Colorado Voter Guide 2012

Friends have asked how I am voting. Here's the rundown for what it's worth. State Ballot Issues

* No on Amendment 64, Marijuana Legalization: It's tempting to agree that prohibition of pot has failed as badly as prohibition of alcohol, and should be ended. But if Colorado does so, locking it into the constitution is the wrong way to go. To my libertarian friends who say that how an adult besots himself is his business alone, I'd argue that widespread doping has huge social consequences which are within the state's police power to mitigate if we can.

* No on Amendment 65, Campaign Finance: This is a symbolic gesture aimed at making Congress narrow the scope of political free speech. Madison spins in his grave. Wrong goal and wrong approach, doubly misconceived.

* Yes on S, State Personnel Reform. Bipartisan support for this measure has long precedent. It went to the ballot when I was a senator, and unions defeated it. Unions are even more powerful now among Colorado's unaccountable bureaucrats. S will give our elected governor more authority to staff the executive branch for results as voters expect.

Local Ballot Issues

* No on school tax increases, in the Cherry Creek district where I live and all across Colorado. Schools have enough money, what they lack is freedom to succeed or fail. See "Won't Back Down" for dramatic proof.

* No on municipal tax increases, in Centennial where I live and all across the Colorado. Government at all levels across this country is over-funded and bloated. Show me one exception. Put'em all on a crash diet.

Judges for Retention

* I vote no on retention of all judges, for impersonal reasons of principle. Of course there are many worthy incumbents. But it's my conviction that America's entire judicial system, top to bottom in Colorado and other states, along with the federal judiciary, suffers from a "God complex" brought on by excessive public deference and weak systems of accountability. Let every judge on election night see a substantial protest vote from citizens. Some day I hope Colorado will lead the way on judicial term limits, a fight I led and lost on the 2006 ballot.

Nonpartisan RTD Board of Directors

* RTD is Colorado's fourth biggest government in terms of spending. Party affiliations are not used in these races, making it harder to gauge who is likely to be more fiscally conservative and market-minded, suspicious of government solutions and labor unions. Nine director seats are up this year. According to my research, the following candidates are best attuned to taxpayers and the private sector.

District E: Dave Williams District G: Jack O'Boyle District H: Kenny Mihalik District I: Jeff Ilseman District K: David Elliott District M: Natalie Menten I'm not unable to recommend anyone in Districts A, D, and F.

Partisan Candidate Races

* I will vote the straight Republican ticket exactly as I've done in 24 elections since 1966. Democrats, though mostly well-intended, are like quack doctors prescribing sugar shots to a diabetic. Their remedy on all issues, fiscal, social, constitutional, national security, cultural, is 180 degrees off target; couldn't be wronger.

Fire Obama, that failure, that fraud; keep Congress and the state House in GOP hands, and elect a Republican state Senate, in DC and Denver alike.

Thanks for reading this far. Comments, questions, and disagreements are always welcome.

Brian Davidson for CU Regent

I will vote for Brian Davidson in the Republican primary for CU Regent. After earlier endorsing Matt Arnold, whom I still consider a friend, I must now withdraw my endorsement. Arnold's erratic and evasive handling of the Arapahoe email fraud is a forfeiture of trust. We need a higher standard of judgment and probity in our elected officials than what he has demonstrated.

It saddens me to take this action, because Arnold has significant potential for public office. But so does Davidson, and his potential is ready to realize now. With the other candidate, who can be sure?

Pass the hemlock, please

Though the Tea Party movement is not a cohesive entity, its component parts this year have been grappling with a central existential question: To be, or not be, a third party?  Thus far, Tea Party leadership from across the country has made a concerted effort to keep its powerful, grass roots movement within the Republican Party.  As one of Colorado’s Tea Party leaders, Lesley Hollywood, told me recently, “We had to work at convincing people that the right approach was to work within the Republican Party – to restore its conservative principles and to keep it honest.”  The thinking is that third party candidates are relegated to the role of spoiler, and even in the rare occasion when they are well financed, have little chance of actually winning.  Principle is important, but power is essential to changing the way government works.   The Tea Party has learned to work the system, and the system has begun to work for them. Or so they thought.  Late on Monday, former GOP Congressman Tom Tancredo announced that he was entering the race for Colorado Governor as the candidate of the tiny American Constitution Party.    Even for those who know this mercurial politician well, Tancredo’s move represented a dramatic about face.  In December of 2009, Tancredo sent an open letter to Colorado’s Tea Party patriots, imploring them to get behind the Republican Party and not make the “suicidal” mistake of backing a third-party candidate from a small fringe party:

Some patriots are tempted to launch a third political party or back one of the existing small parties that never attract more than one or two percent of the vote in state races. I strongly believe that such a course is suicidal and would only result in splitting the conservative vote and guaranteeing the re-election of liberals and socialists.

I believe the Republican Party is the natural home of conservatives and that the road back to constitutional government lies in taking control of the Republican Party from top to bottom, from county committee to the statehouse and all the way to Washington, D.C.

According to the Denver Post, the ACP has 2,000 voters registered with the Colorado Secretary of State, and is the kind of fringe party that Tancredo rightly says never attracts more than a point or two of the vote.  But with a high-profile candidate in Tancredo, who has a dedicated core of state-wide support and a proven capacity to raise money, there is a very real fear that the American Conservative Party will split the Republican vote sufficiently to ensure that Democrat John Hickenlooper is elected in November.  As Colorado GOP Chair Dick Wadhams told the Wall Street Journal, “He wants to destroy Republican chances”.

Not that Republicans haven’t done a good job themselves of messing up the Governor’s race – the Republican front runner, Scott McInnis, has been embroiled in a high-profile plagiarism scandal, and  Tancredo’s stated rationale for joining the race is McInnis can no longer win.   But in the end, this move by Tancredo likely has less to do with politics and more to do with personality.  “Tancredo has an unquenchable thirst for national media attention, at any cost”, Wadhams told the Wall Street Journal.  Tancredo has gained a national following for his strident position on illegal immigration.  When Tancredo ran for the GOP presidential nomination in 2008, he ran an ad that was reminiscent of the “daisy girl” spot that LBJ ran against Barry Goldwater in 1964 – depicting a bomb being planted by illegal immigrants exploding in a mall and the slogan “Tancredo – before it’s too late”.

This kind of sensationalism from a Tancredo run is likely to suck the air out of the Colorado campaign season – at all levels.  In fact, conservatives worry that beyond splitting the conservative vote in the Governor’s race, Tancredo’s presence on the ballot will affect other races as well.  This includes the race in the critical 4^th CD, where Republican Cory Gardner is running a hotly contested race against Democrat Incumbent Betsy Markey.  If Tancredo’s presence at the top of the ticket helps the ACP”s 4^th CD candidate Doug Aden siphons away votes from Gardner, it could mean the difference in the race.

All of which is salt in the wound to Colorado Tea Party activists – especially in Northern Colorado, where Cory Gardner is from.  In an open letter to Tancredo the day before he made his decision to enter the race, Lu Busse, Chairwoman of the Colorado 9-12 Project Coalition wrote:

We clearly demonstrated at the precinct caucuses and state assembly (that the)Tea Party and other pro-liberty grassroots individuals have worked tirelessly for more than a year championing our principles, becoming engaged and informed, learning the political process, vetting candidates at all levels, and also reshaping the Colorado Republican Party as you advised.

For Tancredo, it’s do as I say, not as I do.  “He’s making a mockery of himself and the entire election process”, Lesley Hollywood told the Wall Street Journal.  “It seems like an enormous power grab”.

Or publicity grab, anyway.

“Nothing in politics happens by accident”

This observation by Franklin D. Roosevelt comes to mind as various agencies of the federal government move in force against reported design defects in automobiles made by Toyota Motor Company. Focusing on problems of sudden acceleration, the proceedings of the Securities and Exchange Commission, a grand jury and today the House Energy and Commerce Committee have begun to exhibit something resembling a cross between swarming and piling on. Is it possible that last year’s federal intervention to "save" the Chrysler and General Motors corporations has as its follow up an attack on the chief foreign rival of these American companies? Just wondering. For years, the primary criticism of government efforts by liberals to encourage commerce has been that picking winners and losers is neither productive nor fair, these matters being best determined by competition in the marketplace. Are we now seeing that such "picking" involves not only giving political and financial advantages to favored firms but actually making attacks on unfavored ones? One is reminded of the purportedly non-xenophic President Obama's denunciation of foreign corporations in his State of the Union Address last month. I guess foreigners coming over the borders illegally is one thing but playing by the rules in the American market is something else. Kimberly Strassel wondered out loud about these possibilities last week in her weekly column at the Wall Street Journal. I think she might be on to something.

Let's stop warping words

Rhetoric often manipulates our understanding through bias-laden misuse of language. We all have encountered such examples. "Progressive" suggests innovative, visionary and benevolent. But most "progressive" policies merely regurgitate antiquated notions that were disproved decades ago. A principal contemporary example of outdated "progressive" policy would be the flurry of big-spending, big-government legislation being touted by this Administration, merely repeating the failed economic policies that worsened and prolonged the Great Depression.

Conversely, "conservative" has come to signify stingy and contrary. Actually, there are two distinct forms of conservatism: fiscal and social. Fiscal conservatives believe that spending should be restrained, not over-taxing the public, especially during this economic downturn. Conservative fiscal restraint limits government spending just as people must limit their home budgets. Social conservatives believe in traditional interpersonal values, such as integrity and responsibility.

"Benefits" implies improvement. Properly used, the word denotes the favorable outcome for which we must commit some expenditure of time and resources. When used by the government, though, some people expect the proverbial "free lunch" free for them, paid by someone else.

"Government-funded" has no meaning whatsoever. At any level, no government has any money except ours. Taxes and debt are the only sources of government funding. That is, WE pay for "government-funded" projects. If a politician promises to deliver yet more benefits (see above) at no additional cost, that money must then be taken from some already-funded program.

Impassioned rhetoric should instantly signal the need for wariness, carefully assaying the logic and validity of the speaker's or writer's words. Bias-laden buzz-words especially trigger our alarm bells, protecting us from their misleading damage.