Hey government, we're out of patience

(Denver Post, Jan. 9) “Yesterday, upon the stair, I met a man who wasn’t there. He wasn’t there again today. I wish, I wish he’d go away.” The little poem from a century ago should haunt Colorado’s new governor and legislature as they climb the Capitol steps and set to work this week. John Hickenlooper is shrewdly adding Republicans as well as fellow Democrats to his cabinet, but no one has been appointed from the Tea Party. Speaker Frank McNulty, reclaiming a GOP majority for the first time since 2004, will preside over a House of 33 R’s, 32 D’s, and no T’s. Senate President Brandon Shaffer enjoys an opposite and more comfortable margin of 20 D’s, 15 R’s, and again, zero T’s. So what? This is our state’s two-party system in the same seesaw of power we’ve known since 1876 – politics as usual. But these are politically unusual times. The men and women who aren’t there under the gold dome in 2011, but whom our elected leaders can’t afford to ignore, are the Tea Party insurgents of the past two years.

Fewer than half of Colorado’s eligible voters turned out last November. The half that stayed home were not all Tea Partiers, of course. T’s came out in large numbers to help Republicans take the state House, unseat two Democrats from Congress, and support Tom Tancredo or Dan Maes for governor. Yet the fact remains that as campaigning now gives way to governing, T’s have no formal seat at the table. So it’s insiders beware.

The late Bill Buckley allowed LBJ only about a week in office before announcing in his magazine: “National Review’s patience with the Johnson administration is exhausted.” The Tea Party, a movement of hard-working Americans fed up with over-spending and over-government, is THAT impatient with politicians of both parties. You can imagine them sending Valentines such as these to the power-brokers at 200 E. Colfax:

“Dear Gov. Hickenlooper: No doubt you’re a good guy to have a beer with, though the motor scooter is a bit effete. But for now, forget the image stuff, park your presidential ambitions, and get the economy roaring again. Go after the unions and the spenders like you were Chris Christie. We’re dying out here. Love, Adams County.”

“Dear President Shaffer: What’s with you proposing to make it harder for us to change the state constitution? The constitution belongs to us, not to you and the other suits. Try reading it on opening day, the way Congress did. Then try again on fixing PERA, before it bankrupts the state. Respectful but steamed, Grand Junction.”

“Dear Speaker McNulty: You must have been quoted wrong about not repealing Ritter’s car tax, that outrageous affront to TABOR. When one of your members said the revenue is needed, you woodshedded him, right? Can a couple hundred of us come see you in the Old Supreme Court some afternoon? Patriotically, Pueblo.”

“Dear Senate Minority Leader Mike Kopp: Please fire up your caucus to fight harder than last year against the Obama transformation agenda on things like energy and health care. The GOP is Colorado’s best hope of not turning into California or Greece, but if you don’t show us more, a bunch of us are outta here. Worried in Widefield.”

“Dear House Minority Leader Sal Pace: Ouch, a few dozen votes in the Ramirez race and you could have been Speaker. For 2012, instead of lurching left with labor, why not become a fiscal hawk, a Dick Lamm-style Democrat? We can be had. Available in Arvada.”

Government isn’t the solution, it’s the problem. So said Reagan 30 years ago this month, and the Tea Party believes it is even truer today. If Colorado’s bipartisan establishment doesn’t pay heed, it will pay dearly.

McConnell heads for tall grass

Bob McConnell, who twice in the past five months told Republicans in western Colorado he was their man for high office, today set some kind of record by quitting the party in righteous indignation less than 24 hours after receiving his second rebuff. McConnell lost the August primary for Congress to Scott Tipton (who went on to unseat Democrat John Salazar), then lost last night's state Senate vacancy race to Jean White, then let loose today with the following mass email announcing his exit from the GOP.

crv email edition feb2011

Notice the military boast with which he signs off: "Rangers Lead the Way." Would that be the way to the tall grass when the going gets tough, Bob?

WHY I AM NO LONGER A REPUBLICAN January 4, 2011

To those of you who listened when I asked you to trust the Republican Party, I apologize. The GOP has failed us at the national, state, and local level. I am no longer a Republican because the GOP no longer represents me or what I believe. When I stepped into the fray a year and a half ago I thought the evil I was fighting was the progressive movement. I was only half right. We must defeat Barack Obama and his agenda. The GOP is not up to the task. It is time to face the reality that conservatives are being shut out of the Party. Conservative values, not a "go along to get along, what will keep me in office" mentality will defeat Obama in 2012.

As I drove back from the vacancy committee meeting in Craig last night, I heard that the RNC is $4 million in debt. And these are the people who will lead us to fiscal responsibility? Small wonder contributions are evaporating after we learned last summer that more than two-thirds of all contributions go to keeping the national machine in first class when they travel to gala dinners, and the occasional massage parlor visit. GOP "leadership" in the US Senate and House is an oxymoron - a true contradiction in terms. Mitch McConnell and John Boehner are poster boys for the GOP "paid their dues" mentality. They are the same two who with Pelosi and Reid, "led" us through the Bush 43 and Obama era financial debacle. Last month they caved on critical conservative issues during the lame-duck, and I sense that was just the beginning. Refusing to allow Michelle Bachmann a leadership position was a slap in the face to the Tea Party energy that put a new group of Republicans in office. Soon Congress will vote on whether to keep the government open by funding it with money we don't have. How will Republicans vote? And before May, Congress must vote whether or not to raise the debt ceiling AGAIN, further financially strapping our grandchildren. How will Republicans vote - based on the promises they made while campaigning or based on what they're told by the poster boys?

At the state level, the GOP looked like the Keystone Cops during the last election - funny if not so pathetic in result. Last night the SD 8 Vacancy Committee appointed Al White's wife to finish his term - liberal bloggers say the fix on that has been in for weeks. I am sure liberals celebrated with champagne when they heard the result. When a selection as important as the SD 8 seat is made by secret ballot, we, the people, suffer.

I am now registered as Unaffiliated. It was easy to disengage; just go to a website , and then start paying attention to patriots who pledge allegiance to the flag, not a party.

We need a vehicle other than the GOP to defeat Obama, because the GOP is not up to the task. It is a waste of time to try and change it from within; they have made it clear we are not welcome. The only way to get their attention is to leave. Not necessarily to form another party, but to stand together outside the Boy's Club as independent voters. We can field candidates who have no party allegiance or affiliation. We can choose people who have integrity and want to serve us, not just more mediocre life-long politicians who have paid their dues. Let's get their attention.

I have always urged you to "keep the faith." That never meant faith in the Republican Party, or any political machine. I ask you to have faith in yourselves, in ourselves as conservatives, to overcome the most serious crisis the Republic has faced in a hundred years. We must not repeat 1912 in 2012 and the GOP is well on the way to doing just that.

Rangers Lead the Way!

Bob McConnell

beawatchman@aol.com

970-846-4907

Andrews' Christmas Carol

(Denver Post, Dec. 25) Senator John was a political man, a driven man, some would say a hard man. At dusk on Christmas Eve, he squinted from his office window through falling snow toward the Capitol, and grumbled to his assistant about the latest Bill Ritter gimmick: low-energy holiday lights. His clock struck five. “I suppose you’ll want all day tomorrow,” the aging conservative barked. “If you please, sir,” Joyce whimpered. “It’s only one day a year.” Back came the senatorial snort: “One day less for this office to defend faith, family, and the flag, while you fritter at home with your relatives and pastor. All right, but you’ll owe me an extra Reagan catechism on Monday.” Hurrying past a shopping-cart woman on the corner, Andrews got in his gas-guzzler to head home. Driving south, his thoughts turned northward, not to Santa’s workshop but to the ANWR oil reserve. He ejected his wife’s “Messiah” CD, popped in the latest Cato Institute lecture, and speed-dialed Douglas Bruce.

Then it happened. Distracted by an Obama bumper sticker, the grouchy Republican braked too late for a red light and skidded into a fire hydrant, triggering both a geyser and his airbag. That was the last thing John remembered; everything went black.

A gray-haired lady was shaking him. He sniffed the musty air of Buena Vista’s old elementary school. “You’re not…?” Dorothy Roman smiled. “Yes, I am: your teacher from 1957. For a smart boy, you’re often still a dunce. Follow me.”

Stopping at several homes, she showed him classmates he’d looked down on. Peeking into a church, he saw two brothers ridiculing a less affluent family’s Christmas attire. “Ouch,” he murmured, “Jim and me.” Then to the Andrews ranch, where his mother sat by the fire in tears. “People matter most, John,” Mrs. Roman said quietly. “You’ve often written that, but do you live it?”

“Dad, are you okay?” From the darkness, the dazed rightwinger heard his policeman son shouting through the shattered windshield. But an instant later it was blazing daylight, Christmas morning, and he was 500 feet above downtown in Jeff Puckett’s “Prayer One” helicopter. “Joy to the world, the Savior is born,” crackled the pilot’s voice over the intercom.

Fellow passengers began identifying landmarks. Ron McKinney, a Salvation Army captain, gestured to Red Shield Community Center in a gang neighborhood. Kent Hutcheson pointed out school after school where Colorado UpLift staffers mentor inner-city kids. Bob Cote waved up at them from the Step Thirteen shelter and rehab facility.

Far below, a beaming teenager with a new basketball emerged from a boarded-up house. “Look, Pops, it’s one of the families our company adopted through Denver Kids Inc.,” said John’s daughter over the intercom. He tried not to think about his new landscaping at home. Rev. Tom Melton, who coordinates the weekly prayer flights, greeted them upon landing, serious for once. “Remember, Senator, we’re all one city.”

Flashers from an emergency vehicle blasted his eyeballs. The Cato lecturer was droning on about Ayn Rand. John blacked out, then seemed to waken amid the smell of sanitary chemicals and body fluids. A gaudy banner proclaimed this was Sunrise Assisted Living and it was New Year’s 2030. What was so familiar about the bent man dozing in front of the TV?

“Patty Gordon, who left us back in 2007, was always so warm and kind,” a nurse was saying. “So was her daughter Donna, John’s wife. But with old Mr. Brainy, it was always books and ideas, votes and visions. Now look at him. Too bad.”

The horrified columnist screamed and woke, himself again at last. Paramedics jumped back as he leaped from the wreckage, shouting: “Holy Scrooge, a second chance! Goodwill toward men and no excuses. I’ll try harder, God help me. Merry Christmas, everyone.”

What's Jay Say? Government, Humbug

Some timeless wisdom for Obama: "This country has achieved its commercial and financial supremacy under a regime of private ownership. It conquered the wilderness, built our railroads, factories and public utilities, gave us the telegraph, telephone, electric light, automobile, airplane, radio and a higher standard of living for all the people than obtains anywhere else in the world. No great invention ever came from a government-owned industry." - George B. Cortelyou

Beware backdoor socialism

John Andrews writes: My comrade-in-arms Kevin Miller, the former CCU business dean who is now a Centennial Institute Fellow, has brought out a book-length treatment of his landmark essay on freedom and virtue [photopress:kevin_miller_book_cover_1.png,full,pp_image] in American politics, which we first published a year ago in Centennial Review.

Freedom Nationally, Virtue Locally - or Socialism was released Nov. 29 by Denali Press. Learn more and order the book here.

In a jacket blurb, I call it a guidebook for helping "conservatives rediscover the 'render to Caesar principle," without which "America won't remain the land of the free."

Bill Armstrong, the former US senator who now heads Colorado Christian University, says the book is "full of passion, wisdom, and horse sense... Kevin Miller is an important thinker."

Miller's argument in brief, adds James C. Bennett, author of The Anglosphere Challenge: Why the English-Speaking Peoples Will Lead the World in the 21st Century, is that "while freedom is an attribute of political system, virtue is an attribute of human beings -- and so the attempt to use the state to pursue visions of virtue is undermining the republic of the Founders."