Two takes on Tucson

The assassination attempt on Rep. Gabrielle Giffords is proof we need more gun control, says Susan Barnes-Gelt in the January round of Head On TV debates. Wrong, says John Andrews: gun rights enhance public safety, and the liberties of all shouldn't be curtailed to deter a few lunatics. John on the right, Susan on the left, also go at it this month over Speaker John Boehner, repeal of Obamacare, the Hickenlooper agenda, and dysfunctional mass transit. Head On has been a daily feature on Colorado Public Television since 1997. Here are all five scripts for January:1. TWO TAKES ON TUCSON Susan: With the killing of six people, the shooting spree that felled Tucson Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords at a community meeting is igniting another cry for sane gun control. The shooter, 22-year-old Jared Loughner, has a well-documented history of anti-social, illegal behavior. The system failed. He was able to purchase a semi-automatic weapon.

John: Better security at townhalls is needed. More gun laws are not. We can’t curtail the liberties of all because of an irresponsible few. And shame on the liberal ambulance-chasers who used this madman’s assassination attempt to demonize Republicans and chill free speech. Loughner followed Hitler, Stalin, and Satan. That’s not the Tea Party.

Susan: When a person unstable and known to authorities, can purchase ammunition at a WalMart, hours before killing or wounding 19 people with a semi-automatic handgun, change is needed. It’s time for laws prohibiting the sale of guns holding multiple rounds of ammunition and limiting the caliber of weapons.

John: The shock we all feel after these horrific murders, our sadness for Rep. Giffords and the others who were shot, isn’t necessarily a formula for wise legislation. 2nd Amendment supporters, including Giffords herself, know for a fact that reasonable gun rights enhance public safety. Thank God the congresswoman pulled through.

2. ADVICE FOR SPEAKER BOEHNER

John: Obama and the Democrats lost Congress because voters were alarmed about too much spending, too much debt, too much government. Speaker John Boehner is the doctor who has to put the president in rehab and sober him up before the country goes broke. A similar intervention helped Bill Clinton get reelected.

Susan: Speaker Boehner will have a tough time managing the tea party extremes with the more seasoned members of his party. Reading the Constitution was a great idea. To be successful, the Republican Congress will need to solve problems. Jobs – not healthcare – ought to be the priority.

John: Boehner scored his first big win on jobs even before he became Speaker – forcing Obama to back down on tax increases. The president’s new top staffer, grownups who understand capitalism, represent another win for Boehner. And I love Paul Ryan chairing the budget committee while Darrell Issa investigates the administration.

Susan: The garage door of opportunity slammed shut on the Speaker and his posse when they refused to offer an alternative to healthcare, hold hearings or allow the D’s to offer input. As for the Iceman’s hearings –DC insider stuff – ignoring the real issues facing the country: job, job, jobs.

3. REPEAL OBAMACARE?

John: Barack Obama’s takeover of health care, one-sixth of the economy, is collapsing before its first birthday. Costs are up, participation is down, lawsuits are mounting, and voter approval is falling. When a centrist like David Brooks says so, you know it’s bad. Repeal by Congress will take time, but it will happen.

Susan; The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office warns repealing the Health Care Act will add $230 Billion to the deficit and leave 32 million uninsured, causing most Americans to pay more for health insurance. Congress gets a low-cost public option, subsiized by taxpayers. Voters deserve the same.

John: Susan, cut the comedy. If you believe a huge new entitlement will reduce the deficit, I have some swampland to sell you. Your so-called public option is a code word for socialized medicine, rationed care and mediocrity, Canadian-style. Pelosi abandoned that a year ago. Obamacare must be repealed and replaced.

Susan:: The country is divided on the healthcare law and with a record low number receiving employer-sponsored coverage, the tide is moving against the Republican repeal. Americans rate access to quality care a top issue. Rather than saying no, why doesn’t your party offer an alternative.

4. ADVICE FOR GOV. HICKENLOOPER

John: John Hickenlooper’s office move to the Capitol was a quarter-mile geographically, but light-years politically. His cutesy style as mayor won’t work as governor of a recession-hammered state. Hick needs to unleash his inner businessman, cool it on unions and taxes, and aggressively sharpen Colorado’s economic competitiveness.

Susan: In these particularly polarized and mean-spirited times, Hickenlooper’s non-partisan, let’s solve problems style will be very good for Colorado. He’s no ideologue and would rather be liked than feared or dismissed. That’s a good thing for the state when job creation is on everyone’s mind.

John: A governor who wants to be liked is the last thing we need right now. Ritter neglected the budget and the economy and Colorado is behind the eight-ball. Never mind winning the congeniality contest, Hick needs to be Chris Christie on the budget, Bobby Jindal on energy, and Rick Perry on jobs.

Susan: Hick could be Scrooge himself on the budget and it wouldn’t matter. The leg and the JBC have what little discretion there is. Hick’s can-do optimism and entrepreneurial drive will focus the state on economic development, innovation and sensible regulation. He owns the bully pulpit - the most important show in town.

5. FASTRACKS TO SEEK TAX HIKE

Susan: FasTracks the $4.7-billion comprehensive transportation system, approved by metro voters in 2004, is off-track. Thanks to the soft economy, rising prices and questionable management by RTD. The completed system is key to this regions economic and environmental vitality. Here’s hoping civic and political leadership will step up.

John: Light rail is a heavy mistake. In city after city, these tax-eating transit boondoggles have underperformed on ridership, overrun their budgets, and done little to relieve traffic congestion. The definition of leadership on FasTracks is to cut back the plan, live with existing revenues, and shift money into roads.

Susan: John, you are smart enough to know mobility isn’t a zero sum equation. It’s the appropriate balance of roads, mass transit, bike paths and pedestrian routes. However – until we have civic and political leadership to articulate a vision and build consensus around funding, it’s gridlock for all Coloradans.

John: For ordinary people at work, at play, in families, in the moment, the automobile is the ultimate freedom machine. That’s why Americans love their cars. That’s why liberals, including Hickenlooper, want us out of our cars. Let RTD run buses, not trains. Don’t raise taxes. Build highways, highways, highways.

Tea Party meets with GOP legislators

Republicans in the state Senate and House huddled with Tea Party leaders on Jan. 6, just hours after my column urging such cooperation was filed for publication on Jan. 9 (see left column on main page, Andrews in Print). The following report came to me Thursday evening from a friend at the Capitol: Today Colorado Senate Minority Leader Mike Kopp and six other legislators from both the Senate and House met for 90 minutes with 25 leaders of Tea Party and 912 groups from across the state. The groups represented thousands of grassroots activists from Greeley to Pueblo, eastern plains to Grand Junction.

They agreed to forge a strategic partnership to advance a "small government agenda" with three policy themes -- taxation, regulation and immigration. Leaders of the groups pledged to get their members involved in the legislative process including hearings and advocacy, and legislative leaders pledged to work with the leaders to build local membership and better awareness of state issues.

Participating with Kopp were Senators Ted Harvey, Scott Renfroe, Kevin Lundberg, and Kent Lambert, along with Reps. Libby Szabo and Chris Holbert. Speaker Frank McNulty and other members of House leadership were in DC, hence unavailable to attend.

Then on Sunday afternoon, after my column ran, headlined "Hey, Colorado government, we're out of patience" and sprinkled with imaginary signatures such as "Worried in Widefield" and "Available in Arvada," I received the following email from someone calling himself "Juiced in Jeffco." Could it have been Mike Kopp himself?

Dear Former President Andrews: The Senate Republicans stand ready to blast steadily and constructively at the destructive statist policies of the day. Look for bright and passionate moments of contrast when such issues appear. Look for some surprises on new ways to void Obamacare. And look for a steady appeal to competent governance and for Senate Repubs to be continually let down after pursuit thereof yields smaller than hoped-for results. Please let us know how well you think our message, on the foregoing items especially, is penetrating the T space.

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.”