly out of touch, They denied that the Moon was Stilton; they denied she was even Dutch; They denied that Wishes were Horses; they denied that a Pig had Wings; So we worshipped the Gods of the Market Who promised these beautiful things.

When the Cambrian measures were forming, They promised perpetual peace. They swore, if we gave them our weapons, that the wars of the tribes would cease. But when we disarmed They sold us and delivered us bound to our foe, And the Gods of the Copybook Headings said: "Stick to the Devil you know."

On the first Feminian Sandstones we were promised the Fuller Life (Which started by loving our neighbour and ended by loving his wife) Till our women had no more children and the men lost reason and faith, And the Gods of the Copybook Headings said: "The Wages of Sin is Death."

In the Carboniferous Epoch we were promised abundance for all, By robbing selected Peter to pay for collective Paul; But, though we had plenty of money, there was nothing our money could buy, And the Gods of the Copybook Headings said: "If you don't work you die."

Then the Gods of the Market tumbled, and their smooth-tongued wizards withdrew And the hearts of the meanest were humbled and began to believe it was true That All is not Gold that Glitters, and Two and Two make Four And the Gods of the Copybook Headings limped up to explain it once more.

As it will be in the future, it was at the birth of Man There are only four things certain since Social Progress began. That the Dog returns to his Vomit and the Sow returns to her Mire, And the burnt Fool's bandaged finger goes wabbling back to the Fire;

And that after this is accomplished, and the brave new world begins When all men are paid for existing and no man must pay for his sins, As surely as Water will wet us, as surely as Fire will bum, The Gods of the Copybook Headings with terror and slaughter return.

Twenty-somethings for McCain

"If McCain doesn’t win, the liberal tyranny of Obama will be so epic, you’ll vomit." The reason this sounds more like a Lodo bar conversation than your typical pundit is that Jim Krefft is a year out of Colorado College, an Ebay entrepreneur, and author of a book on military history -- the very picture of a twenty-something in a hurry and pardon his dust. I asked Jim, who helped me in the Colorado Senate when he was in high school, why he's for McCain and whether the old guy can win. Here's his answer - Editor HOW MCCAIN CAN WIN

Conservatism is defined by its ability to hold true to cherished values and ideals both fundamental and foundational to the American way. We uphold the traditional family and free market as both allow us as citizens to be healthier, happier, and freer. But the often unnoticed part of conservatism is that it has a built-in elastic clause: a proviso that allows those fundamental ideas to adapt to the ever-changing landscape of a moving and advancing world.

In 2008 this means that the GOP and conservative leaders alike must begin to listen to the ideas and observations of the new and next generation of young conservatives. People like, with all humility, this 24-year-old author.

This year is a critical pass for the Republican Partyand the conservative movement. We could both, party and movement, continue our current state of malaise and surrender ourselves before the marching armies of Senator Obama’s rather invasive liberalism.

Or we could act like men, act like conservatives, take our medicine like adults and fight until our last breath. Our standard bearer is John McCain, an absolutely relentless leader who is often misunderstood, but always honorable.

For McCain to win will require a few things. Foremmost of these is his own aforementioned quality, the quality that will get conservatives to show up en masse for McCain on Election Day and earlier. McCain won’t win if GOP members and activists sit at home pining away for the happy days of 1980. Oh and believe me, if McCain doesn’t win the liberal tyranny of Obama will be so epic, you’ll vomit.

To win McCain must also do his job; he must make it clear to the nation just how hard-left Obama is and who he represents. McCain must also show how Obama is, quite directly, a fraud who is misleading the American public with high rhetoric and undeliverable promises.

McCain must win the idea battle. He must show that the GOP can own the energy issue; that we can drill in the short term and pursue alternative energy in the long. Or that we can care about and protect the environment without devolving into the religion of Al Gore and the Human Extinction Movement.

McCain needs to present fiscal sense that allows for maintained military spending and balanced budgets. He needs to show that we will finally start fighting the War of Terror with sense and thought, finding those responsible for 9/11 and executing them publicly. McCain must argue for the free market and empowerment of small business while ensuring that the corporate giants participating in said market do so with ethical dealing and care.

John McCain must win in 2008. If we work and he wins the battle of ideas, those electoral states will fall right into place.

American Hope 2050: A Manifesto

With conservatives heavy-hearted all across the country about their choices and chances in the 2008 campaign, we in Colorado can relate. Our lean times started several years ago. The answer lies in looking not just to next November, but to a longer horizon: even to mid-century. Will America remain the hope of the world as these decades unfold? Conservatives tend to believe it will; liberals dissent. Long before hope became a cheap thing, a racket on the left, it was a noble thing on the right, as Lincoln and Washington well knew. The latter wrote: “The preservation of the sacred fire of liberty and the destiny of the republican model of government are staked on the experiment entrusted to the hands of the American people.” That’s the real meaning of hope in our tradition. CHARTING THE CONSERVATIVE COURSE TO 2050 By John Andrews Chairman, Backbone America Former President, Colorado Senate

Contents..........

Hope: Cheap or Noble? A Senator's House of Cards Yesterday: The Colorado Comedown Today: On Borrowed Time Tomorrow: On Tiptoe for the Future The Pole Star: American Hope 2050 The Passport: Contrast and Cohesion The Course: Protective, Confident, Proud The Compass: Strong Accountability Nobly Save or Meanly Lose?

“We shall nobly save, or meanly lose, the last best hope of earth.” – Lincoln

“Be always ready to account for the hope that is in you.” – St. Peter

With conservatives heavy-hearted all across the country about their choices and chances in the 2008 campaign, we in Colorado can relate. Our lean times started several years ago. I’ve concluded the answer lies in looking not just to next November, but to a longer horizon: even to mid-century. Will America remain the hope of the world as these decades unfold? Conservatives tend to believe it will; liberals dissent.

This essay draws lessons from the Colorado comedown and proposes as our new beacon: “American Hope 2050.” I conceived it when Barack Obama hadn’t yet debased the word with his phenomenal but ultimately phony campaign.

Long before hope became a cheap thing, a racket on the left, it was a noble thing on the right, as Lincoln and Washington well knew. The latter wrote: “The preservation of the sacred fire of liberty and the destiny of the republican model of government are staked on the experiment entrusted to the hands of the American people.” That’s the real meaning of hope in our tradition.

Winning in politics and public policy involves four “I’s.” You need ideas, individuals committed to them, institutions to project them, and issues as a vehicle of change. I’ve limited this discussion to the first element, ideas. Get those right and the rest will follow. Get them wrong and nothing else matters.

A Senator’s House of Cards

Smart cards, coded with magnetic data strips, not only can pay your bills or unlock your hotel room. They now also serve as keys to legislative power in Washington. Congressmen use them to access voting machines on the floor.

Such technology isn’t yet used at the Colorado General Assembly. But one day in 2003, all 99 of my fellow legislators were presented with a “voting smart card” anyway, compliments of Senate President John Andrews. On the front were our state flag and the vision statement: “A Better Colorado for the 21st Century: Freedom, Responsibility, and Opportunity.”

On the back, instead of a magnetic strip, was my five-point test for good legislation: less government, lower taxes, personal responsibility, individual freedom, and stronger families.

Essential for gaining the Senate President’s support for your bill, I told colleagues, would be its fidelity to these criteria:

(1) Does the bill reduce the size of government, lessen regulations, or elimi-nate unnecessary programs?

(2) Does the bill promote individual responsibility in spending, or reduce taxes or fees?

(3) Does the bill encourage responsible behavior by individuals and families and encourage them to provide for their health, safety, education, moral fortitude, or general welfare?

(4) Does the bill increase opportunities for individuals or families to decide, without hindrance or coercion from government, how to conduct their own lives and make personal choices?

(5) Does the bill enhance the traditional American family and its power to rear children without excessive interference from government?

We borrowed the card idea from former Florida House Speaker Tom Feeney, who’s now in Congress. Our Colorado version drew appreciation from Republicans, offset by Democratic leader Joan Fitz-Gerald, who grouched to reporters: “Why would I care?”

Yesterday: The Colorado Comedown

That year and next, before term limits retired me, our legislature in partnership with Gov. Bill Owens accomplished much for the conservative agenda. We curbed health care mandates and union power, expanded charter schools, controlled spending, passed parental notification, enacted education vouchers, and drew permanent congressional districts.

An activist state Supreme Court struck down the last two, however. And Republican defections blocked passage of judicial reform, right to work, curbs on eminent domain, restraints against illegal immigration, a color-blind civil rights act, and an academic freedom bill. The smart card message was sadly lost upon some on my side of the aisle.

Then abruptly our time was up. The 2004 elections saw a Democratic legislative sweep for the first time in 40 years. In 2006 Democrats took the governorship as well. Colorado went from red to blue overnight, shattering the complacent assumption among conservatives in our state that there’s always next year. Now our policy gains are being erased week by week.

Other states have since had the same rude awakening. So have Republicans in Washington. The seduction of power, family feuds, short horizons, a tactical mindset, and nostalgia for bygone glory days – for the GOP these have proved to be not the makings of that permanent majority so recently dreamt of, but the recipe for a political comedown.

Now my Senate gavel gathers dust, and our smart card, that little conscience for the politician’s pocket, is just a souvenir. A season out of power distills humility and sharpens concentration. To get back in the game, I believe conservatives need to cut the nostalgia, quit feuding, recover our principles, and see the far horizon again. We can then connect anew with the American people on that basis – the basis a Madison or a Lincoln could approve, the basis of a confident, capable New World conservatism.

Today: On Borrowed Time?

That heady time we remember as the Reagan revolution of the 1980s, with its second wave, the Gingrich revolution of the 1990s, was an era of huge electoral victories and remarkable policy achieve ments, mixed with plenty of disappointments, betrayals, and failures. It was also a time of many goals unreached and reforms unrealized.

To complete Reagan’s revolution is a worthy aim for conservatives in coming decades. But we stand no chance of doing so while looking in the rearview mirror. Talk of “finding the next Reagan” is fantasy. We must work on finding our own soul as persons and patriots, and our bearings as a conservative movement. From this will come the needed impetus, including statesmen equal to the hour, for reviving the Reagan revolution and completing it.

The old age that overtakes nations and pulls them down should concern us. Weariness, softness, self-indulgence, self-importance, arrogance, smugness, a sense of entitlement, dull habit, overweight, laziness and boredom, grievance and complaint, the blurring of imagination and memory -- everything we deplore in someone over the hill is equally a danger to societies as the years mount.

Well into her third century, how is the United States of America doing? Has she seen her best days? Are we on borrowed time against the societal and political entropy observable in history elsewhere? Perpetuity is not guaranteed for the “empire of liberty” foreseen by the Founders. It will fade unless we conservatives conserve it.

Tomorrow: On Tiptoe for the Future

George Washington, John Adams, Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, and all of America’s founders understood this. They looked to the far horizon, built and prepared accordingly. So did Abraham Lincoln, the seer of distant danger and promise in his greatest moments from the Lyceum speech to the Second Inaugural. So did Ronald Reagan, prophet of the shining city on a hill whose best days he insisted are not behind her. Those heroes will none of them come again, but what is that to us? Our task is to follow their example and live up to their legacy.

For us to keep faith with America as they did means being grounded in yesterday, the best of timeless truth and historical experience, as well as being on tiptoe for tomorrow, the still unseen possibilities of discovery and the human spirit. A conservative movement that meets this standard will both advance politically and hold its integrity. Conservatives who settle for less will neither win the people’s trust nor deserve it.

Americans in this century confront decisions and dangers unimaginable to earlier generations. Implacable enemies, impatient rivals, multiculturalism, secularism, globalization, and technology present tough new challenges for the United States in the coming decades.

We’ll need more than precepts on a pocket card if we are to succeed. Navigating our way forward will require four essentials. I’ll call them a pole star, a passport, a course, and a compass. Consider each and see if you agree.

The Pole Star: American Hope 2050

Conservatives must have one bright political beacon, high, fixed, and clear, in order to stay on course and bring majorities with us. We could do worse than to take for our pole star the idea of “American Hope 2050.”

In that simple phrase is packed a lot of evocative power. To begin with, the very mention of America now poses a stark litmus test between left and right. They are not sure at all about America’s goodness, and we are sure. So let’s assert that goodness.

America as the hope of mankind was an article of faith from the Founders through Lincoln to Reagan. Today it too is stridently denied, not only by demagogues abroad, but also by intellectual elites in our own country.

Now is our chance to identify the conservative movement with that spirit of hope. We do so not in the gauzy sentimentality of progressivism, Obama-style, but in fidelity to America’s founding principles as embodied in our Declaration of Independence and Constitution.

Let our pole star be the practical hope of a better life for all, achieved the American way and across the span of this new American century, shared generously with all peoples of the earth who wish America well, guarded prudently against the depredations of any who wish us ill. The mid-century dateline, 2050, sets a long horizon and speaks of sturdy optimism, stewardship for the needs of America’s children and grandchildren, foresight to a hopeful future. Political success in the present is a by-product.

American Hope 2050 is the right fight for us to be in. “We shall nobly save, or meanly lose, the last best hope of earth,” said Lincoln. That stark choice confronts our generation as it did his. Which will it be?

The Passport: Contrast and Cohesion

Thinking about the passport we’ll carry as conservatives in the new century means sorting out our identity, our credo: what we stand for and who we are. In Colorado the past few years, working to recover our morale and mend the rifts after a series of bruising defeats, I have found it helpful to first set a sharp contrast between the prevailing notions of progressivism and the wiser “small R” republican worldview. The latter still enjoys a natural majority, even amid the flux of trendy attitudes in a state that is now politically purple at best.

My next step in defining the passport is then to remind “big R” Republicans just how easy it is (or should be) for us to remain unified as a party, despite all our intramural disagreements.

One version of the contrast exercise goes this way: Conservatives favor reason, liberals favor feelings. We favor experience, they favor theory. We favor theology, they favor sociology. We tend to realism, they tend to utopianism. We favor the personal, they favor the collective. We favor the family, they favor the state. We favor the market, they favor the government.

Conservatives favor freedom, liberals favor equality. We emphasize responsibility, they emphasize excuses. We trust elected legislators, they trust appointed judges. We favor the United States, they favor the United Nations. We favor human beings, they favor the earth. (After a reporter asked me for ten points, I jotted this list of twelve; it could easily have been 112.)

The unity exercise grew urgent after the Colorado GOP split bitterly over a 2005 tax increase. My list this time was 20 points – too long to reproduce here, but aimed at showing fellow Republicans how many reasons there were apart from taxes (No. 21) to prefer our party rather than the Democrats running state government.

Our shared beliefs on issue after issue – from rights and law to free enterprise and private property, from defense and sovereignty to education and morality, from health and welfare to energy and environment – all make it imperative, I pleaded, that we not cede power through disunity over any one issue to opponents who reject our beliefs entirely. In a two-party system, better to stick with the party that agrees with me 80% of the time than to dump them for spite and be saddled with the others who agree me none of the time. The logic was unassailable; even so our side lost the next election. This passport problem still needs a lot of work.

Course: Protective, Confident, Proud

The course we present to voters is what charts the way toward American Hope 2050. It follows logically from the passport and the pole star. Let’s make the case to our fellow citizens that in these troubled times, where you stand politically is a function of where you stand on America – and we believe that after looking at the alternatives you will stand with us. The alternatives are sharp. Time and again in political contests for a generation past, and today more than ever:

** One side, ours, is more protective of America in a dangerous world.

** One side is more confident in the American people to use freedom responsibly, and

** One side is more proud of America without apologies.

This is true hands down. The evidence is overwhelming. We as conservatives, mobilized politically through the Republican Party, hold this huge advantage over the liberals and the Democrats. If we’ll just map the future in these terms when candidates face off or policies are debated, the future is ours.

Do you agree (our side should ask) that enemies are out there, evil is real, many wish us ill, and government’s first job is to protect its people against those threats? Then follow our course: we’re the side that is consistently stronger on defense abroad and tougher against crime at home.

Do you agree that individuals and families are mostly capable of making their own decisions, that enterprise and voluntary association are usually the best problem-solvers, that taxes and regulation should be minimal, that centralized power is suspect? Then come with us: we know you’re not children; we honor your dignity.

Do you agree, finally, that America is noble and good, self-improving though imperfect, special in history, the hope of the world? Then follow our course: we feel no embarrassment for God and country, faith and flag.

Protective against enemies, confident in liberty, proud and patriotic – ask if the liberal is okay with that course heading, and then watch how he squirms, how quickly the qualifiers cloud his answer. I usually encounter a “but” in the first ten words of a liberal’s reply. The left will not, cannot, take our line. A solid majority of Americans will.

The Compass: Strong Accountability

The same entropy that ages a person or a society can stall out a political movement or an administration. Ask ex-Speaker Dennis Hastert.

Ask President Bush or any second-term White House. My lesson in how circumstance or expediency can subvert good intentions came as a young Nixon staffer 35 years ago.

The republic is disserved when conservatives split the difference with liberals in the name of “governing.” We fail our trust when losing-more-slowly gets redefined as “winning.”

Without a steady compass, in other words, the beacon ahead and the map in hand aren’t enough.

Suppose, then, we were to stipulate that a human community (nation, state, or city) that is genuinely and vibrantly conservative is one that has…

** A constitutional politics

** A market economy and

** A social order balanced between duty and liberty.

And one that also is…

** Culturally cohesive and confident

** Morally rigorous and

** Religiously devout.

I call these the conservative leading indicators. Let them be our standard by which to measure policy in the moment, and by which to hold ourselves accountable over time.

Will the accountability hurt sometimes? Yes, that’s the benefit of it.

Nobly Save or Meanly Lose?

This politico’s perspective on American Hope 2050 obviously differs from what a political scientist or political philosopher might offer.

My unacademic metaphor of pole star and passport, course and compass, reflects a lifetime of stump speeches and a naval boyhood. Middlebrow and practical, nothing pretentious.

Yet scholar and politician alike can remember Goldwater and the landmark year of 1964. That was 40-some years ago, a generation plus. Intrepid conservatives navigated us from then to now.

From here to 2050 will be another 40-some years, one more eventful generation. Much is entrusted to us. May we warrant a “well done” from our descendants at mid-century.