I was looking forward to hearing former Rep. Tom Tancredo on talk-radio radio, after Obama’s announcement yesterday, and he didn’t disappoint.

He appeared on KNUS’ Kelley and Company, KHOW’s Peter Boyles show, and KLZ’s Grassroots Radio Colorado, where he called the Senate immigration deal a “Republican suicide pact” that “opens the door for millions who will not vote for us.”

On KLZ, Tancredo said Republicans are “smoking the substance I haven’t tried” if they think a softer immigration stance will move Latino voters to the GOP.

He got into more detail with his immigration soul mate Boyles this morning, and here’s an entertaining taste of their conversation. (For me, Tancredo usually at least scores points on the entertainment scale.)

TANCREDO:  The Republican Party, I don’t know, it’s on its last legs, I think.

BOYLES:  I do, too.  It’s on life support, right now, and it should be.

TANCREDO:  Yeah!  Honestly, for so long, it has tried to play this game of stealing the page out of the other guy’s playbook, and just being a little bit, you know, a ‘Democrat Lite’ on a lot of issues, and spending like crazy.

BOYLES:  You see that now they are going to make a deal on immigration.

TANCREDO:  Of course, I saw it!  Absolutely, I see it, and they think, they think–

BOYLES:  –It’s going to help them.

TANCREDO:  –that it’s going to help.

BOYLES:  Yeah.

TANCREDO:  You know, Pete, get this!  In this last election, Romney only got 27% of Hispanic votes.  Everybody goes, “Oh, my God!  There, it [just] goes to show you, you’ve driven the Hispanics away!”  The Republicans – do you know who got the lowest percentage of Republican votes in recent history in a presidential race?  Bob Dole!

BOYLES:  Yeah.

TANCREDO:  Twenty-one percent!

BOYLES:  Right.

TANCREDO:  And what was the immigration issue then?  None!  Was he a hardliner on immigration?  Absolutely not! It’s because he was a lousy candidate!

BOYLES:  Exactly.

TANCREDO:  We had the same situation, right?

BOYLES:  Agreed.  I agree.

TANCREDO: [Hispanics] don’t vote for Republicans because they are big government people, for the most part.  Hispanics, God love them, I wish we could convince them, what they’re doing is trying to – Many people who have just come here, immigrants, are voting this way, are voting to put in place a situation here in America exactly like the one from which they ran.

BOYLES:  I agree.

TANCREDO: You know what I mean?  And that’s what we have to explain to them! And, when you ask Hispanics, over and over and over again, in poll after poll after poll,  “What do you think the most important issue?”  They never say immigration, unless you give it to them as one of the list, they don’t even put it on the list!

Tancredo’s appearance on Boyles’ show sounded a lot like the conversations elsewhere in radioland. That is, one sided. Shocking, I know, and also a shame because the Republican talk-show hosts might learn something if they popped the bubbles that surround them and talked to someone with different views than their own.

They might learn, for example, that Tancredo is right, insofar as Hispanics aren’t all about immigration, or even mostly.  And Tancredo is correct that Hispanics wouldn’t like Tancredo or GOP talk-radio hosts, even if they favored a path to citizenship.

But here’s what Tancredo doesn’t understand. Hispanics are a lot like the rest of the American voting population whom Republicans need to win over, and those people want immigration reform too, just as they want basic health care, reliable government, a safety net, good schools, basic opportunity, and so on.

Correction: On 1-15-13, I corrected this post because the kiss was on NBC, not CNN.
—————–

KVOR talk-radio host Jeff Crank and his producer were chatting Jan. 5 about how horribly trashy CNN’s New Year’s Eve special was.

Crank was hating CNN’s Cathy Griffin, who he called a “liberal, leftist scumbag,” and he had nothing kind to say about anchor Anderson Cooper. I don’t love them either, and it sounds like there was plenty to criticize about CNN’s silly New Year’s broadcast.

But one thing that really pissed off Crank, who lost in a vicious GOP primary to Rep. Doug Lamborn in 2008, was NBC’s first on-air kiss of 2013. Here’s what Crank had to say about it:

CRANK:  … You know what they did?  The very first thing, right at the stroke of midnight, you know, all the confetti drops, it’s, “Oh, it’s such a wonderful thing!”  And she turns around and she looks at a guy who is standing there, and I’ve got to tell you , he was a freaky-looking dude,  and she goes, “Isn’t this just wonderful? Happy New Year!” to him.  And he turns around, and his quote-unquote partner turns around, and they kiss each other!

PRODUCER: [inaudible]

CRANK:  Right there!  And [sarcastically] oh, yeah, this was just a heartwarming moment that just happened to come about.  I mean, they just try and push this stuff.  I mean, isn’t that disgusting?

PRODUCER:  That is disgusting.  But we’re in new times now.  It’s good to do that.  It’s cool to do that.  It’s okay to do that.

CRANK:  [laughing]  It’s okay, yeah, yeah, because the President thinks it’s okay.

PRODUCER:  [sarcastically] Yeah.

CRANK:  Look.  But who wants to see – I just don’t want  to see that!  And I don’t want to explain –.  You know, not that the kids are up at midnight, but they are sometimes up at midnight on New Year’s Eve.  It’s maddening, that they get away with this stuff.  And it’s this constant push to change the mores of society.  And yet, somehow we’re the ones that are the social – you know [affecting a curmudgeonly voice] “We’re always pushing our social values on everybody else!”  No.  They are the ones pushing their social values on everybody else.

Listen to audio of Jeff Crank on 740 AM KVOR CO Springs Jan 05_0002

I tweeted Crank, who’s also a national staffer at Americans for Prosperity, to find out if he gets as upset about heteros kissing on NBC. What, specifically, is the problem with a kiss?

And what to do about it? In Tunisia, kissing in public can allegedly land you in jail for months. Who know what would happen to gays.

I love it when the conservative echo chamber validates itself with references to unnamed Democrats who amplify the sounds coming from the mouths of talk-radio hosts.

In the case below, we have KVOR host Jeff Crank, who doubles as Colorado State Director of the conservative Americans for Prosperity, bouncing ideas off of Tony Sanchez (And I do mean bouncing, because the ideas bounce back in the exact same form that they were launched.). Sanchez is on the board of the Colorado Hispanic Republicans.

Sanchez conjured up Ken Buck and told Crank that “already” Hispanics are having “buyers’ remorse” over their overwhelming vote for Obama.

Crank and Sanchez touched briefly on number of things Dec. 15, without getting into specific legislation of course, but they dwelled on one point that comes up a lot on talk radio: The unproven assertion that Republicans can win over Hispanics on social issues.

CRANK: Well, and a great example of that is on the social issues, you know? I think that the Hispanic community naturally would align with conservative values, of family values, —

SANCHEZ: Oh, they do!

CRANK: –on marriage, on pro-life issues, and those sorts of things. But the conservatives allow the Left to define them on that issue—

SANCHEZ: Yes! Yes.

CRANK: — so they didn’t vote with us on those issues.

SANCHEZ: I just spoke to a Democrat, an Hispanic. And he said that, “I was glad they didn’t focus so much on those issues. We would have lost at least four percentage points had that happened.” And the other thing that I would also add is to keep it simple. There’s a lot of times that we have a lot of facts,– and on the conservative side, yeah, it makes a whole lot of sense, but keep the message simple. And make it real clear.

Setting aside the small problem of the devastating backlash among women voters if the GOP decided to focus openly (instead of behind closed doors) on social issues, there’s no reason to accept the echo-chamber idea that Hispanics would vote Republican anyway, if GOP candidates starting talking more about gay marriage and abortion.

The majority of Latinos actually favor gay marriage. Mexico City and some Latin American countries have legalized it.

And, really, how many Hispanics are going to swing to a GOP candidate who aims to ban abortion even for a raped woman? Evangelical Hispanics, yes, who make up about 15% of Latino voters and align with the GOP anyway. Seven of ten Catholic Hispanics align with the Democratic Party.

And it’s not as if Democrats are pro-abortion. Most are pro-choice, which reflects an understanding, shared by Hispanics, even if they self-define as anti-choice, of real-world complexities as well as the struggles of poverty. I mean, one of the major reasons Hispanics turned against Romney, according to Project New America’s David Winkler, was because he was so unsympathetic to the poor.

I could be wrong, but it’s hard to see a significant number of Hispanics peel off from Democrats if the GOP pushed its abortion position even harder. And, again, at what cost to the GOP in terms of other voters, like women, young people, and the four reasonable Republican middle-aged white men out there?

So Sanchez and Crank, a former GOP congressional candidate, who defines himself as “a strong voice for social and fiscal conservative issues in Colorado,” should look elsewhere, other than social issues, to prove Ronald Reagan’s opinion, which still sits atop the website of Sanchez’s Colorado Hispanic Republicans, that “Latinos are Republicans. They just don’t know it yet.”

As long as the talk-radio sounds keep reverberating, unchallenged, Hispanics will never know they’re Republicans. Why would they?

Reporters covering the local fallout of the Newtown tragedy should dig into statements percolating through the media, and exemplified by comments like state Sen. Greg Brophy’s below, that Democrats are using the tragedy simply to bring down Republicans.

“And there’s a lot of–and this is going to sound terrible, but it’s the truth–there’s a lot of politicians and leftist activists who see this as an opportunity to permanently injure the Republican Party and make it more likely that Democrats will win elections,” Brophy told KFTM radio’s John Waters this morning. “And I think there’s a lot of people pushing it, especially their media allies that are pushing this notion from that perspective.”

It’s not the kind of comment that should be thrown in the pile of political-discourse-as-usual. What would Brophy have Democrats do? Be mute? Blame the media, as he does? Talk about mental health issues, as if guns had no role? Why does mentioning the word “guns” equal an attack on the GOP?

Brophy thinks the focus should be on the mentally ill, with no discussion of guns:

“And I’ve got to tell you, if the leftist activists and their allies in the media concentrate only on beating up Republicans over our principled stand on the Second Amendment, then we may not have the discussion that we need to have over all of these other issues [like treatment for mental illnesses],” he told Waters.

Brophy’s unsubstantiated accusation of Democratic politicking contrasts with another strand of thinking by local politicians, like Colorado Senate Minority Leader Bill Cadman quoted below, who argue that politicians can do nothing at all.

“The real bottom line here, is there is 300 million people in this country. Someone, somewhere is planning to do harm to somebody at any given day, and all the laws in the world aren’t going to stop it,” Cadman said at a Denver-Press-Club forum, as reported by Rocky Mountain Community Radio’s Bente Berkeland. “Criminals will still do criminal acts.”

So, if he really thinks nothing can be done, does Cadman also think the Dems are all about politics too, like Brophy does?

See the entire Brophy interview here.

The Editorial Page Editor of the Colorado Springs Gazette, Wayne Laugesen, caught my attention last month when he pointed out that talk radio is “viewed, right or wrong, as part of the GOP, a big part of the GOP.”

This, he said, has hurt Republicans among Hispanics.

I asked Laugesen whether the damage caused by talk radio goes beyond Hispanics, to women or environmentalists, for example.

“I think a lot of good comes out of conservative talk radio,” he told me “But it can be a double-edged sword. That which gets ratings is not always in the best interest of those trying to win elections. Trying to find a niche on the radio is different from trying to put together a coalition of voters to win an election.”

I called Laugesen after listening to him on a talk radio show yesterday, where he had this exchange with radio host Jason Worley on KLZ’s Grassroots Radio Colorado yesterday:

Jason Worley: Environmentalism is a religion today. If you compare it to Judaism, Catholicism, Christianity, Hinduism, it has the same tenents, the same ideas. The problem is, the people who follow it, don’t have to actually ever suffer the effects of it. Go drop them off in Borneo in the middle of the rainforest with no mosquito protection repellent, no sunscreen…see how long they could last. They wouldn’t.

Laugesen: Right. If they ever got their way. If they were ever successful at stopping all this progress they intend to stop, they’d be miserable.

Worley: Wayne, you and I share a lot of beliefs. We’re right there on libertarian-leaning conservative beliefs.

Laugesen: Sure. I love progress. Almost 100% of the time, with some exceptions, when someone creates profit, which is really just the cost of capital, that person has improved the human condition. Because what are we willing to pay for? What makes us part with precious capital? An improvement to our lives. That’s the only thing that makes us part with capital. Human beings are not intuitively into destroying their lives, or the environment that supports their lives.

Lots of people, like swing-voting soccer moms, consider themselves environmentalists.

Could this conversation possibly make them feel good about the GOP?

To be fair, there was a lot more to the KLZ radio segment, including Laugesen’s audio of a group of anti-fracking protesters saying some silly stuff, but still, if you’re the kind of person who feels warmly toward environmentalism, and you listened to this show, you could easily have felt personally attacked.

But that wasn’t Laugesen’s intention.

I interpreted Laugesen’s 100% comment to mean he’s against most all regulations that might hinder profit. But he straightened me out, saying he believes that rules and regulations are necessary.

He also said he thinks “organized religion is far more legitimate than extreme environmental activism.”

In fact, throughout his radio appearance, Laugesen directed his critique at “radical” environmentalists, not all of them.

But, amid the extreme comments by a guy like Worley, do everyday environmentalists hear the distinction. Or do they just feel attacked, like Hispanics?

Laugesen and I agreed that amplification can overpower details on talk radio.

“Dwelling on the nuances does not win the favor of dittoheads,” he said.

I wrote earlier this week about how hard it will be for conservative talk-radio hosts to modify their views, even if pressured by more moderate GOP factions to do so. Here’s an example of how this looks on the air:

About a month and a half before the election, on KFKA’s morning radio show, hosts Devon Lentz and Tom Lucero, who are prominent Larimer County Republicans, were more than happy to plug Dennis Lynch’s underground film, arguing, as Lynch put it, that people aren’t crossing the U.S.-Mexico border just “to cut your lawn” but “to cut your throats.”

The tone of the Greeley radio show changed last week when Lentz and Lucero talked to Michael Barrera of the conservative Libre Initiative, which is advocating that Republicans be nicer to Hispanics.

Barrera complained to the talk-show hosts about the nastiness of some Republicans when it comes to immigration:

Barrera: Some of the rhetoric that’s coming from some of the folks on this issue has been pretty bad. Like, you had a guy – a state legislator out of Kansas that came out and said, “We ought to shoot these illegal immigrants like pigs off a helicopter.” That’s horrible!

I would have asked if the “cut-your-throats” comment and Lynch’s fear-mongering movie, which had been so warmly received by the talk show hosts, was in the same ballpark, but who am I?

Barrera: The only thing that [Hispanic voters] did hear, you know, from candidate Romney, who I think is a good man, but you know, mainly his words regarding immigration that they remember were “self-deportation”. They saw him embrace Arpaio [Barrera pronounces it “Air-A-PEE-O] out of Arizona. They saw him embrace Kolbeck out of Arizona. [He] embraced Arizona law which many Hispanics felt was a bad law for immigration. So, they saw him embrace all these things, rather than embrace something like the DREAM Act. When that came up he actually attacked other candidates for supporting the DREAM Act. And even when Rubio tried to come up with his own act, again, he didn’t embrace that, he embraced these other [inaudible]. And so this is what they saw, this is what they remember. And when you feel like you’re not being — you feel like you’re dealing with a candidate you can’t trust, or a candidate doesn’t care about you, you’re not going to vote for him.

Lentz did not say she gets mad when she sees all the Spanish words in the packaging department at Wal-Mart. That’s what she said when Lynch was on the show before the election.

But she asked a good question, saying she thought jobs and the economy were the top issues for Hispanics, not immigration.

Lentz: … in my mind, it’s not just the DREAM Act, it’s continuing to let anybody come into our country that’s going to affect our jobs and our economy because it’s more people we need to supply jobs to and it’s a bigger drain on our entitlement programs, in some cases. How do you make that balance and how do the Republicans back up and say, ‘Are jobs the most important thing to you, because if we don’t have jobs, we don’t have jobs for anybody.’

Barrera said Republicans have to get the “immigration issue behind us,” but his amorphous suggestion of allowing undocumented immigrants to work here legally, as long as they aren’t criminals, didn’t seem to grab Lucero or Lentz.

They didn’t say, “That was phenomenal,” as Lucero had told Lynch when he was fear-mongering about undocumented immigrants just a few weeks back.

And that’s the problem Republicans will have going forward with talk-radio hosts and the GOP base that listens to them.

The problem will be exacerbated by people like Tom Tancredo, who’s a star guest on many Colorado talk shows where he loves to say stuff like:

“We can’t let those who actually believe the answer is comprehensive immigration reform…aka massive amnesty…take us back down that path again. We must stop them cold, as we did before–because we know that will be the end of the line for America,” Tancredo emailed his supporters Nov. 16, as reported by Fox 31’s Eli Stokols.

Tancredo, you recall, was a talk-radio host in Colorado Springs for a long stint after he ran for President, on an anti-immigration platform, and he still loves to make the talk-radio rounds–or any rounds where a microphone is present.

But even if Tancredo disappears, whose ideas do you think are more likely to win over the talk-radio hosts and audience, Barrera’s? Or Tancredo’s?

Wayne Laugesen, the Editorial Page Editor at the conservative Colorado Springs Gazette, made the point last week on Rocky Mountain PBS’ Colorado State of Mind that the “general public” thinks conservative talk radio “is part of the GOP.”

And for good reason. You find the top GOP candidates, like Mitt Romney, holding forth on Denver talk radio, while avoiding TV or print media. As elections get close, you hear talk radio hosts acting as if they are part of that famous well-oiled Republican get-out-the-vote machine. You see GOP leaders say something in Washington, and then you hear it again on KNUS radio in Denver.

And when something outrageous trickles out of the talk radio world and into the headlines, it rapidly becomes linked to conservatives. See Rush Limbaugh. At the local level, see Mike Rosen, Brownie, Steve Kelley, Tom Lucero and Devon Lentz, Amy Oliver, Jeff Crank, the whole gang.

It’s pretty obvious that Republicans would like to figure out a miracle way to stop the hatred and extremism on talk radio so they can be better polish up the image of their party, especially among Hispanics.

“The talk on immigration comes out on talk radio anymore as just general hostility toward Latino culture,” said Laugesen.

But does anyone really expect conservative talk radio hosts to change their tune anytime soon? No, because if they did, they’d lose their audience, which listens to the shows precisely to hear the extremism they love.

The conservative talk-radio audience has been nurtured to want the extreme talk. That’s how the shows built what little audience they have. It worked.

As explained here, they captured a market niche alienated from the reasonable news media. Talk radio listeners like to connect with people who share their fringe views. (This is a generalization, I know, but still.)

How is that going to change anytime soon? It can’t, because if conservative talk radio moderates itself, it will die. Its core audience will change the channel.

But there’s hope, if you’re a Republican like Laugesen. The conservative white, aging, male audience of talk radio is on the way out. But chances are they’ll stick around long enough, with their extremism stuck to them, to make it all the more difficult for the GOP to re-invent itself.

View Laugesen video here.

Laugesen: A lot of Republicans will say, we’re not against Hispanics at all, we’re against illegal immigrants. Okay, we get that, but that’s not how it comes across. It’s not how it comes across on talk radio, which is, right or wrong, is viewed by the general public as part of the GOP, a big part of the GOP. The talk on immigration comes out on talk radio anymore as just general hostility toward Latino culture. So I think that’s really hurt Republicans. In 1984 you had Ronald Reagan who actively sought the Hispanic vote, and he got 40 percent of it. Later on in 2004, you had George Bush, who spoke Spanish, and was very good about courting the Hispanic vote got 44 percent. So it was going up. And–

Host Cynthia Hessen: And talk radio kind of talked it away?

Laugesen: Talk radio and a lot of politicians pandering for the white vote, apparently. I don’t know what their thinking is. Let’s try to be more conservative than the next guy by talking more critically about immigration, illegal immigration.

KOA’s Mike Rosen began his radio show this morning in Denver by saying the left is unconcerned about “unethical, illegal, immoral behavior” and therefore willing to commit election fraud.

Then, in the next hour, Rosen suggested that a caller, who admitted forging the name of his son on a mail-in ballot, lie to authorities in order to avoid penalties.

To Rosen’s credit, he told the caller he did the wrong thing, and he should probably report the fraud, which allegedly resulted in his son’s voting twice for Romney.

But Rosen apparently forgot what he said earlier about conservatives being all law-abiding and the left being a bunch of liars.

Rosen actually did what he accused the left of doing, by suggesting the caller lie to authorities to avoid being charged with election fraud, most likely a felony.

Here’s what Rosen said in hour one:

Rosen: The left imagines that the ends justify the means, which is why their unethical, illegal, immoral behavior, is not judged by them, as they rationalize, as any of those things, because the ends justify the means. Republicans tend to be more civil and constrained by the law and decorum.

Here’s Rosen’s conversation in hour three:

Brian: Hey Mike, I got a little dilemma here. I get the ballots by mail, and two of my kids are away at school.

Rosen: Yeah.

Brian: And you know being a good dad, I voted for them. I know you’re not supposed to do that.

Rosen: You signed? You forged their name? On the mail-in ballot?

Brian: I’m afraid I did.

Rosen: You shouldn’t do that.

Brian: I know. Well, I did do that, and because they asked me to last year.

Rosen: It doesn’t matter [laughing]. You can’t do that. It’s illegal, what you did.

Brian: Well, I did use a fake name, by the way. But–

Rosen: What do you mean a fake name. You have to sign the name of the registrant.

Brian: Yeah, but it’s just kind of scribbly. But let me ask you, so that’s done. I know it was stupid. It won’t happen again.

Rosen: Yeah.

Brian: But I just talked to my son and he’s so happy he voted. He voted for Romney. So he voted for Romney twice. What do you think I ought to do?

Rosen: You ought to do the right thing. Call your county clerk and explain the situation. I don’t know if you want to confess that you forged the signature [laughs]. I don’t know what the penalty for that is. You can claim ignorance and say that your son told you to sign his name. But what you’ve done is wrong. [laughing] I don’t know what kind of advice I can give you.

Brian: Do you think it’s going to come out in the wash?

Rosen: I don’t know. I don’t know what processes are in place to record a double-counted vote. I mean, given the computers, it shouldn’t be that tough.

Brian: Ok. All right. I think I’ll call — who is it I should call?

Rosen: Well, your county clerk and recorder. You might–you can call the Secretary of State’s Office for guidance. And maybe don’t give your name. [laughing]

Brian: [laughing] No, I won’t.

Rosen: I don’t know if you have a 5th Amendment problem here, for self-incrimination, but you haven’t been sworn. So anyhow, so how did your son come to vote, if you had his absentee ballot?

Brian: [laughing]. I don’t know. I don’t know. He said he voted.

Rosen: Now this sounds strange to me. What vehicle would he have used to vote?

Brian: I assume he–

Rosen: Is he out of town?

Brian: Yeah.

Rosen: So he didn’t show up at a polling place for an early vote?

Brian: I think he did.

Rosen: Oh.

Brian: I think he did. Like I said, I was just talking to him about the election. He said, ‘Oh I already voted.’

Rosen: And so where does he live, your son?

Brian: Ummm. He’s in Gunnison.

Rosen: So he’s in Colorado.

Brian: Yeah.

Rosen: Hmmm. What’s his voting precinct?

Brian: I have no idea.

Rosen: What’s his legal address?

Brian: Good–His legal address is here in Denver.

Rosen: Well how’s he voting in Gunnison?

Brian: I don’t know. That’s a good question.

Rosen: A lot of things we don’t know about this. But as a lesson, everybody else, don’t do this kind of stuff.

Brian: Ok. Public Service.

Rosen: Thanks for your call.

You can find plenty wrong with The Denver Post, especially if you’re wishing it were what it used to be, but you have to respect the newspaper for trying to get basic information about all Colorado candidates on the record for voters to chew on, spit out, or whatever.

That’s why The Denver Post’s voter guide is such a beautiful thing. It asks  all state candidates a bunch of questions, both broad and specific.

The questionnaire represents a speck of hope for civil debate—and it was obviously ton of work by the news side of The Post to get it together.

Oh, you haven’t heard about it? That’s because The Post has barely mentioned it, even though it represents a basic and respected function of a newspaper. I didn’t find a single mention of the voter guide in The Post’s print edition.

With the voter guide flying under the radar, it was easy for candidates, Republicans especially, to sit back and blow it off.

For state legislative races overall, 12 of 85 GOP candidates (14%) returned The Denver Post questionnaire, while 57 of 78 Democratic candidates (73%) returned it (seven races had no Dem candidate).

For the State House, 56 Republicans didn’t submit the questionnaire, and nine did.  For Dems, 19 did not and 41 did submit. (Dems did not run in five races.) So, in 33 House races, Dems filled out questionnaires but not Republicans. In one race, a Republican filled out a form, but not a Dem.

For the State Senate, 17 GOP Senate candidates did not submit it, and three did. Sixteen Dems filled it out, and two did not. Dems didn’t field a candidate in two races. For 13 races, Democrats filled out a questionnaire but not a Republican. And in one race, a Republican filled out a questionnaire and not a Dem.

Rather than write angry news articles and editorials about this, The Post didn’t publish anything, as far as I can tell, even though you might think the response-rate to the questionnaire would have been blasted far and wide by The Post, pressuring candidates, mostly Republicans, to answer basic questions, and showing subscribers that the newspaper is fighting for them.

But no such luck. Too bad for us, and for The Post.

SAMPLE QUESTIONS FROM THE DENVER POST VOTER GUIDE

First, it asks for education, endorsements, community service, etc., then  it poses these questions:

• Briefly describe the biggest issues facing your constituents.
• Name an issue where you have disagreed or are likely to disagree with your party’s legislative leadership?
• What is the top reason voters should support you over your opponent?
• The state’s sales tax is now at 2.9 percent after being cut from 3 percent by lawmakers in 1999. Meanwhile, the state’s income tax was at 5 percent in 1999 but has since been cut to 4.63 percent by lawmakers. Are there conditions under which you would support asking voters to raise sales and income taxes back up to their 1999 levels? If so, describe them.
• Name one law you would repeal in Colorado state legislature.
• A major criticism of the Senior Homestead Exemption program is that it gives a property tax break to qualifying seniors, regardless of their wealth. Would you support a means test for the Senior Homestead Exemption?
• Should the legislature pass a law allowing the university to set its own policies on carrying weapons on campus?
• Do you support efforts to charge lower tuition than the out-of state rate for children of illegal immigrants at Colorado’s public colleges and universities?
• Would you support a law returning the power to appoint trustees in the 10 largest counties back to the county government?
• Would you support a law requiring online retailers to charge sales tax?
• Would you support statewide rules that increase setbacks for oil and gas drilling near residential areas?
• Do you support efforts to repeal defense of marriage act which bans Gay marriage in Colorado?
• Do you support the legal recognition of civil unions?
• Would you support referring to voters a tax increase a ballot question to support transportation improvement?
• Many critics of Colorado’s initiative petition process say it’s too easy to amend the state constitution and that this has had negative results for the state. Would you support asking voters to make it harder to amend the constitution?
• Would you support adding a “personhood” amendment to the Colorado Constitution, declaring a fertilized human egg to be a person and to have the fundamental legal protections a person has?
• Do you agree with Roe v. Wade?
• If no, do you believe in an exception for rape/incest?
• Do you support Amendment 64, the Regulate Marijuana Like Alcohol Act?
• Do you support greater transparency and access to government records?
• Would you fight against rules that weaken public access to government?
• How would you address the challenged Colorado economy and seek to impact job growth?
• Has the legislature done enough to reform PERA, or should additional measures be taken? If so, what would you advocate?

You recall that Colorado State Senate candidate John Sampson got in a dispute last week on KHOW radio with Orly Taitz, who said she served Sampson with a subpoena to appear at a birther trial in Indiana, aiming to knock President Barack Obama off the election ballot there.

With KHOW radio host Peter Boyles trying to mediate, Sampson told Taitz that he’d not received her subpoena, and he had no plans to testify at her trail, as he’d done previously at a trial in Georgia.

Taitz told Sampson that Sampson would be facing contempt of court charges if he did not appear, and at one point Sampson told Boyles to “put a muzzle” on Taitz, and Sampson threatened on air to sue Taitz for defamation of character.

Now Taitz has posted a fed ex receipt on her website proving, she writes, that Sampson has been officially served with the subpoena to testify.

On her blog, Taitz explained why she posted the receipt:

On Peter Boyle (sic) show John Sampson claimed that a subpoena was defective because it was mailed to his work address. He put his address at issue. Additionally his residence address is at issue, a he is running for office in Colorado and needs to show that he resides in the district.

In response I served him yet again by FedEx and posted the receipt, showing that the subpoena was received yet again at his home address and he does not have any excuse not to show up and not to testify. He can be found in contempt of court and liable to Plaintiffs, if he does not comply with the subpoena and does not show up to testify and authenticate his own sworn affidavit.

Boyles tried to interview Sampson on-air yesterday, but Sampson didn’t come on the show because he was campaigning.

When he comes back on the show, sooner or later, Boyles should ask Sampson if he’ll continue testifying in birther trials like Taitz’s, once Sampson is finished campaigning and has cleared up the other legal hurdles that he mentioned to Boyles last week.

Or has Sampson’s intense dispute with Taitz soured him on his work showing that Obama is using the Social Security number of a man from Connecticut?