Some GOP president or other once said, " A house divided against itself cannot long stand." These days he could be speaking to his own party faithful in Colorado. For a long time now the Republican Party has been of two minds. On one hand, the GOP ginned up social conservatives by appealing to emotion-fraught issues such as homosexuality, abortion, veneration of the flag, etc. On the other hand, the Republicans translated the victories handed them by the social conservatives into policies benefiting their business wing at the expense of the very values voters responsible for their electoral success. Vote for the Pledge of Allegiance and get a capital gains tax cut. Vote for the sanctity of the zygote and get a rollback of worker safety regulations. Even suckers wise up, though, and in Colorado, values voters have been flexing their muscles. By insisting on a share of the political spoils, the social conservatives are provoking a backlash from the laissez-faire wing of the GOP. For example, dig what happened in Colorado Springs CD-5 Republican primary where even a guy named Crank wasn't right wing enough...
With its concentration of military bases and evangelical church headquarters Colorado Springs has long been a conservative hotbed. Viet Nam carpet bombing proponent Curtis LeMay is buried on the grounds of the Air Force Academy at the foot of the Rampart Range, and radio preacher James Dobson's Focus on the Family compound lies directly across I-25 from the Academy. With such bona fides Colorado Springs' 5th Congressional district could be counted on to go Republican with the regularity of swallows returning to Capistrano--until this year.
In February the district's 10-term congressman, Joel Hefley announced his retirement and set off a six-way primary. Hefley and the Colorado Springs business community threw their support behind the congressman's former aid Jeff Crank. The values conservatives lined up behind a lawyer named Doug Lamborn who as a state senator managed to earn "0" ratings from both NARAL (abortion rights) and the Colorado PTA but an A+ from the NRA.
So the primary got under way, and Lamborn directed his pitch squarely at the social conservatives. Crank was not right wing enough, he told them. Crank wanted to raise their taxes. A mailing from the Colorado Christian Coalition accused Crank of "public support for members and efforts of the homosexual agenda." Lamborn won, but Crank supporters were embittered.
In an August 29th interview with the Colorado Springs Gazette Congressman Hefley lashed out against Lamborn:
The 20-year Republican congressman said, however, that he will not back GOP nominee Doug Lamborn for the seat, explaining that he can not condone the way the state senator campaigned in a six-way primary. "I feel that he ran the most sleazy, dishonest campaign I've seen in a long, long time, and I can not support it," Hefley said in a telephone interview.
For the moment, however, Hefley has stopped short of endorsing Lamborn's Democratic rival, an air Force veteran named Jay Fawcett.
Though he will not endorse Lamborn, Hefley said it would be "very difficult" as well to support Democrat Jay Fawcett because he wants Republicans to keep control of the House. But he added: "I don't know what I'm going to do at this point about that."
Former state senator John Andrews is the wagon boss of Colorado's social conservatives. In the aftermath of Hefley's non-endorsement, Andrews lamented the "Knifing of Lamborn" on his Backbone America website:
A political party whose elite class persecutes its best grassroots heroes, while at election time posturing righteously in defense of everything those heroes have personally sacrificed to advance, is a party destined for ruin. If you are a Colorado Republican, what the state's Republican elites are doing to Doug Lamborn should concern you.... So the situation is very simple: if you want to see the Colorado GOP continue to collapse, help the GOP establishment attack Doug Lamborn in CD 5 and other conservative heroes around the state while calling for party unity when it is their turn or their buddy's turn to stand for election. On the other hand, if you want to see the Colorado GOP regain its philosophical and moral roots without having to endure another November drubbing to learn that lesson, now might be a good time to contact Republican leaders and tell them to stop working against a 12-year Colorado hero and their own party's nominee.
The SoCon vs. BizCon infighting is, of course, very good news for Jay Fawcett. His stock is rising, and now the national GOP will have to deploy time and resources in what was once considered a "safe" district.
As the flames of discontent crackle in El Paso County, Colorado, Andrews would do well to remember his own Weekly Standard post mortem of the GOP's loss of the Colorado statehouse in 2004:
Times are hard for Colorado Republicans, these days. Yes, we again carried Colorado for President Bush. With a GOP voter-registration edge of 186,000, we darn well should have. But that was all we did. Down-ballot, this was the ugliest election for Colorado Republicans that I've experienced in my 30 years in politics. And as president of Colorado's state Senate, I saw the devastation up-close....It was motivation, above all, that powered this Democrat [sic] victory. Democrats were driven and hungry from decades in the political wilderness. Republicans were complacent and soft from too long in power. Their motive for winning was to get in there and do things. Ours, it often seemed, was merely to stay in there. These attitudes translated into discipline and unity for Democrats, indulgence and disunity for Republicans. GOP factionalism was endemic and fatal.