Red Colorado group now on Twitter

I've been learning Facebook and Twitter in recent weeks, finding them worth the investment of time. Twitter is essentially a chatroom where very short comments with links can be blasted to your selected network of friends. Easy to sign up, free, and easy to start using - the sophisticated wrinkles can come later or be ignored. This post is particularly addressed to Colorado Republicans and conservatives who I think would benefit from keeping in closer touch via Twitter. I have created a specialty group called Red Colorado for us to "talk" in. Here's how it works...

1- Create your Twitter account at www.twitter.com, start collecting others to "follow" (hear from automatically).

2- When you write an update, if it concerns the goal of making Colorado red again, include the "hashtag" #redco

3- Any time you want to check on what others in Red Colorado are saying, go to www.search.twitter.com, enter #redco, and presto - all the comments are show there, with options for you to reply directly to the individual or to toss in your own comment to the whole group.

A number of sample #redco items are already posted to give the idea. These things can be a time-wasting toy OR a real productivity tool for our political goals. So far I see potential for the latter. Let's experiment and find out.

Paul Weyrich, Genius of the Right

Paul Weyrich, conservative organizer par excellence, died today at his home in Washington DC after a long and painful illness which he bore with heroic good cheer. He was just 66. A tribute is here. History will recognize him as a giant of the American right. The vaunted successes of the Democracy Alliance for liberal goals in recent elections are really just a mirror of the way Weyrich's visionary institution-building and networking since the early 1970s set the stage for Reagan's presidency in 1980 and Gingrich's takeover of Congress in 1994.

Paul helped found both the Heritage Foundation and the Free Congress Foundation. He pioneered the weekly center-right coalition gatherings that continue to wield vast influence in the form of Grover Norquist's Wednesday Meeting. He was among the earliest players in conservatism's move into cable television, demonstrating the potential for what is now Fox News Channel.

We could not have created the Independence Institute in 1985 as a force in Colorado policy and politics, simultaneous with similar state startups in Illinois, Washington, and South Carolina, without the national template for think tanks that Paul Weyrich and Edwin Feulner -- financially backed by Joe Coors -- provided a decade earlier at Heritage and Free Congress.

So it can be said that State Policy Network, now encompassing free-market institutes in some 45 states, also owes its existence to Weyrich's genius, drive, and hard work. Conservatives in the Colorado General Assembly, as in state legislatures across the country, also benefit from his legacy as one of the founders of the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC). The Republican Study Committee of Colorado, a legislators caucus, imitates yet another brainchild of his, the House Republican Study Committee in DC.

I was honored to know Paul as a friend for many years. He was a mentor to me as to countless others. As a devoted follower of Jesus Christ, he anticipated celebration with the angels when death finally came. I trust that's what this faithful servant is experiencing right now -- an early Christmas in heaven. But we on earth will sorely miss him.

Opportunities abound in Rocky sale

As by now everyone knows, the Rocky Mountain News has been put on the block, This at a time when the Tribune Company has filed forChapter 11, when over 30 papers are for sale nationwide, and there don't seem to be any buyers for large-market papers.

The business reasons for this have been chewed over ad infinitum, but the chief culprit is declining ad revenue, which only looks to get worse. (I'd also suggest brand equity; the Rocky used to win the lion's share of the journalism awards, but the Post had a better brand, in part because broadsheets seem to carry greater credibility.)

Editorially, this is an opportunity.

It's an opportunity for center-right bloggers, who will now be able to go after the Post as it inevitably spins off to the left, becoming our version of the "Strib" (Minneapolis Star-Tribune).

It's an opportunity for us in the Colorado blogosphere to do more original reporting, since it's possible the Rocky won't be there to do it.

It may be a big opportunity for the Examiner, which may try to pick up some of the loose talent soon to be running around Denver looking for work. The online paper is based here in town, and could rapidly turn its local edition into the flagship for the country.

It's also an opportunity for the talent at the Rocky, who could try the same thing on their own. Shed the national reporting, bring in some entrepreneurial-minded management, ditch the printing presses and expensive delivery system, and turn the paper into an online, state- and local-oriented newspaper. Charge a nominal fee for a subscription, and go back to a no-holds-barred style, that takes on the Post directly.

In defense of social conservatives

For rank-and-file Republicans, our party's mission is to advance freedom through limited government, strong national security, personal responsibility and traditional family values. Although many Republicans generally adhere to all four of those elements, some do not; yet they remain allied because they are so strongly committed to many of those principles. Despite inner-party squabbles, most Republicans rationally accept that we must work together to form an electoral majority.

Recently, some have grumbled that social conservatives - pro-lifers, opponents of same-sex marriage and the "Religious Right" - are to blame for the party's recent setbacks and should be muzzled.

If the goal is winning elections, rather than purging membership rolls at the country club, throwing social conservatives under the bus is a catastrophically bad idea.

Roughly two-thirds of Republicans are pro-life; the balance are pro-choice. However, overwhelming majorities in both camps weigh other factors before casting their vote. According to Gallop, rigidly single-issue voters constitute just 22% of pro-life Republicans and 8% of pro-choicers.

Just four years ago, pollsters credited "values voters" with re-electing President Bush and expanding GOP majorities. This year, moderate "maverick" John McCain enjoyed strong support from evangelicals on Election Day, despite ranking as the least favorite primary candidate of pro-life Republicans.

Meanwhile, Republican moderates like Colin Powell, William Weld and Lincoln Chaffee endorsed the Democrat. Bob Schaffer experienced similar defections from social moderates who certainly would have disdained defectors had the shoe been on the other foot.

So why do some social moderates and libertarians find it so difficult to coexist with social conservatives?

Some believe social issues are a loser at ballot box, pointing to the 3-to-1 defeat of this year's "personhood" amendment. That's a poor example because Amendment 48 split the pro-life community between those who hope to end abortion in one fell swoop and those who think an incremental approach is more practical.

Gallup says the public "is split nearly down the middle" on abortion, but measures like a ban on late-term abortion enjoy overwhelming support.

The other galvanizing social issue, preserving the traditional definition of marriage, is the most successful citizen initiative since term limits and enjoys even stronger support among blacks and Hispanics than among whites.

Another reason social issues cause a rift is that many in both camps are very principled in their beliefs. Moderates and libertarians truly believe that abortion and marriage fall beyond the bounds of limited government. Social conservatives reason that life is the foremost of our inalienable rights and that traditional marriage laws merely preserve what governments have codified for centuries.

Fiscal conservatives must recognize that social conservatives are often their strongest allies in the battle for low taxes and limited government. In the last legislative session, pro-life Republicans scored an average 65% on the Colorado Union of Taxpayers scorecard, while pro-choice Republicans averaged 41%.

Most social conservatives don't care what goes on in someone else's bedroom but take to the ramparts when those matters move to a courthouse or seek taxpayer funding. In most cases, conservatives didn't seek out these battles until liberal activists and judges ignited them.

Social moderates who say they just want government to "stay out of it" will soon be tested. Will they vociferously oppose restrictions on religious speech, taxpayer funding of abortion, and federal legislation to pre-empt state laws on abortion and marriage?

Standing on principle is commendable, but beating each other over the head with our differences is a fool's sport. In the coming months, Barack Obama, Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid will remind us all too clearly that the principles which unite us are far greater than those that divide us.

We need that reminder because, in the words of Benjamin Franklin, "We must all hang together or, assuredly, we shall all hang separately."

Anti-slavery then, pro-life now

(Denver Post, Dec. 7) What many call a concern for social issues, I call a passion for protection of the human person. With Democrats on a winning streak, some Republicans are asking why that passion is so strong in our party. Does it even belong in American politics? Thinking the question through, you’ll see that it does and it always has. Imagine you’re an Irish cop living in a Chicago slum. In the neighborhood you meet Barry and Shelley, a black couple who help the poor. You’re impressed with their efforts to bring the community better jobs, doctors, and schools. But one day you are ordered to raid their home and arrest them. Barry and Shelley are not criminals. They have harmed no one. But the year is 1858, and a man from Mississippi named Davis claims to own them as property. Federal law requires Illinois to enforce his claim. The black man “has no rights which the white man is bound to respect,” according to a US Supreme Court ruling in 1857.

You see your friends hauled away in chains. A month later you learn that Davis has sold the man into Alabama and taken the wife as his concubine. Their young daughters were put to work as field hands. The older one, defiant and desperate, dies after a whipping. Mississippi brings no charges.

After witnessing this, if a new political party called for changing the law so it would safeguard the life and liberty of all persons equally, wouldn’t you vote for them? If the same party insisted on strong marriage laws to protect women and children, wouldn’t you support that too?

I have just described the origins of the Republican Party in this country 150 years ago, during the crisis over human slavery in the South and plural marriage in Utah. Both injustices were condemned in the earliest GOP platforms on which Abraham Lincoln and his fellow partisans appealed to Americans’ moral conscience. A passion for protection of the human person is bred in our party’s DNA.

Bring the scenario forward to 1978. You’re an Italian nurse in Denver, mother of a pregnant 17-year-old. The whole family, even the expected child’s father, wants to see it born and either raised or offered for adoption. But your daughter wants the baby aborted.

Coloradans once made their own laws to balance this difficult issue where precious lives are at stake. Now they can’t. A US Supreme Court ruling in 1973 has barred state action, effectively saying that the child in the womb has no rights which adults are bound to respect.

Your long allegiance to the Democratic Party is no help; they favor court-sanctioned abortion on demand. If the Republicans called for letting elected legislators instead of robed judges seek a life-affirming compromise on the issue, wouldn’t you move their way? Millions would and did.

Forward again to 2008. You’re an African-American pastor in Los Angeles. You marched at Selma with Dr. King. You can’t wait to see Obama in the White House. California’s huge Democratic landslide will be partly your doing. But all your faith and common sense tell you marriage means one man and one woman, as voters affirmed by over 60% before the state’s highest court said otherwise last spring.

Now your congregation puts its weight behind Proposition 8, writing traditional marriage into the state constitution, even as most of them also vote for Barack. You’re not about to register Republican, but you’re quietly thankful that America still has one major party with a passion for protection of the human person, including the biological family.

Should the GOP abandon its defense of the unborn and the married moms and dads who await them? Not unless we’re ready to renounce our humanitarian patriarch and founder, Lincoln.