If you follow Tom Tancredo you know he makes it clear where he stands on people, like Ryan Call (dislikes him), and places, like Mecca (bomb it).

So, even as Republicans are still warm from hugging each other, it’s no surprise that Tancredo is launching a new campaign to stop New Jersey Gov. Chis Christie’s presidential aspirations.

Tancredo doesn’t like Christie, and you can’t blame him. You recall Tancredo’s promising path to the Colorado governor’s office was upended this summer by his own party, through a vicious ad campaign orchestrated surreptitiously by the Republican Governors’ Association, which is chaired by… Gov. Chris Christie of New Jersey.

Tancredo is fighing back now with his “Stop Chris Christie PAC.”

Speaking with Grassroots Radio Colorado (KLZ 560-AM) host Kris Cook Oct. 27, Tancredo said he’s already “filed papers” to create the Stop Christie PAC, allowing him to do “everything” he can to prevent Christie from securing the Republican nomination for president.

“He is no more a Republican than the man in them moon,” Tancredo told Cook. “He is a left wing, east coast liberal.”

TANCREDO: “You know, to be absolutely fair here, and clear, I have a bone to pick with him in particular, because of what he did during our primary,” Tancredo said on air. “You know, although, I must ad– we have never gotten along. We’ve always argued, especially about immigration. We did so publicly. I have never liked the guy. I have certainly never supported him for anything, and because he was concerned that I would, in fact, go against the [United States] Chamber o f Commerce position on immigration and make it a big deal, and I might win, he chose to spend a quarter of a million dollars of Republican money – Governors’ Association money—

COOK: Right.

TANCREDO: –to attack me, here, in Colorado. And, launder the money through Attorneys General Association.

COOK: And five other organizations.

Tancredo held off promoting his Stop Chris Christie PAC until after Tuesday’s election to avoid hurting Colorado Republicans.

“I don’t want to do anything that’s going to hurt Bob Beauprez or any other Republican in Colorado during–or before this election,” said Tancredo on the KLZ show, which aired before the election on Oct. 27. “But when it’s over with, I guarantee you, I’m going after him.”

Partial Transcript of Oct. 27 KLZ-560 Grassroots Radio Colorado Interview with Tom Tancredo. See longer transcript here.

HOST KRIS COOK: Oh, goodie! We’ve got Jeb Bush, going to run for President

FORMER U.S. CONGRESSMAN, GOP GUBERNATORIAL CANDIDATE, AND GOP PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE, TOM TANCREDO: Yeah. Yeah, Jeb Bush and Chris Christie, what a pair to draw to.

COOK: It will be a delightful field. My goodness, we have got to do something about this.

TANCREDO: I agree completely, and I intend to.

COOK: [chuckles] Good.

TANCREDO: I totally intend to.

COOK: Good.

TANCREDO: I’m not going to let this one go by and everybody – you know, when — how many times have you said this? “Oh, my gosh! We just don’t have any good ones to pick from, and I don’t like — .” Well, okay, that – probably very true. And if it’s Chris Christie or Jeb Bush either one, let me tell you, I think it’s a debacle in the making for the Republican Party.

And so, I have started – I filed papers a couple of weeks ago, now – probably ten days ago, anyway, –for a Stop Chris Christie PAC . And I’m going to do everything I can to do just that: stop Chris Christie. He is no more a Republican than the man in them moon. He is a left wing, east coast liberal. He masquerades, to the extent that there’s any – even attempt to pretend – any attempt –anything that comes out of his mouth that sounds relatively conservative. It’s a masquerade, because he now is seeking the Republican nomination, he is actually – I read the other day, that he is actually so afraid of the governor of Wisconsin –

COOK: Scott Walker.

TANCREDO: –Scott Walker—that he has almost purposel—well, almost entirely, kind of subverted his campaign. They are not giving him the money he needs, and why? Why? Because, of course, he is a competitor for that presidential nomination.

COOK: [sarcastically] Yeah, Mr. Christie, that is exactly the way to use your position at the RGA

TANCREDO: Yeah.

COOK: I mean, he has proven that he is absolutely unworthy of that role, and any other role in power.

TANCREDO: Well, you know, to be absolutely fair here, and clear, I have a bone to pick with him in particular, because of what he did during our primary. You know, although, I must ad– we have never gotten along. We’ve always argued, especially about immigration. We did so publicly. I have never liked the guy. I have certainly never supported him for anything, and because he was concerned that I would, in fact, go against the [United States] Chamber o f Commerce position on immigration and make it a big deal, and I might win, he chose to have – spend a quarter of a million dollars of Republican money – Governors’ Association money—

COOK: Right.

TANCREDO: –to attack me, here, in Colorado. And, um, and launder the money through Attorneys General Association.

COOK: And five other organizations.

TANCREDO: Five other organizations. You, — God bless you, you were the best interview we ever had on that issue, because you had done your homework and you knew what they had done. Uh, I’m telling you, it’s, I think, unconscionable and I definitely want to make an issue of this, but I want to add somebody to it, and that would be,–let’s – I might start another 527, saying, “Let’s, you know, stop Jeb Bush.” Let’s try to do this before they get a foothold in the–

COOK: Right.

TANCREDO: And get out–get to people, — let them know who they really are. And I mean, I’m totally going to do this. I certainly am for Christie.

COOK: good.

TANCREDO: Um, and we will take our – we will do our first whatever we’re going to do right after the election. I mean, I don’t want to do anything that’s going to hurt Bob Beauprez or any other Republican in Colorado during–or before this election. But when it’s over with, I guarantee you, I’m going after him.

COOK: November – the 2016 election season starts on November 5th, 2014.

TANCREDO: That’s right. That’s right.

COOK: And if you don’t get that, if you don’t understand that, you’ve got to wrap your brain around it. Because if –we cannot do what Republicans always do, which is disappear after the midterm general, and not show up again until the day of the – or the two weeks leading up to the primaries in 2016, that is not the way that this works. If we’re going to win, and if we’re going to win for conservative principles, we have to be out there on the ground. We have to be making those touches with unaffiliated voters. We need to make sure that stuff is happening, and that they understand what the Republican Party really stands for, and what conservative principles are.

TANCREDO: Yeah, well, and our job is to make the Republican Party stand for something.

COOK: [chuckles] That’s right.

TANCREDO: And then—

COOK: It’s a two way street, yeah.

TANCREDO: Absolutely. But, if we win this election, –generally speaking, I’m saying, both in national elections and Colorado elections,– if we do well, if we end up winning — winning control of the Senate, and if we do nothing to actually change the direction – not just slow down the movement to the precipice, –

COOK: Right.

TANCREDO: –but change the direction of this country, if we just watch it, for fear that if we really did change it, we’d all get thrown out of office again, well, I’ll tell you, if that’s it, then there’s no need–. Why should we work hard—any of us–for the status quo to be slowed down? We have to see in these people who are running, the willingness [and] the desire –and the ones who win—the desire to change. Because, oh, I tell you, I can—this is the –my nightmare, is a Republican Senate that refuses to either impeach, repeal Obamacare, um, repeal whatever he’s going to do to us in a few months, with regard to immigration.

Colorado State Treasurer Walker Stapleton took to the airwaves of KLZ 560-AM yesterday to raise the specter of judicial bias in Monday’s Colorado Supreme Court decision not to release records on the top PERA recipients.

Speaking on KLZ’s nooner show, Freedom560, hosted by Ken Clark, Stapleton said:

“It’s worth pointing out, call me a cynic, that every single member of the judicial branch is also a member of PERA. And that means that every single judge that heard my case had a vested economic interest in doing nothing about the problem, in maintaining the status quo, in feeling that their pension would be somehow released to me and not wanting that to be the case. I mean it’s mind-boggling to think our judicial branch is aiding and abetting a lack of transparency. It really is.”

Commenting via Twitter on Stapleton’s remark, Luis Toro, Director of Colorado Ethics Watch, wrote dryly: “Shocking admission that the point of his suit is to undermine PERA. If his suit was to strengthen PERA, the ‘vested interest’ would be to support him, wouldn’t it?”

The day before the Republican primary, in which Republican Laura Woods triumphed over Lang Sias for the right to take on Democratic State Senator Rachel Zenzinger, Woods made the following comment on the KLZ’s Grassroots Radio Colorado:

WOODS: “…tomorrow, if you’re an unaffiliated voter, and you don’t want more of the same, go down to the polling place, change to a Republican for a day or two, fill out a ballot, and then after the primary, if you don’t want to stay a Republican, you don’t have to stay. You can unaffiliate again. But you can be a part of the change right now by electing somebody who is going to stand up for the Constitution.”

Listen to Woods suggest unaffiliated voters briefly switch parties to help her win GOP primary 6-23-14

There’s nothing illegal about Woods’ suggestion, but the folks down at KLZ, including host Kristina Cook, are all about “principles.”

How principled is it to try to win a Republican primary with the votes of fake Republicans? It doesn’t appear that Woods’ suggestion made any difference in the election, but if I were running the show at Grassroots Radio Colorado, I would have asked Woods about her idea that unaffiliated voters should join the GOP for “a day or two.” But it’s done now.

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.

You knew Texas Gov. Rick Perry’s famous Oops Moment would hurt Perry himself, because it made him look so stupid, but I really thought the substance of Perry’s incomplete thought–that is, which federal departments should be shut down–would become more of a recurrent theme in conservative GOP primary circles.

I mean, it separates you from the crowd: Shut down the Commerce Department! The Education Department!

This comes up, just not so often.

For example, last week on KLZ 560-AM’s new “Wake Up” show with Randy Corporon, Rep. Tom Tancredo, who’s running for governor, boasted about his efforts, when he was a regional director of the U.S. Department of Education, to shut down the Department of Education:

TANCREDO: I was elected to the State Legislature in 1976, re-elected two more times.  I was appointed by Ronald Reagan to run the U.S. Department of Education’s regional office here, in Colorado – six state region.  I did that for him and Bush I [one].  Our purpose was to try and implode the whole thing, because we wanted to get the federal government out of education, as much as possible.  We couldn’t even get a Congressman to introduce the bill to abolish it, so we tried to do it administratively, and, um–.

HOST RANDY CORPORON:   Starve the beast.

TANCREDO:  Starve the beast.

CORPORON:   Cut back the budget.

TANCREDO:  Exactly.  So, I found out that that’s what you had to do.  That’s the only way you could actually get rid of people that were extraneous – let’s put it that way.  [chuckles]  I had 22o people employed at the U.S. Department of Education, in the regional office.  Two hundred and twenty-two.  Now, I emphasize the word ‘employed’.  Some of those people were working there, [but] not many.  And, um, it took me four years – and as I say, I had to go back to Washington every year and ask for a budget cut in order to actually work through the process of reducing the staff.  And I — and there were other reasons why we ended up moving downward, but we got to the point that we had sixty people left, when I left, out of 222.

Left hanging here is, what departments would Tanc cut, wholesale, from state government? That would’ve been a more relevant direction for Corporon to steer the conversation, given that Tancredo is running for governor.

Perry, you recall, had three federal departments he’d shut down. You get the feeling, when it comes to state government, a guy like Tancredo can top that. Maybe we’ll hear about it next time he’s on KLZ.

KNUS talk show host Dan Caplis sat silently behind his microphone last week while his guest, GOP Senate candidate Amy Stephens, said the Republican Party would not get behind her opponent, Ken Buck, if he wins the Republican nomination to take on Democratic Sen. Mark Udall. But Republicans would rally around her, she said.

Stephens: “I also believe nationally, and I have heard this in my travels, that there is not going to be — You know, when somebody wins a primary, people rally, come around. The party goes, whatever. I do not believe that’s going to happen should Ken be the nominee. I do believe this would happen should I become the nominee, because I think  there will be a lot more interest in this race and a lot more support.” [BigMedia emphasis]

You wish Caplis had asked for the names of the folks who’ve been telling Stephens, during her national “travels,” that they won’t back Buck, even if he were the one left standing. Presumably it wasn’t anyone associated with the rainmakers at the National Republican Senatorial Committee, and it’s likely Stephens wouldn’t have told Caplis about her sources, if he’d asked.

But, at least, Caplis could have fact-checked Stephens on her statement, delivered during a Jan. 15 interview, that “people would rally, come around” and support her if she gets the nomination.

So, to fill in the media gap left by Caplis, I decided to see if Stephens was correct. I didn’t think so, because I thought I’d heard Ken Clark, co-host of KLZ 560-AM’s flagship Tea-Party talk show, Grassroots Radio Colorado, say that he would not only never support Stephens but would never vote for her as well.

“I will never under any circumstances vote for Amy Stephens,” Clark said via email when asked about Stephens. “She is the epitome of what the GrassRoots despises in some Republican Party candidates and elected officials.  She is a big government, statist Republican and does not represent Conservative Values.  Her arrogance is beyond measure, and I really don’t see much difference between her and Udall. The Party had better come up with a candidate that is more palatable to the GrassRoots, or they will deliver yet another loss.”

Before I had a chance to ask him about the veracity of Stephens’ statement, Randy Corporon, who’s hosting a new “Wake Up” show on KLZ (5-7 a.m.) announced Jan. 17 on air that he wouldn’t vote for Stephens. 

“Amy Stephens is running for Senate in Colorado on the Republican ticket, but she is the mother of Obamacare in Colorado,” said Corporon. “I cannot support her. I have said publicly, and I will say again: If she is the Republican nominee, I will find a Libertarian. I won’t  vote for the Democrat.  But there are certain lesser-of-two-evils choices that I am no longer willing to make.  Is the Republican Party paying attention to that? 

Does the Republican Party understand that they cannot win without the Liberty Movement, without those of us who knock on doors and make phone calls, and write small checks regularly and consistently to try and support the candidates that we believe in?  Do they understand that they can’t win without us?  And if they promote—if they attack our people, the constitutionally principled conservatives that are running, if they promote the big government, establishment Republican-type candidates over our own, they’re not going to win, because they can’t win without us.  Amy Stephens should just get out of the race.” Listen to KLZ host Randy Corporon explain why he won’t vote for Amy Stephens (1.17.14)

Certainly Stephens could be correct that Republicans will get behind her if she wins the nomination, while Buck would repel fellow Republicans away from him, if he’s the nominee. But if you’re tuned in to talk radio, and Caplis certainly is, you know there’s two sides to that story that deserve to be aired.

If you want to convince the hosts of KLZ’s Grassroots Radio Colorado that you’re a true conservative, you have to do more than just say you’re categorically opposed to raising the U.S. debt limit, as U.S. Senate candidate Randy Baumgardner did just before Christmas, saying on the radio that he’d “definitely not be in favor of extending” the debt ceiling.

Clark told Baumgardner that, for his radio show, conservative credentials are established by a website called Principles of Liberty, based on votes cast in the State Legislature. We rely on them, Clark told Baumgardner.

Clark reminded Baumgardner, a Republican, that Principles of Liberty gave Baumgardner a disappointing D+, fourth worst among Colorado Senate Republicans last year.

“And, you know, you’re five away from being a Democrat!” Clark told Baumgardner, who’s widely considered an arch conservative. “Why would the Liberty people want to support you in your campaign?”

Baumgardner’s answer illuminates the rough road confronting conservative candidates as they face the stomping of feet and gnashing of teeth on radio stations like KLZ, 560-AM. Here’s Baumgardner’s response to Clark:

BAUMGARDNER:  Well, I tell you, um, I am a conservative.  And maybe [the Principles of Liberty score card], you know, doesn’t always reflect [that].  One of the things that you find there, and I guess it comes down to what your word’s worth, what you’re made out of, because there were things that I didn’t felt like I voted any different in the Senate than I did in the House.  Okay?  And my rankings were very good in the House. In fact, I had a 92 or a  93 percent in the House.  In fact, [I] was top—I believe, top of Principles of Liberty when I served in the House of Representatives.

CLARK:  You know, I’m going back – to be fair, I’m going back to 2012.

BAUMGARDNER:  Yeah.

CLARK:  Okay? And you were ranked number one by Principles of Liberty.

BAUMGARDNER:  Yes.

CLARK:  You got an A+ ranking with a 94 percent in 2012.

BAUMGARDNER:  Yeah.  And I’ve had conversations with Principles of Liberty that –. First of all, maybe it was the consent calendar because –.

CLARK:  Well, but everybody voted on the consent calendar.

BAUMGARDNER:  They did.  They did, but the Principles of Liberty said that everybody’s numbers were 10-15% lower than they normally were.  I don’t know why.  I don’t know what it was, but the only thing that I can say is that when you give your word—and there was a couple of bills that changed, and I went to the Senator and I said, “Look, this is not what I bought into. Can I get out of this?”  And they said, “No, you said you’d be on with me.”   So if your word means anything, you stick to that.  And that’s where I am.  If that’s what they want to judge me on, that’s fine.  But I own what I vote, and I’ll talk about anything that they want to talk to me about.  So, that–.

CLARK:  That is an amazing difference from one year to the next…. My point is, Senator Lundberg is number one, Senator Baumgardner is number twelve, with everything being equal.

BAUMGARDNER:  Right.

CLARK:  All right?  Now, if you go back to 2012, yeah, I mean, you were top of the heap.  That is an anomaly.  I need to figure that out.

BAUMGARDNER:  Yeah.  Well, and I do too.  And that was the conversation that I had with Principles of Liberty  – ‘cause I said I didn’t feel like I voted any different than I did when I was in the House.  So, I don’t know….

WORLEY:  We’ll figure it out.

BAUMGARDNER:  And when [Principles of Liberty organizer] Rich Bratten comes to me and said, “Randy, what’s going on?”  And I said, “Rich, I don’t know!” So, we had those conversations, and yeah, I don’t kn0w.  I mean, I wish I had an answer, but the only thing that I can come up with is that there was a couple of votes that I had given my word on to other senators.  And if they won’t let you out of that, you have integrity and your word.  That’s all you’ve got down there.  And if you lose that, and if they say, “Well, you didn’t do as well”, well, you know what, maybe I can strive to do a little better to not give my word to those people as easily.  But I try to look at things, but as they change, again, if they say, “No, you can’t be out — I’m not going to let you out of my commitment to me,”  then if, as a person, as someone that stands up and says I gave my word, I’m going to stick to it.  Thanks guys!

Correction: An earlier version of this blog post stated that Sen. Kevin Lundberg would not photograph a gay wedding. In fact, he told me in a telephone interview that it would “depend on the circumstances.”

—————–

State Sen. Kevin Lundberg told a KLZ radio audience Dec. 12 that he relates to the Colorado baker who, by court order, must bake a cake for a gay wedding even though the baker says it violates his Christian beliefs.

“I actually do some photography, and I’ve shot a few weddings,” Lundberg said on the radio, explaining that a similar case involved a wedding photographer in another state. “And I can see a very close parallel between baking a cake for a wedding or shooting pictures for a wedding. And I can tell you that there’s no way I could enter into shooting a wedding without doing my best to condone everything that occurred there.” [BigMedia emphasis]

“You’re trying to get the best [photo] shots,” Lundberg continued. “You’re trying to tell the story. And you’re trying to promote the event. You’ve been hired by the couple, by the family, to make this statement. To do a wedding cake, it’s not just a cake. It’s a very strong symbol of the ceremony and the process that’s occurring.”

Lundberg, a Republican, appeared on KLZ to express his displeasure with Colorado Attorney General John Suthers, who told Lundbergduring a legislative hearing last week that his office would continue to side with the gay couple, not the baker, because Colorado’s public accommodation law prohibits discrimination based on sexual orientation.

“This baker considers it an artistic statement when he’s baking a wedding cake,” Lundberg said on air. “Somebody said, ‘Come on. It’s just a cake.’ Well, the business is actually called Masterpiece Bakeshop.  It’s quite obvious they consider their bakery items a work of art. And if that isn’t something that would qualify under freedom of speech, I’m not sure what would.”

In his summary-judgment ruling against the Masterpiece baker, Colorado Administrative Law Judge Robert Spencer addressses Lundberg’s argument as well as others in favor of the baker that you find floating around the talk-radio airwaves. Read his decision here. The complaint against the baker was initially filed by the ACLU of Colorado.

“Some legislators would insist, ‘Keep your religion out of the State House,'” Lundberg told KLZ guest host Stacy Petty, going beyond the wedding-cake issue. “Well, I would say to them, ‘Keep your worldview out of the State House.’ And what do we have left? Nothing.”

Obviously, Lundberg sees religion everywhere, even if he’s not looking through his camera lens at a gay wedding.

Fresh from his top-GOP-Senate-candidate showing in the latest Public Policy Pollingsurvey, Ken Buck took to the talk-radio airwaves in recent days, bragging that he’s ahead of his primary opponents by “25 points or more” and that he “had a lot Tea Party support last time” and he has “a lot of Tea Party support this time.”

Reminded by KHOW’s Mandy Connell that he was tagged as a “gaffe-machine” in 2010, Buck said:

Buck: “Obviously, I’m more careful in what I say and where I say it and who I’m around. It doesn’t mean I don’t hold the same values. I think messaging is important.”

Connell wouldn’t have gotten anywhere with Buck had she asked him the sorts of things he’d say privately versus in public, but she could have at least listed a couple of Buck’s private utterances that Democrats used to  sledge-hammer Buck in TV ads last time around, including his infamous exuberance for banning abortion, even in the case of rape and incest, as well as his private courting then public dumping of personhood activists, whose failed amendment would have banned common forms of birth control, as well as all abortion.

Connell, who had Buck on her show Tuesday, also might have recounted some of the Buck material leading to the “gaffe-machine” tag, like his comment comparing being gay to alcoholism.

With this info out there, listeners might have wondered about the truth of Buck’s claim to Connell: “The donors know me. They trust me.” Really? On the issues, Buck said: “I’m going to put out a series of issue statements, starting in January, that will be very specific on health care, on energy, on five or six or seven different issues.”

Five! Six! or even seven issue statements! Connell could have mocked Buck for promising such incredible depth. But instead she just let him say:

Buck: “I think it’s very important for Republicans to stand for something, not just stand against something. I’m not just part of the party of no.” On health care, for example, Buck says he wants a “free-market health-care system.”

On KLZ radio Friday, Buck took a shot at candidates who petition onto the primary ballot, as planned by his opponent Rep. Amy Stephens, instead of going through the caucus process.

Buck said the petition route “bypasses the party structure, the people who work the hardest in the party, and it’s something that would be very unfortunate, if people petitioned on.”

Discussing in more detail why it’s bad for a candidate to skip the caucus-process and petition onto the primary ballot, Buck and Clark said:

Clark: Then you have the other tactic, which is simply to pay a bunch of people to go out and get a bunch of signatures and put your name on the ballot. Well, okay, we’ve all seen what happens when that happens. It’s usually not very pretty. This particular candidate, I have a feeling, is going to run a scorched-earth campaign. We’re just going to have to deal with that. Ken?

Buck: Well, I think, one, there’s a big advantage to going to the caucuses and the assembly. And that is, you go to all the counties of the state, and you ask for their support. And they work for you in the primary and they work for you in the general election. And when you put people in front of a supermarket with a clipboard in their hands, you’re not gaining support. You may think that you may have enough money to run an air game in Denver media and win a race, but the reality is that running state-wide is very difficult to win petitioning on. And so, I agree with your analysis.

Buck told Clark: “In primaries, people are going to put their best foot forward, and they’re going to put their opponent’s worst foot forward, and we will be weaker going against a candidate like Mark Udall.”

Do you remember this headline from The Denver Post Spot blog back in September?

“Upset Republicans propose chicken protest at Colorado GOP meeting Saturday”

It referred to an idea hatched by a group of Republicans to bring boxed chicken to a GOP gathering as a protest against State GOP Chair Ryan Call, who joined Democrats in criticizing a Republican legislator for talking about the “chicken” eating habits of the “black race.”

The protest never happened, but Ryan Call was so upset that the idea for such a protest would land in the hands of The Denver Post that he angrily passed out copies of The Post story at the Sept. meeting of the Republican Party’s Executive Committee and announced that he never wanted to see another article like it again.

During an hour-and-24-minute discussion about the chicken protest, Call angrily reprimanded CO GOP Secretary Lana Fore-Warkocz, who was accused, over her objections, of leaking the chicken-protest story to The Post. Never undermine the Republican Party again, she was told.

That is, according to the unedited, unofficial meeting minutes, written by Fore-Warkocz in her capacity as party secretary, and given to me by credible sources.

But the  Colorado Republican Party’s official minutes of the meeting, which are an edited version of Fore Warkocz’s notes and were also given to me by credible sources, tell a different story:

Official Republican Meeting Notes: “Certain matters concerning recent disclosures in the press, and the airing of disagreements between certain officers and members of the Executive Committee were candidly discussed. Officers and members of the Executive Committee were reminded of the importance of trust, unity, confidentiality and our role as leaders and members of the Executive Committee, and of our duties with respect to the Republican Party, but no formal action was taken.”

The unofficial meeting notes paint a different picture.

State GOP Secretary Fore-Warkocz’ Meeting Notes: “Chairman Call made it clear that I signed up to defend ALL Republicans, including McCain and Boehner, and if I didn’t like that, to check my bags at the door. Chairman Call said that folks like Jason Worley, Ken Clark, the Brattens, Debbie Healy and the Arnol’s are no friends of this party. Again, I was instructed to never undermine the family or the Republican Party again.”

Fore-Warkocz explained in her minutes that she had actually argued against the chicken protest.

But this didn’t stop Ryan Call from telling Fore-Warkocz that “trust and honesty” had been broken and from ordering Fore-Warkocz to notify him “immediately” if she’s invited to another meeting involving dissent (gasp) within the GOP.

“Senator Bill Cadman reiterated Chairman Call’s comments, and I was reprimanded for another 20 minutes,” according to Fore-Warkocz’ version of the meeting.

Fore-Warkocz’ notes state:

“[Committee member] Ellyn Hilliard explained that Ken [Clark] and Jason[Worley] are in it for the ratings and to not speak to them. I explained that I hadn’t.”

(Side note: As a media critic I was floored that anyone would think KLZ talk-radio hosts Ken Clark and Jason Worley are in it for the ratings! No one defends Sen. Vicki Marble for the ratings! You can defend Mylie Cyrus for the ratings. But talking on the radio about chicken or Marble or barbeque doesn’t do much for you. Unless you’re gunning for Tea-Party ratings, which still don’t do much for you.)

At the end of the executive committee meeting, Ryan Call presented a new branding campaign for the Republican Party.

The bold initiative replaces “Grand Old Party” with the smooth-and-easy phrase “Great Opportunity Party.”

“New brochures were presented, and all were very impressed with the new marketing materials,” according to the official minutes.

I get it. Dumping the word “old” will make the Republican Party young!

Just like whitewashing the notes from a contentious GOP meeting will make the Party get along?