GOP gubernatorial candidates will be debating the issues from a “feminine perspective” May 20 at the conservative Centennial Institute, housed at the conservative Colorado Christian University (CCU), presided over by the conservative former Sen. Bill Armstrong.

Here’s a description of the debate topic:

The Women of Centennial Institute, a new group affiliated with CCU’s think tank, invite you to a debate on economic growth, education, energy, the environment, safe neighborhoods, drug policy, moral and cultural concerns, and all the other issues from a feminine perspective. All the major party candidates, four Republicans and one Democrat, have been invited. Republicans Mike Kopp, Scott Gessler, and Bob Beauprez have accepted.

Even without Tanc, who’s declined to attend, as did Hick, this promises to be well worth the ticket price (free), but you must RSVP. Do so here.

If reporters attend the event, co-sponsored by KNUS 710-AM, here’s a cheat sheet.

First, the Centennial Institute is the outfit that sponsors the annual Western Conservative Summit, where I witnessed the conservative minions literally drinking Kool-Aid last year, prior to an anti-immigrant speech by Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas.

The women at this year’s event (July 18-20) include Michele Bachmann and Laura Ingraham. Sarah Palin and Carly Fiorina are invited. It would be good to know if the debaters would welcome the endorsement these women.

There’s always personhood, which would ban abortion, even for rape and incest.

Beauprez: He’s gone both ways on personhood (like Rep. Cory Gardner), first endorsing a federal personhood bill, then saying in May he’s never supported it at the state level. What happened?

Gessler: His website says he believes life begins at conception. If he’s not supportive of personhood, which would give legal rights to all stages of human development from conception on, is he pro-choice?

Kopp: He’s fully supportive of personhood and has a legislative history to back it up.

Beyond personhood, how about equal pay for equal work? Do they like Planned Parenthood? Roe v. Wade?

And just out of curiosity, do any of these guys these guys consider themselves feminists?

I was all set to write a blog post this morning about Scott Gessler saying on the radio that his Republican gubernatorial opponents are all losers, including Mike Kopp who, Gessler said, presided over the Republicans’ disastrous legislative-election collapse in 2010.

Gessler told KNUS talk-radio host Jimmy Sengenberger a couple weeks ago:

“If you want to have the same results that we’ve had in the past, just do the same thing… I’ve won a state-wide election. You know, Tom Tancredo is a good man, he has not won one. Bob Beauprez is a good man, he has not won one. Mike Kopp is a good man. When he ran the state Senate Majority Fund, which was the 527 to support senators in 2010, we didn’t win any of the competitive races then either. I think we need to stop looking to the past and looking instead to the future.”

But then I saw Denver Post reporter Lynn Bartels’ article about all the “unity” among Colorado Republicans this election cycle.

Bartels reported:

Although there’s a four-way race this year for the GOP nomination for governor, [GOP State Chair Ryan] Call & Co. so far have done an effective job cajoling the candidates to aim their potshots at Democratic Gov. John Hickenlooper and not each other.

I thought, “Huh?  What Tea-Party planet have I been on, to have missed this alleged unity?

Tom Tancredo, who’s the GOP front-runner, is arguably the face of Republican dis-unity in Colorado.

He’s repeatedly bashed by Republicans, even in The Post (by former Colorado GOP Chair Dick Wadhams), and Tanc wastes no time fighting back, also in The Post, beginning with the line, “Asking Dick Wadhams’ advice on how to win Colorado elections is like asking Barack Obama’s advice on how to balance the federal budget.” He’s constantly telling KNUS’ Peter Boyles that Ryan Call wishes he’d disappear.

Before he left the race, Sen. Greg Brophy was in attack-a-fellow-Republican-a-minute mode, saying Tancredo is weak on guns and is focused mostly on writing books. Gessler, he said, has ethics and budget issues.

“You look back at the Holtzman campaign and the damage done to Beauprez at this time — Both-Ways Bob and all that stuff,” Bartels told me, acknowledging that Brophy was “the most vocal.” “Where is Beauprez-Holtzman? You have to make things relative to 2006. This would be July in 2006 right now. And it’s nothing like it was. I mean, Beauprez was so damaged by Holtzman.”

“I realize you’ve got the two Jeffco races involving Rocky Mountain Gun Owners and all that, but I expect that,” Bartels continued. “It’s not news to me that the Rocky Mountain Gun Owners is involved in a primary. It’s going to be below-the-belt torture. But it is news to me when Dave Pigott gets 45 percent at the assembly and jumps out.”

Bartels has a good point. It could be worse.

But still, aside from the GOP Senate primary, if you’ve been observing Republicans fighting in the trenches, “disunity” is still mostly the word that comes to mind, and Bartels should have toned down the unity theme and provided some examples of infighting in her piece.

The Durango Herald got it right Thursday by leading its report on 9News’ gubernatorial debate with the news that “three Republican candidates for governor said they would probably repeal a law passed last year granting in-state tuition to students who immigrated illegally.”

News coverage of the debate among Republican gubernatorial candidates, minus no-show Tom Tancredo, should have put more emphasis on the in-state tuition issue, because all the GOP candidates came out against in-state tuition.

No one wavered much, and no one thinks Tancredo will do so, meaning the GOP gubernatorial field is unified on an issue on which Republicans must “improve” or “die,” according to GOP guru-pundits Josh Penry and Rob Witwer, writing in The Denver Post just after the last GOP bloodbath:

Penry and Witwer: We’ve forgotten that politics is a game of addition, not subtraction. And here’s some more math: 50,000 Latino kids turn 18 every month in this country. These kids grow up in households where parents work hard and attend church on Sunday. These are American values. But yes, some of these kids — through no fault of their own — were not born American citizens.

We’ve seen the arc of the immigration debate, and through our own personal experiences, we’ve also seen that it must now be resolved at all costs. This is a human issue, with moral (and biblical) implications. It’s time to bury the hatchet and forge bipartisan agreement on immigration reform.

Here’s the 9News’ exchange in the “lightening round” clip:

9News Political reporter Brandon Rittiman: Would you sign a bill repealing in-state tuition for college students in the country illegally?

Bob Beauprez: Yes.

Rittiman: That was a yes.

Mike Kopp: I would. I’ve, In fact, led the Senate effort against that the first time it went through.

Scott Gessler: Probably yes. Of course, you want to look at them. But probably yes.

The Colorado Independent’s Sandra Fish reported April 14 that gubernatorial candidates Tom Tancredo and Bob Beauprez were present at the GOP assembly in Boulder Saturday.

Fish reported:

Tom Tancredo, who’s already petitioned his way onto the gubernatorial ballot, was grinning as he left Coors Events Center a couple of hours before results were announced.

“I feel great,” he said. “It’s especially good for me. I’ve got a base that stays strong. The rest of these folks have to split up the rest.”

But neither Fish nor any other reporter explained why Tancredo and Beauprez, who are taking the petition route to the GOP primary ballot, were allowed to attend the event, while U.S. Senate candidate Jane Norton, who also petitioned on the ballot, was banned by GOP Chair Dick Wadhams in 2010.

Referring to candidates like Norton who were petitioning on the primary, Wadhams told Denver Post’s Allison Sherryat the time, “If the convention is not good enough to participate in, it’s not good enough for them to have a presence. That’s their decision.”

ColoradoPols has called on gubernatorial candidate Tom Tancredo to address rumors that “GOP power-brokers” are pushing for him to be Superintendent of Jefferson County Schools.

Pols didn’t get into whether Tancredo, who’s currently leading the gubernatorial GOP primary field, would be a logical selection for the Tea-Party-controlled Jeffco School Board. No need to fall off your chair because yes, unfortunately, Tancredo’s views on education are thoroughly right-wing.

He’s not only a consistent supporter of diverting public-school funding to private schools through vouchers, but he also sees the public school system as a way for public officials to control the small minds of America’s children.

Tancredo: “Why we can’t at least give kids in those [poverty] circumstances, a key to that door – called a voucher. Tell me, why it is so important to keep them locked into a government school system. Well, we know why they want to. They want to determine how those kids view the world, as we just got done explaining.“

Where’s the evidence that public-school education is about anything but freedom from indoctrination? Teachers wouldn’t tolerate it. They don’t want to indoctrinate their students. They want to teach them to understand how the world works and ask questions about it. American public education is about mind control?

Tancredo expressed these views on the Peter Boyles show April 1, with Chuck Bonniwell subbing for Boyles.

Jeffco teachers, supported by community members, are at an impasse with the Jeffco board, whose current leaders would certainly applaud Tancredo views, as stated here:

TANCREDO: That’s for sure! And what a great debate to have over the implementation of that. I just – I relish the opportunity to debate that issue with the governor, or with the CEA, the teachers union, and all the people that are opposed to such an idea. “What?” you know, they say. “What? Are you some sort of chauvinist–”

BONNIWELL: Racist pig.

TANCREDO: “– suggesting that America is actually a better place to be than anywhere else?” Yes! The answer to that is, “Yes!” And it’s empirically prove-able. This is not subjective. You have—you have – when – as I remember my old boss Bill Bennett used to say, “When you open the gates, all over the world, people only run one way, and that is a pretty good indicator that there is something better they’re going to. People don’t leave hearth, home, kith, or kin to go to something as good or worse. They only leave all of that for something better. We have it. We have to — We have to maintain it. Because if you do not teach children what is good about this country, instead of all of the stuff that they read constantly about, you know, how – about the negative things. And I don’t mean to whitewash this. I don’t mean that children should not be told about the problems we have had. But, you know what? In comparison to what we’ve accomplished, in comparison to what we have provided for so many millions, that — you know, those problems pale in comparison to the great things America has done, and the idea of a republic, and what those founders did, how they put it together. Yeah, I want to debate this, whether or not kids should be taught that, and taught to actually appreciate it. That’s the important part.

BONNIWELL: That would be – that would be a great debate with Hickenlooper, who is the head of the NGA [National Governors’ Association] – he’s head of the NGA this year, and I assume is a Common Core supporter. That would be a great – a great debate.

TANCREDO: It certainly would, and I intend to make it a very important part of our agenda and of our campaign. I mean, there—even – because, for one thing, it is a responsibility of the state. You know, so many things really aren’t, and yet the government gets involved. But, this one is. I mean, the Constitution talks about providing a free, thorough, and uniform system of education. And that doesn’t mean, however, you have to own the system. It doesn’t mean that you have to build the buildings, hire the teachers, and determine the curriculum. You know. And so, yes, you can provide choice. And here is another thing I want to debate. I want to debate whether or not Hickenlooper agrees that if you are a child who is from a family that is below the poverty line, or locked in[to] a school that is failing, that you should you be forced to stay there because you’re too poor to make any other choice. I want to just go ahead and debate that — why we can’t at least give kids in those circumstances, a key to that door – called a voucher. Tell me, why it is so important to keep them locked into a government school system. Well, we know why they want to. They want to determine how those kids view the world, as we just got done explaining.

Delegates at the state Republican convention will vote Saturday to decide which gubernatorial candidates will face off in the GOP primary election June 24.

But delegates will not have the option of voting for Bob Beauprez, who’s the only Republican GOP gubernatorial candidate who’s decided to skip Saturday’s convention and rely only on petitioning onto the June primary ballot.

The question is, will Beauprez be told not to attend the convention, like failed Senate candidate Jane Norton was in 2010 when she decided to forgo a vote at the assembly? Not only was her presence banned, but so were any Norton banners, signs, and literature. Presumably, Norton could have stood on the public sidewalk outside the convention hall, and indeed her signs were scattered out there in 2010, but Norton stayed away.

Then State GOP Chair Dick Wadhams was clear that no whiff of Norton would be tolerated, telling  The Denver Post’s Allison Sherry at the time:

Wadhams: “Any candidates for statewide office who forgo the caucus assembly process will not be allowed to speak,” Wadhams said. “They will not be allowed to have banners or signs or literature at the state convention. If the convention is not good enough to participate in, it’s not good enough for them to have a presence. That’s their decision.”

Media outlets have yet to determine if the same rules will be enforced, which makes for an interesting angle on equal-pay week. An email to GOP Chair Ryan Call seeking clarification was not immediately returned.

GOP candidates must receive 30 percent of the vote at the state convention to make the June 24 primary ballot. Additionally, they must garner at least 10 percent of votes to be placed on the ballot, even if they’ve collected enough signatures to make the ballot. If no candidate at the convention hits the 30-percent threshold, then the top to vote-getting candidates will make the primary ballot.

By skipping the convention, Beauprez eliminates any risk that his name would be struck from the ballot for getting less than a 10 percent of the convention vote, assuming he makes the ballot via the petition process. It appears that he will make the ballot via signatures.

Tom Tancredo has already petitioned on the primary ballot.

The winner of the GOP gubernatorial primary will take on Democratic Gov. John Hickenlooper.  Leading candidates, in addition to Beauprez and Tancredo, are Secretary of State Scott Gessler and Sen. Greg Brophy.

Earlier this year, State Chair Call clarified that GOP candidates are allowed to both petition on the GOP primary ballot and go through the assembly process.

If you really want to understand the dynamic playing out right now among conservative candidates battling each other to defeat their primary-election opponents,  I might suggest you tune to conservative talk radio, even if it’s only for the next couple of months while the primary process unfolds.

You might ask, as a friend did the other day, “Does listening to talk radio make you want to crawl in there and strangle someone?”

No. Not at all.

Take for example, KLZ radio host Ken Clark’s conversation with gubernatorial candidate Bob Beauprez the other day.

Clark asked Beauprez how he’s going to get the support of grassroots conservatives when “you make statements like we-have-to-legislate-from-the-middle.”

“I don’t even remember saying it,” Beauprez responded, “but I’ll take you at your word, Ken'”

And then Beauprez flashed his conservative cards:

Beauprez: “I had one of the most conservative voting records in Congress. In fact, I believe I had the most conservative voting record of our entire Republican delegation, including Marilyn Musgrave and Tom Tancredo and Joel Hefley at the time. I believe the National Journal had me right at 90 percent of all members of Congress. So that puts me in reasonably elite category of proven conservatives.”

Later, Clark did some off-air research and told Beauprez that he made his we-have-to-legislate-from-the-middle comment on KNUS’ Peter Boyles Show.

But Beauprez denied being on Boyles show, telling Clark: “I suppose it showed. You couldn’t catch me off guard, because that doesn’t sound like something I would have said,” and, in any event, “I don’t think I was on Pete’s show.” [BigMedia emphasis]

A talk-radio puzzler! Did Beauprez make the heretical statement that we should govern from the middle? He didn’t say it on Boyles’ show because Beauprez was correct; he did not appear there.

But on KNUS’ Dan Caplis show March 4, with attorney Craig Silverman guest hosting, Beauprez didn’t use the exact words “legislate from the middle,” but he said as much:

Beauprez: You know, Colorado is a wonderful place where we all seem to figure out a way to get along.  But you can’t track way far to the right or to the left in Colorado and pretend to still be mainstream and be on the side of the vast majority of people. Listen here.

So Ken Clark wins! In front of a more moderate conservative host (Silverman), Beauprez did advocate for governing from the middle. In front of a Tea-Party host (Clark), Beauprez disavowed any talk of middle-ground-governance.  (Read this backwards: bob syaw-thob.)

Thumping is conservative chest on Clark’s show, Beauprez suggested that anyone concerned about his conservative credentials should read his 2009 book, Return to Values, where he outlines an “appropriate agenda for America.”

“Contact me, and I’ll get you a copy!” Beauprez said.

See what I mean about conservative talk radio? On top of all the dramatic conflict and intellectual stimulation and puzzles, you even get free books by guys like Bob Beauprez. Don’t miss it. Grassroots Radio Colorado starts at 5 p.m. on KLZ 560 AM.

I wrote a blog post a while back regurgitating rocker Ted Nugent’s appearance on KNUS Peter Boyles’ show, where Nugent said Colorado is the poster child of “moral dereliction” and the Republican Party has “no balls” because someone cut off “their scrotum with a rusty shiv.”

Exciting stuff that logged me 50,000 listens on SoundCloud.

The thing is, Nugent, who also called Obama a “subhuman mongrel,” is featured in at least three fundraising appeals for GOP gubernatorial candidate Tom Tancredo.

A couple weeks ago, Denver Post reporter Lynn Bartels asked Tancredo about his association with Nugent:

“Every time somebody asks me about it, I always say, ‘The thing about Ted Nugent that I like is he has given me the ability to say something that I have hardly ever before uttered in my life and that is the following — ‘” Tancredo said, but couldn’t finish his sentence he was laughing so hard.

“He has given me the ability to say, ‘I wouldn’t go that far,’” Tancredo said, cracking up.

After he calmed down, Tancredo noted Nugent had apologized for the remark. Critics said it was a half-hearted apology, and Nugent then went on to attack Obama, calling him a lying, law-breaking racist who engages in Nazi tactics. The apology came after Nugent was criticized by a number of Republicans, including Sens. Rand Paul of Kentucky and John McCain of Arizona.

But Nugent has yet to apologize to Colorado!

Nugent: “If ever there was a poster child for apathy, disconnect, laziness, and abandonment of We the People, and moral dereliction, it is Colorado.” 

I’ve been trying to get Boyles to play Nugent’s Colorado insult to Tancredo on air and get his response. It would make great radio.

Meanwhile, here’s a March 25 conversation between Tancredo and Boyles with Tancredo’s take on the conversation he had with space reporter Bartels.

BOYLES: [inaudible] Only you!

TANCREDO: Oh, it’s just great! — A very successful fundraising activity where we gave away an AR-15, and that raised a really big sum of money for us, more than we’ve ever raised before. And, thanks a lot, of course, to Ted Nugent who sent out [laughing] the little email for us. Uh, but, the fellow that we want to give a shout out to at Gunsmoke is a fellow by the name of Brian Midol [spelling?] who indeed is providing the AR-15 for us. [laughing]

BOYLES: Yeah, that’s great! Tom, do this, real quick, can you do – we have got a little bit of time here. But do this, — about the Lynn Bartels phone call – and we—I love—

TANCREDO: Oh, yeah! Yeah!

BOYLES: I’ve known Lynn a thousand years, at The [Denver] Post, Bartels called you.

TANCREDO: [laughing] She calls me up and she says, “Tom,” she says, “I–“ Is this okay? She said, “Tom, I, uh, we’re getting all these emails. Every time you send out something by Ted Nugent, we get all these emails from Republicans and Democrats, saying, ‘This guy is terrible! He said these horrible things! He called the President a mongrel – a lying mongrel!’” And all this stuff. And I said, “Oh, Lynn! I am so glad you called me because I have this great line to use! [laughing] I thought, — when this first happened, I thought of it. And then I thought, ‘Who am I going to tell this to?’ And then here you are, you’ve given me a call.” And I said, “Why this really works out for me, is that, –and why I really like Ted [Nugent] for doing this,– is because –.”

BOYLES: For the first time in your life –.

TANCREDO: Yeah, “For the first time in my life I’m able to say something, that never before have I been able to utter!” And she says, “What’s that?” And I said, “[citing Nugent’s comment that Obama is a mongrel] ‘Well, I wouldn’t go that far!’” [laughs]

Just after gubernatorial candidate Tom Tancredo departed from from KNUS’ Peter Boyles show this morning, where Boyles told his listeners, “If there’s a god, [Tancredo] becomes governor,” Tancredo talked about immigration with Dan Caplis, whose KNUS radio show starts right after Boyles’.

Caplis: If you had that power, right now, what would you do with the folks who are already here?

Tancredo: …I think everyone who applies for a job in this country should have to be here legally and should have to prove that. Now, certainly, would there be hardships? I have no doubt. But a decision was made when the person came here illegally. I mean, that decision brought with it a lot of ramifications. One is that indeed you may end up having to leave at some point in time. And that means a lot of things to a lot of different people. Leave I-don’t-know-what behind, you know, familiar relationships and all that sort of thing. But you have to determine that you are ok with the idea that people who are here illegally would have to go home. [BigMedia emphasis]

Tancredo isn’t shy about discussing his proposed e-verify solution to the immigration problem, whereby employers would have to run the Social Security numbers of potential employees through a national database prior to hiring them, but Tancredo usually doesn’t mention the “hardships” involved for the undocumented immigrants.

Below, in a 2011 video shot during Tancredo’s 2011 presidential run, Tancredo said, “All you have to do is restrict the ability of an employer to give a job to somebody who is here illegally. People self deport when that happens. It happened in Arizona.”

Today on the radio, Tancredo again said that his e-verify solution “in effect” is “self-deportation,” but his heart peeked through when he talked about the “hardships” of leaving “familiar relationships,” which obviously include children, fathers, mothers, nieces, uncles, neighbors, teachers, entire communities in the most personal sense and beyond. Those are the human hardships involved.

Ironically, Tancredo began his interview with Caplis by saying that, as governor, he’d mandate that, as a high-school graduation requirement, all Colorado students be able “to articulate an appreciation for western civilization, American exceptionalism, and the Constitution.”

Absent was a discussion of how destroying the families and communities of undocumented immigrants fits in with Tancredo’s proposed high-school-graduation criteria.

Republican gubernatorial candidate Tom Tancredo thinks he can ride his support for pot legalization into the governor’s office.

That’s what he said Tuesday on Michael “Heck’ve a job” Brownie’s KHOW talk show, when Brown asked him how he can “grab the unaffiliated” voters in the general election, if he wins GOP primary.

Tancredo: “One thing, admittedly, makes a lot of my more conservative friends mad at me, and that is my support for Amendment 64 [pot legalization]. But that translated into a lot of support among people who aren’t necessarily the typical Republican voter.”

No one pointed out that it’s Tancredo’s conservative friends who will be deciding whether he wins the Republican primary and is able to enter into an orbit where unaffiliated voters matter to him. [Then we can discuss how it plays among suburban women.]

Tancredo’s other explanation for his popularity among unaffiliated voters: “I am sort of the anti-Republican Republican.”

Ironically, being the anti-Republican Republican might help Tancredo among Republicans, but still, I was waiting for Brownie to ask, “Do you think unaffiliated voters might possibly remotely maybe find other reasons not to like you, like the fact that you’re anti-choice (anti-abortion, even for rape), anti-undocumented immigrant (round ’em up and throw ’em out), anti-environment (global warming is “Bull“), etc., etc. (and that’s a big fat etcetera, etcetera).”