For years now, Colorado has been drifting further and further into Democratic ranks. Frankly, it’s become a blue state. The reason for this is a combination of an influx of Californians who are morons and vote for the moron party and the fact the GOP excels at turning off voters. How has the GOP done this? By turning into a cult.
Look, when I grew up out here, Colorado was very conservative in the sense that Reagan was conservative. Coloradans believed in small government, limited regulation and a right to be left alone. But at the same time, they favored strong defense and law and order. In terms of values, they liked traditional values but with a live and let live flavor which meant you didn’t impose them on others. Essentially, we wanted to be left alone so long as we didn’t bother other people or cause problems. We wanted to be safe, but free. We trusted business, but we also trusted a small, focused government to regulate them. And we didn’t want to control our neighbors. This was the atmosphere in Colorado.
In the 1990s, things began to change. For whatever reason, we suddenly got an influx of Religious Right groups, like Focus on the Family who still have headquarters here. These people quickly took over the GOP and changed it. Suddenly, the live and let live attitude was replaced with a paranoia that wanted the government to make sure nothing untoward was happening in the neighbor’s bedroom. Economics vanished from the Colorado GOP agenda. People fled the party in droves. Even in Colorado Springs, which sits in the most conservative county in the country, Democrats suddenly became competitive for city council because people couldn’t stomach the obsession with gays and abortion and forcing prayer on public schools. They were worried instead about little things like roads and taxes.
In addition to this problem, the GOP also managed to pick up some fringers like Tom Tancredo whose only issue was his visceral hatred of Mexicans... and Republicans who disagreed with him.
The result was a GOP that became irrelevant and was becoming less relevant every year.
Suddenly, however, it looks like the GOP will win a Senate seat again as Cory Gardner appears ready to defeat Democratic marshmallow Mark Udall. The Denver Post even endorsed Gardener this last weekend. The GOP looks set to win the governorship too. And it looks like they will hold onto a House seat the Democrats had targeted; the Democrats announced this weekend they are cancelling $1 million in ads to help former state House speaker Mark Romanov try to defeat incumbent Republican Mike Coffman. That is a sure sign they think the race can no longer be won.
So what happened? Well, each of these Republicans has abandoned the whole insane culture war stuff. Both Coffman and Gardner have endorsed allowing over-the-counter sales of birth control, i.e. “the pill.” The reasons for this are twofold. First, as a policy matter, easier access to birth control has demonstrated that it will lead to a lower rate of unwanted pregnancies, which means fewer abortions. So this really can be seen as a way to reduce abortions. Secondly, this immunizes the GOP candidate from attacks that he wants to ban birth control. In fact, the reason the Post endorsed Gardner was that Udall has been blasting him with only one issue: CORY GARDNER WANTS TO BAN BIRTH CONTROL!!, and the Post called this dishonest. And with Gardner not talking about abortion at all, his campaign has resonated.
Similarly, Coffman has embraced the idea of allowing the pill to be sold over the counter (this is a GOP idea which is spreading fast even as it brings out calls of “RINO” as Bobby Jindal discovered when he became the first to try it) and he’s renounced his former support of the “personhood” amendment, which would ban abortion and do some very bad things.
Our gubernatorial candidate, Bob Beauprez, has run as a moderate while pounding away on Democratic Governor Hickenlooper’s signing of extremist anti-gun rights bills and some anti-capital punishment stuff. Hickenlooper is generally a moderate, but he stuck his neck out on those issues and now he’s paying for it. And Beauprez can capitalize on this because he’s focused on that rather than ridding the state of gays and abortion doctors.
This is an amazing turn around for the moribund Colorado GOP. And the message is clear: the public will support GOP candidates when they come across as normal and not fringey. And fringey doesn’t even mean moderate, it just means not being obsessed and showing priorities that align with those of the public. Indeed, neither Gardner nor Coffman is pro-abortion. They just don’t talk about the issue. And they don’t lump it in with birth control as Rick Santorum does, and they don’t foam at the mouth about how evil it is and they don’t cry about it in debates.
So the moral is that you can have religious conservative values or libertarian conservative values or whatever conservative values, just so long as you don’t foam at the mouth about them and so long as you don’t oppose things the public will never surrender (like a right to birth control). Win the public on the public’s terms and save the fringy stuff for later once you’ve won the public’s trust to see more of your agenda put into place.
That is what has saved Colorado from being a totally blue state this cycle. That can help the GOP fix a lot of its problems nationwide.
Thoughts?
14 comments:
Whenever a Rep candidate in a debate is asked the "gotcha" question on abortion, they should say, "Great question George! I support OTC BC pills. Now, please ask my opponent if he/she favors partial birth abortion. I'm curious as he voted for it in HR. xx and S. xx bills last year. Oh, and please ask them if they voted for Obamacare and ignored the warnings that were out there at the time that it would turn out exactly as they predicted. Oh, one more thing, since my opponent voted for Obamacare, and now wants to "fix" it, ask them if they read the bill before they voted on it. All the facts and approaches were in the bill, and if they wanted to "fix" what was wrong, why did they vote for it after having read and understood what was in the bill they voted for?" "What's that? They didn't read a massive 2 thousand page bill before they voted for it? A bill that would affect potentially every American? Please ask my opponent what other bills he voted for without reading them."
The only way to win is to turn the tables on these idiots and show the public what tyrannical monsters they are. Monsters with a pretty face and smooth sounding speech.
Anon, I agree. The only way to fight this issue is to shift it back to the Democrats truly extremist votes and let people know that these guys favor things way beyond what the public favors. Beyond that, this is an issue that is best not addressed on the campaign trail or in ads or at debates. The public really doesn't want to hear it. And I think that the GOP's turnaround in Colorado really is because they've chosen to stop obsessing over it.
P.S. On Udall, pounding away on Obamacare makes a lot of sense. So does pointing out that he voted with Obama on 97% of his votes and he introduced almost nothing of merit in his time.
Good points....Hey diddle, diddle, straight down the middle.....Reagan was very much a moderate on many points, so was Bush I, to an extent the same could be said of Clinton....it not only winds, it tends to be a good way to govern. Look, I'm Roman Catholic, I detest abortion and the morning after pill, however, I also realize that education is the best tool we have to combat these things, not laws. I'm tired of a someone somewhere wanting a new law to cover something...hey I heard a good joke:
President Obama went to the bank to cash a check and he didn't have his ID. And the teller said you've got to prove who you are.
He said, "How should I do that?" She said the other day Phil Mickelson came in, he didn't have his ID but he set up a little cup on the ground, took a golf ball, putted it right into that cup so they knew it was Phil Mickelson. They cashed his check.
And then Andre Agassi came in. And Andre Agassi didn't have his ID either. He put a little target on the wall, took a tennis ball and racquet – hit it onto that target time. We knew that was Andre Agassi so we cashed his check.
And she said to him, "Is there anything you can do to prove who you are?" And [Obama] said, "I don't have a clue."
And she said, "Well, Mr. President, do you want your money in small bills or large bills."
They just don’t talk about the issue.
This feels like vindication for me, and I can't wait to crow about it to my buddy w/ the poli-sci degree. For years we've argued back and forth about whether abortion even needs to come up on the campaign trail. He's always claimed ya gotta to get the base out. But the GOP base is the opposite of the Dems' base in every way, right down to their (un)reliability.
Both races are very close. Gardner has done a good job despite all the accusations of being a women hating, polluting, Koch puppet. It seems to me that Gardner has widened his lead despite these attacks which goes to show that after awhile it stops working.
The Beauprez race is more interesting than I expected. It helps that the GOP didn't run someone who is a fraud or insane. I've not necessarily been a fan of Beauprez but he hasn't done anything wrong. Just find him boring. Tancredo sometimes was on the radio in the past and he can actually be pretty funny. I think the hate Mexicans thing is a bit of hyperbole but the label has stuck and he has had trouble shaking it. He also seems to have a tin ear about how most people don't have illegal immigration in their top problems. Frankly, I didn't think Beauprez had a chance against Hickenlooper. Most people don't like change as much as they claim they do. RCP has it as a toss up but I think the Hick wins it.
Critch, That's funny! :)
I think people forget that Reagan was a pragmatist. His idea was to get what he could of his ideology rather than play the all-or-nothing game. The result was that he got huge chunks, and when it proved to work, he got even more.
He also remembered the first rule of being liked by the public: be nice. He didn't run around attacking people, especially in his own party, and he didn't run around trying to create us versus them scenarios. Essentially, he took the approach that he wanted to work with everyone to get as much as he could implemented, and it worked really well.
tryanmax, That's the problem with most party people -- they have become blinded to the need to win over the public and instead they think that turning out the base is all that matters. Or worse, they think that turning out the base will somehow also turn out the public. And even though voter turnout keeps falling, they never see the connection that the more fringey they get, the more they lose the public.
In fact, the only thing saving either party right now is that both are doing the exact same things.
Koshcat, The races are very close and can still go the other way. But compared to the blowouts the GOP has been suffering, this is a significant change.
On Hickenlooper, I saw my first set of ads this week accusing Beauprez of wanting to ban birth control. It felt played out, especially with the Post calling out Udall for using that tactic against Gardner. On the other side, I'm seeing some decent ads about Hickenlooper keeping women from getting guns. That issue does seem to be resonating.
On Tancredo, the problem is that Tancredo made such a huge deal about illegal immigration that he became associated with that issue. Then he dove into other Republican races and cost us some elections. None of that plays well.
Andrew,
Fascinating case and great write-up. I disagree a bit with your conclusion though. Culture war stuff serves the GOP very well in some instances.
I think the takeaway from what is happening in Colorado is that one should tailor one's campaign to local concerns. Not exactly a radical notion, but an unpopular one in recent years :) .
In both parties candidates out of step with their local party tend to not survive the primaries of wave elections (they tend to get replaced by witches and clowns).
Thanks Anthony.
There are times you need to appeal to the base. There are also states where base issues play well. For example, you could easily score majorities in the theological states in the South just on the abortion and gay issues.
That said, however, it comes at a price. That price is the perpetuation of an image that seriously hurts the party outside the South. And unfortunately, the Republicans are swimming uphill against years of imposed ideological purity -- something the Democrats also did, but hid quite nicely by allowing high-profile defections on every issue. Thus, people are prone to believe that the GOP has a secret agenda related to abortion and gays -- just as the Democrats used to be seen as having a secret socialist agenda until Bill Clinton came along.
So I'm not sure the GOP can just run regional strategies. I suspect they need to do more to break the link or else people will just see the vocalization of that agenda by part of the GOP as evidence that it's still a secret plan.
I was shocked to hear the Denver Post endorsed Gardner. For those who don't know that would be equivalent of the NY Times endorsing Palin. The Post is the Queen of putting editorials on the front page disguised as news.
Udall has tried to gain mileage out of HR1091 or the so called personhood bill. It's shortened title is "Life at Conception" act. There isn't much to the bill but basically it was to extend 14th amendment rights to "...each born and unborn persons...". In the bill it specifically states "...nothing in this Act shall be construed to authorize the persecution of any women for the death of her unborn child."
So what is the point of the bill? Some of this is clearly a slippery slope mechanism to make abortion illegal and I can see why proponents to keep it legal would be concerned. However, some of this also came about due to peculiarities of the law that doesn't allow a prosecutor to charge a person with a crime if they cause the death of an unborn fetus. I believe one of the cases started with a pregnant woman who was hit by a drunk driver. She survived but the fetus did not. Because the fetus wasn't recognized he couldn't be charged with his death. I don't know if this is true and I don't know if the story is even true.
The overall issue has died and this bill never left committee. Gardner "sponsoring" the bill is really meaningless because the bill has never been debated or voted. There is very little text to go on to know how it would even look in practice. Accusing Gardner that this bill is proof that he is against abortion is reasonable but to use this bill to say he is against birth control is nonsense and is one of the reasons Udall is being criticized.
Koshcat, I was floored when I heard the Denver Post endorsed him. That just doesn't happen with the Post, but yet... there it was.
On the personhood thing, the problem is that it would grant nebulous legal rights to a fetus. The people on the right who are pushing the idea see this as an end-run around the legal process and courts to stop abortion because the child would now be considered a legal person and thus abortion would automatically become illegal. That's probably true. But they totally ignore the fact that other rights would appear if you defined the fetus as being the same as a living child. Specifically, if the mother did something that could harm the fetus, the child could actually sue (through a guardian) to stop the mother.
For example, it is easy to see social workers (or even doctors) asking the court to appoint a legal guardian to sue a mother to stop the mother from smoking or drinking or working in a uranium mine while she is pregnant. And from there it becomes a can of worms which will allow those interested in imposing the nanny state on mothers everywhere to keep inventing new rights... required prenatal care, education planning, etc. This thing would be like making a dog into a person: it may solve whatever problem you are trying to solve, but it creates a vast new amount of collateral problems.
As an aside, in every state of which I am aware, you can be charged with murder or manslaughter if you kill a fetus through some criminal or reckless act. Abortion is usually an exception.
I googled the Denver Post endorsement. Of course the first two links were New Republic and Media Matters screaming about it. Oh, well.
Anyway, here is the Denver Post endorsement: LINK
Andrew, I think this is the part you referred to:
"Rather than run on his record, Udall's campaign has devoted a shocking amount of energy and money trying to convince voters that Gardner seeks to outlaw birth control despite the congressman's call for over-the-counter sales of contraceptives. Udall is trying to frighten voters rather than inspire them with a hopeful vision. His obnoxious one-issue campaign is an insult to those he seeks to convince."
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