The reason the enemy line came into play is that both my colleagues and I were surprised to see both Scott McInnis and Dan Maes be very civil with each other, and direct their collective ire at one guy, Tom Tancredo.

It wasn’t like Maes and McInnis failed to disagree, but you could certainly tell that both are interested in trying to diminish the presence of Tancredo in the Governor’s race.

It makes sense for Maes and McInnis to try to collectively diffuse the Tancredo situation. Indeed, I would agree that it is even more important than defeating each other in this primary.

Whomever loses the primary, whether it’s Maes or McInnis, the second place finisher must endorse the winner and directly help them unify a Republican party that seems to be in tatters as of right now.

Even though some major race primaries make unifying a party difficult, it must simply be job both of the candidates on August 11^th. If that is to take place, then attacking Tancredo and John Hickenlooper should be the focus of the remaining days of the primary season.

Don’t get me wrong, both Maes and McInnis want to win the nomination, especially since the race became far more competitive than it was a few months ago. But it truly seems that both men realize that they will go further by helping each other attack Tancredo or Hickenlooper rather than add to the general havoc that the last couple of months have wreaked over each of their campaigns.

But like I have encouraged before, please don’t let my take on the debate be the last word. Check out the debate for yourself on Friday at 9:00pm on Channel 12. Comment and tell me what you think.

Maybe a different political proverb will come to mind when you watch the debate, but for right now, it seems to me that Maes and McInnis are enjoying having a common enemy.

Well, almost all of the big races.

We’ve already presented Frazier/Sias and Norton Buck. We’ll feature McInnis/Maes later this week, and we’ll even be covering Stapleton/Ament on August 6^th.

The only race that we’re not able to provide a full debate is the Democratic U.S. Senate Primary, featuring Andrew Romanoff and Senator Michael Bennet. We certainly tried, and we’re at least going to provide an empty chair debate with Andrew Romanoff.

We would have much preferred to offer both candidates to our viewers, but the Bennet campaign declined our invitation when they were unable to find time in the Senator’s schedule, despite our considerable effort to do so. We determined that our only option, without Senator Bennet’s participation would be to offer an “empty chair debate” with Andrew Romanoff.

Offering an empty chair debate is always a debate producer’s last option. It is not a move meant to simply shame the candidate who declined to participate.

For me, it is a move that conveys the message to our viewers that we did everything we could to provide viewpoints from all of the candidates in the race. I also think it says that we take our debates seriously enough to not give up on them when one of the candidates declines.

Still, while I am sure about the reasons we offer empty chair debates, I’m never quite sure how they are received by our viewers. I am sure some viewers fall along partisan lines per each candidate, but how do the undecided voter/viewers react?

Do they see our presentation of at least one candidate’s viewpoints as a service or do they see it as punitive treatment of the missing candidate? Does the empty chair in the room seem like an odd way to handle it? Should it just be handled as a one on one interview, without any obvious signs of how the other candidate handled the invitation?

Until they make truly interactive television where all of our viewers can tell us exactly what to do, I will have to go with my gut instinct of what is the best way to respect our viewers.

That gut instinct tells me that if you are going to produce a debate series, not an interview series, then you must do your best to provide actual debates. In order to provide the best debates, I feel you need to be flexible on dates, offer a format that provides the best information for your viewers and do your very best to provide both of the candidates in the race.

If you can’t fulfill your duty on that last one, you need to show that you tried and that you respect the process.

It’s not a perfect scenario, nor a perfect solution, but I think it is the very best way to show respect to everyone involved. But like I said, I could be wrong.

If you would like to decide for yourself, please tune in to Colorado Public Television on Friday, August 6^th at 9:00pm for our empty chair debate with Andrew Romanoff, and let me know what you think.

Why would anybody ever want to run for a major elected office?

Here’s a quick synopsis of the story that inspired my latest inquiry.

Senate candidate Ken Buck was asked this weekend to respond to comments he made about Tea Party members that asked him about President Obama’s birth certificate authenticity. Buck was secretly recorded asking someone to “tell those dumba—s to stop asking me about birth certificates…”.

First of all, Buck was recorded without permission, while he was backstage at an event. Secondly, he was recorded by a Democratic operative that has been following him for months. I should note that this “tracking” strategy, as reported in The Denver Post, is a very basic strategy used by both parties for all major race candidates.

We should quickly address Buck’s comment. 

1. I can’t imagine anyone he may have offended will flock to another candidate, so I think he’s safe there.
2. He probably gained five to six points among independent voters who do not give the “birther” movement a great deal of credibility.

Okay, back to my original question. Why would anyone want a job where a standard strategy is to record your every comment and movement during a campaign that may last for over a year?

Think about what would happen if every one of your audio comments at work were recorded. The comments you mutter under your breath after a meeting, the comments you make to your colleagues on a lunch break, the comments you make in stressful situation. Would you want those comments to be made public? Could you defend every one of those comments in the press?

Many may respond to my questions by saying if we are going to elect someone to a position as important as Senator or Governor, we deserve to know everything about them. We need to see if any major candidate will make a mistake in any situation so we can be sure we know who we are electing.

Well, I certainly agree that we need to know how candidates think and how they respond under pressure. And, as I have told many friends, I make many of my own voting decisions based on how candidates act in our studio before the cameras start rolling.

However, as voters, we need to understand the price we pay for accepting this kind of 24-hour scrutiny. Since voters respond to these kinds of sound bites, we create this situation. And this situation will guarantee that we have a smaller and smaller pool of potential candidates to select from in the future.

To put yourself under this kind of scrutiny is not a normal instinct, nor is it something that many consider worth going through for an elected position. Many of the people that may be the exact right type of person we need leading this state or representing us in Washington in the future won’t even consider entering the race knowing the kind of punishment they will be subjected to.

When the potential pool of leaders shrinks, the chance of getting the exact right fit shrinks as well.

This isn’t to denigrate any current candidate as a helpless masochist. This is to remind us all that we are an audience and how we respond creates the environment that will inevitably repel more and more potential leaders. If we want more quality choices in the future, we must treat the process with more respect.

Three points occurred to me when I heard the news.

One, Tancredo is not afraid to back up his words with actions, especially knowing his history of disregard for party leadership. Two, if John Hickenlooper does win the election, the blame should not fall squarely on Tancredo’s shoulders.  And three, this is really not about Tancredo, this is about Scott McInnis and the fractured state of the Colorado Republican Party. 

First, it should be clear by now to anyone following Colorado politics that Tom Tancredo has no fear of upsetting the party establishment if he feels they are out of line with true conservative ideals.

This is the same man that wasn’t afraid to take on his own President when George W. Bush was in power or to run as a Presidential candidate on one issue. And while he wasn’t remotely competitive in the presidential race, he did force his fellow candidates to take a stand on immigration. If he was willing to do that, I’m confident he’s perfectly comfortable forcing this situation.

Tancredo’s not afraid to stand on principle, no matter how hot the heat gets from the establishment.

To my second point, there are those that will try to lay the blame of a Hickenlooper victory at Tancredo’s feet. GOP State Chair Dick Wadhams made a statement on Thursday that said if Tom Tancredo gets into the race that “he will be responsible for the election of John Hickenlooper as Colorado’s next Governor”.

While I can see Wadhams’ point, I don’t think every Colorado Republican will agree.

Some of the blame must fall on Scott McInnis, who initially handled the plagiarism charges as a “non-issue”. Remember, it wasn’t just Democrats or just Tancredo calling for McInnis to drop out of the race last week. Fellow Republicans, conservative editorial pages and others openly asserted that McInnis should leave the race. McInnis must hold a considerable amount, if not all, of the blame for this one.

I also believe some of the blame must fall on whoever pressured Josh Penry to jump out of the GOP primary in late November. If he truly jumped without any pressure, then some of the blame must fall on him as well.

I honestly do not believe most Republicans will blame Tom Tancredo if John Hickenlooper wins the Governor’s seat. Some certainly will, but most will look at the fractured state of the party and look to that as the key culprit.

That brings me to my final point.

The reason that Tom Tancredo can take this stand, even with all of the controversy that follows him and his words, is because he still has a distinct and strong following. That following is a sign that the GOP, no matter how tantalizing the November election may seem, is still fairly fractured.

If the GOP wasn’t fractured, this would not be a news story, we wouldn’t see the reactions we are seeing and no Republican would fear a Tancredo candidacy. Tancredo can only siphon votes to himself if the Colorado GOP is not unified behind one candidate.

This threat from Tancredo may be a significant blow to the Republican Party’s chances of taking back the Governor’s office in Colorado. But what is more serious is that this threat is a sign that the Party may not have a leader or a rallying cry effective enough to truly unify a party that should be leading every race in the polls right now.

All of these developments lead me to ask one question. If this is July, what on Earth does August have in store for us? Stay tuned.

The disagreement between Democrats and Republicans wasn’t about the benefits. Both parties wanted to see them extended. How to pay for the benefits was where the two parties distinctly skewed apart.

But while Republicans have voted for past extensions to be paid for through deficit spending, they picked this set of extensions to stick to their guns and maintain that other spending should be cut to fund the extension.

Even though Republicans stuck to their guns of fiscal restraint in the face of a growing deficit to show conservatives and Tea Party members that they remember how to be fiscally conservative, I’m not sure if voters will buy their sincerity. The problem is that Republicans have not been terribly consistent on this issue as of late. 

The GOP spent six years in the majority under President Bush spending money like sailors on leave. I believe it’s going to take more than trying to stop this small bill to convince voters that they have suddenly rediscovered their fiscal restraint roots.

I say “small” bill because the extension of benefits will cost about $34 billion dollars and will be added to our country’s deficit, now standing around $13 trillion.

I mean really, think about it, $13 trillion is $1300 billion.  Adding $34 billion to that is not terribly significant.

Don’t get me wrong, Republicans have tried to walk the walk. However, voters may want them to prove themselves for a longer time than GOP leaders would prefer.

It’s like when an alcoholic goes on a bender and then decides to go clean. You hope they can stay clean, but you can’t trust it until you see them prove it for more than a week or two.

In political time, it’s only been a week or two for Senate Republicans.

The other reason that Senate Republicans may not get much credit for this filibuster fight is that it’s hard to turn this particular stance into a clever election season advertisement. Fighting health care or stimulus packages almost write their own 30 second spots. However, how do you couch the stance on this bill to voters?

Maybe something like this, “Senate Republicans stood up for American taxpayers when they refused to help unemployed Americans get extended benefits because it would have raised our deficit by nearly 3%.”

See, it just doesn’t have a good ring to it.

Only voters can decide if the GOP has been in the wilderness long enough to be trusted again. Maybe their stance on recent fiscal issues has been consistent enough to win back the trust of voters.

But when the GOP decides which fights to pick, they would be wise to remember that they are trying to make up for a six year spending bender. It’s going to take quite a bit of effort to convince voters they can stay on the wagon this time.

It’s easy to look at last week’s allegations of plagiarism and the subsequent fall out and proclaim the McInnis campaign dead. His odds have certainly gone from “somewhat likely” to “now I’m in a competitive primary with a guy who’s has no political experience whatsoever”. But, this week will tell us if those odds will plummet further, or if he can possibly begin the long slow excruciating walk back to competitive candidate.

The reason this week is so important is because if this thing is going to work for McInnis, if it isn’t all over but the singing, this week he must adhere to the Hippocratic Oath, first do no harm.

If McInnis can get through a week where no more staffers quit, no more people make allegations of anything remotely negative, no other newspapers call for him to quit the race, he may, and I underscore may, be able to right the ship.

Many experts have been pointing to the variety of factors that will need to exist for McInnis to pull off the greatest comeback in Colorado political history. I certainly agree with many of those requisites for success.

But I would add to that list that this week needs to be more calm and less newsworthy than a librarian convention for McInnis to begin his comeback. 

After the shock of the scandal and the initial frustration with many of his supporters ebbs, many of Colorado’s Republicans are going to realize that while he is certainly damaged goods, he’s still the GOP’s best option right now.

This is not a slight to any of the potential other leaders that may fill his shows if he does drop out. Actually, it is a nod to the reality that fundraising rules elections far more than politics. If Scott McInnis drops out of the race, it is not likely any candidate could raise enough money to be competitive with only two months left in the race, even if they were more politically attractive.

So, if the initial anger wears off, many GOP voters may come to realize that even in his weakened state, McInnis is still their best horse to ride to November, and the healing may begin.

However, if this week even offers even a small blip of negativity for the McInnis campaign, it will be like the sound of a slamming door next to the ears of someone suffering a major hangover, painful and memorable. And that sound may be the final nail in the coffin.

If McInnis can get through one quiet week on the campaign trail, he may be able to come out of the bunker and potentially make a fundraising call or two.

A nice quiet week. It doesn’t’ seem that difficult, but right now, it’s currently the tallest peak McInnis needs to climb to begin his comeback.

But while McInnis’ candidacy may become a lost cause, I think the biggest casualty from this PR disaster will be the concept that upstart candidates need to “wait their turn” and let the more seasoned candidates go unopposed in a primary.

And to me, that is wonderful collateral damage. We’re long overdue for a reminder that voters should decide primaries, not party leaders.

While Josh Penry gave Scott McInnis a race for a few weeks, he deferred to his former boss, worried that a bruising primary would weaken the eventual GOP candidate in his run against Gov. Bill Ritter, who had yet to announce that he wasn’t running for re-election.

The prevailing logic at that time was that making two popular GOP candidates have a competitive primary was going to be a problem on many fronts.

If the primary got nasty, it may have given fuel to the Democratic opponent’s campaign.

If the primary was too competitive, the GOP candidates would spend too much money on the primary and be at a financial disadvantage in the general election.

And finally, and most ludicrous of all, some believe in the idea that if a more seasoned politician is in the race, the younger and less experienced candidate should bow out and defer to let the veteran take “his turn”.

The McInnis debacle should put to rest all of that prevailing nonsense, or at least I would like to think it will.

Think of how much better shape the GOP would be in if Josh Penry wasn’t pressured to let Scott McInnis have his turn.

While the race may have become nasty, maybe that nastiness could have helped unearth the plagiarism allegations earlier and helped the GOP regain their focus with more time than three weeks before the primary.

And while a competitive primary may have been expensive, how expensive will it be for McInnis to run the rest of this campaign when his fundraising dries up? How much money will a potential new candidate be able to raise in August with only 2 months left in the election season?

And finally, how valuable was giving Scott McInnis his turn to run essentially by himself if it ends up handicapping the GOP’s chances of securing the Governor’s seat?

Hopefully, the whole idea of picking candidates by whose “turn it is” has finally been proved to be fatally flawed.

As a fan of primary races and voters actually making decisions, I personally hope that the “your turn” concept is dead.

If it’s not dead, this whole controversy must at least give the leaders of both political parties pause the next time they decide that a competitive primary will be more damaging than what could happen running virtually unopposed.

It deals with water and accusations of plagiarism.

By now, you have heard about the accusations that Scott McInnis plagiarized the ideas and the content he included in his writings about water he wrote for the Hasan Foundation. You have likely also heard McInnis blame a research assistant for the error and call the incident a non-issue.

We will find out soon enough if this situation proves to be McInnis’ waterloo.

The first in a long line of difficult challenges for the McInnis campaign is that two key potential allies have abandoned him.

The assistant that McInnis threw under the bus has come out pinning the responsibility on McInnis. And the foundation that employed McInnis announced their anger and disappointment, claimed McInnis worked alone and announced that they are launching their own investigation.

Both the assistant and the foundation could have helped get this issue off the front page if they would have backed any part of McInnis’ story. Even if there were some doubts, they could profess McInnis was innocent and only guilty of miscommunication or misunderstandings.

Instead, they both came out firing right back at the campaign.

The second major challenge for the McInnis campaign is that while he may think voters don’t care about this issue, well funded Democratic 527’s will spend a great deal of money and time trying to make them care. This story also effectively knocked any Hickenlooper flip flopping accusations right out of the news cycle.

The final challenge I see right now for the McInnis campaign is that even if voters don’t care about the accusations of plagiarism and even if this is a non-issue, the campaign is having to spend a great deal of resources and time on the issue.

All of that time and resources should be spent gearing up for the general election run against a formidable opponent in John Hickenlooper. But instead of storming out of the gate, McInnis is finishing his primary season tripping over these accusations. So, even the best case scenario gives Hickenlooper a major head start in a likely tight race.

Whether this is a tempest in a teapot or a tsunami in a teapot, this issue will certainly test the mettle of a campaign that didn’t think it was going to have to work this hard so soon.

On one side note, I do need to mention the one person I thought about today that was likely slowly banging his head on the wall in frustration when he read this story.

It wasn’t McInnis, nor anyone involved in his campaign. Nor was it Dick Wadhams, Colorado’s GOP Party Chair. It was Josh Penry.

I honestly believe he is looking at this situation and wondering if deferring to his former boss back in November was still a good idea. Frankly, many other Republicans may be wondering the same thing.

This tax proposal smells like the continuation of the knowing wink that is the hypocrisy of our current marijuana laws.

On one hand, you have the people who want to use pot legally winking to the government as they go through the required hoop of claiming they have irritable bowel disorder or chronic back pain.

On the other hand, you have the government saying we’re going to tax the bejeezus out of this stuff, but we’ll do it for “the kids”.

Basically, everyone has this all figured out so that everyone gets what they wants, just as long as they are okay with a few required hoops.

What makes this new tax proposal hypocritical though, is that the city of Denver would never think about taxing anyone else’s “medicine” for “the kids”. The only thing we like to tax for “the kids” is something relatively sinful, like tobacco, alcohol or maybe the lottery.

Do you think anyone on the council is going to propose that the city of Denver begin taxing Viagra and use to money to build battered women’s shelters? Me neither.

I guess if you are either a medicinal pot user or a medicinal pot seller, this little dance, despite the hypocrisy, is just fine. If you have to do a little tap dance to be able to get what you want in the clear light of day, it’s no big deal.

But the problem I have is the people who get caught in the crossfire. I think the majority of Colorado voters who approved medicinal marijuana weren’t doing it as a way to legalize pot, but were authentically trying to help patients with cancer, MS or some other debilitating disease to find a way to make their difficult path a little easier.

But now, those same people that are only getting what they need to make their terrible diseases a bit more tolerable could possibly pay over 13% in city taxes just because Dr. Reefer distributes their medicine and not Walgreens.

What it feels like to me, as a Colorado voter, is that I have been used by both sides. Pot users that don’t have a real disease and my local governments are both using my vote to get what they want. And the people I really wanted to help with my vote did get the right to use pot, but they may have to pay over 13% in taxes that they wouldn’t have to if so many new cases of IBS had been discovered in men 18-24 in the metro area.

It makes me wonder how many other things I have been asked to support in order to help either the sick or the kids, or maybe sick kids, have turned out to be used for other people’s gains, and eventually toward the harm of those meant to receive the good.

I don’t know a lot of things, but I do know that the next time someone asks me to vote for something to help a very justifiable cause, I will look good and hard for the actual people who will likely profit from my vote.

Steele has come under considerable fire for his comments, not only from Democrats, but also from fellow Republicans. In fact, even the Chair of the Colorado Republican Party, Dick Wadhams, said he disagreed with Steele’s comments.

When finally faced with news cameras and the opportunity to clarify his statements, Steele stated his emphatic support for our troops and found a way to make himself look even less credible.

Steele was asked by a reporter if he planned to resign in the face of the criticism of his comments. His answer was, “I ain’t going nowhere.”

I guess if you’re going to go with the double negative, you might as well go with a word that doesn’t officially exist in the English language. While Steele was hoping to send a strong message to his critics, he only magnified the reasons why he is failing as a national party chairman.

No, using proper English is not a requirement for any national party chairperson, Republican or Democrat. However, a party chairman needs to be able to keep a positive spotlight on their own party, and a negative spotlight on the opposing party, not the other way around.

How can Steele’s fellow Republicans come to his aid if he says something as preposterous as saying a war that has been going on since George W. Bush’s first term is “of Obama’s choosing” and follows that up with “I ain’t going nowhere”?

How does Steele help rally his party and better yet, cajole money from potential funders, with that kind of credibility?

The short answer is, he can’t. Steele is right about one thing, he is going nowhere.

The Republican Party is in a sticky situation at one of the most pivotal points in 2010. And their national leader is busy trying to mop up a mess of his own making, with statements that are doing nothing to boost his credibility.

At this point, the Republican Party can either launch itself into an even greater uproar by ousting Steele, or it can hide Steele during one of the most important times of 2010. By any standards, they are not where they want to be at this point in the election season.

However, my personal belief is like any crisis, this is an opportunity. It is an opportunity for a real leader in the GOP to step up. We know it can’t be Steele, but maybe another leader is out there.

Maybe there is someone to take the rhetorical reins, the leadership mantle that usually comes without an official title. If someone can unify the party and move everyone past this moment and toward a productive goal, this moment will go down in history as the moment when the GOP began to re-capture the momentum and recover from the drubbings of 2006 and 2008.

Of course, like any crisis, true leadership in the GOP may be lacking, and only imposters may show up. If that happens, this moment will still go down in history, but for the GOP, it’ll be for a much worse reason.