If I were a conservative talk-radio host, I’d love it if my guest called Social Security a “Ponzi scheme.”

The topic would keep your geriatric audience awake, plus it gives you a chance to say “Ponzi” a bunch of times.

So why do talk-radio hosts love to sit there in silent acquiescence as their guests say that Social Security is nothing but a disaster?

That happened last year, when we heard Rep. Mike Coffman say on KNUS’ Kelley and Company that Social Security is “obviously” a “Ponzi scheme.”

And again, on Grassroots Radio Colorado Wed. Colorado Sen. Kent Lambert said Social Security “really is a Ponzi scheme.”

Lambert: “I’d like to tell you what I like about PERA. It’s not Social Security. Social Security really is a Ponzi scheme. You’re taking from one employee or one worker and just giving it over to somebody else. In PERA at least we’re making some investments and having some growth to that retirement system.”

If I were at the controls at KLZ AM 560, I’d be thinking, how beautiful is this?

Here’s a leader of the Legislature’s Joint Budget Committee, whose members presumably know a lot about budgets, saying that Social Security is a criminal enterprise.

That should make for good talk radio. A good debate.

I thought Social Security was one of the U.S. government’s greatest achievements. It’s been tweaked slightly over its 76 years of providing a lifeline to seniors, and it’s on solid ground for 25 more years. With minor changes, it will last indefinitely.

So what’s up with the Ponzi-scheme attack line? It doesn’t fit.

It’s shallow thinking at its shallowest. As such, it could make for a good debate.

Any chance we can hear what Lambert’s logic is, next time he’s on Grassroots Radio Colorado?

Talking to KHOW’s Peter Boyles June 5, state Senate candidate John Sampson said it was unfortunate that a Georgia judge decided not to scratch Obama’s name from Georgia’s presidential ballot for the upcoming election.

Sampson said the judge should have issued a default decision against Obama for failing to appear in court in person to defend himself in a case brought by some of America’s five-star birthers (though Boyles not among them).

Yet Sampson was on KLZ’s Grassroots Radio Colorado July 5 saying he had no position on Obama’s eligibility, even though he previously said he thought Obama’s  name should be off the Georgia ballot and he was hired by the birthers to testify against Obama.

Sampson told KLZ he was hired by the birthers to testify; he was an expert witness with no opinion. He described his court testimony this way:

Sampson: “I did the Joe Friday routine, ‘it’s just the facts, ma’am.’ There was no opinion in that. I was asked to do a job. I did a job. And regardless of what people think, or what their opinions are, it doesn’t change the facts.”

All Sampson knows, he said, is that:

“Sampson: Mr. Obama is using his social security number that was issued to somebody residing in Connecticut in March of 1977. And there is no connection ever documented between Mr. Obama and the state of Connecticut. So, the question is, how did it come to pass that he’s using that number?”

Snopes and others have debunked Sampson’s claim, and Worley should ask Sampson about the facts.

But who could possibly believe Sampson’s claim that he’s all about the facts on Obama’s SS number, and he has no opinion on Obama’s eligibility, especially when Sampson stated his opinion on a previous radio show, claiming Obama should be, shall we say, purged, from the Georgia ballot?

I’m hoping Worley delves into this next time he sits down with Sampson.

Rep. Mike Coffman is still mostly avoiding reporters, after he went into hiding following his comment at a fundraiser that he’s not sure Obama was born in the U.S. but, in any case, he believes Obama is not an American “in his heart.”

But Coffman is creeping into medialand ever so gently, with appearances on some conservative talk shows (though he’s ignoring Steve Kelley on KNUS). He was on Fox 31 in the morning as well, after the Obamacare decision, but 9News hasn’t been on his dance card.

Coffman’s brief interview on KLZ 560-AM’s Grassroots Radio Colorado July 5 shows what he gets when he cherry picks his questioners.

At one point in the interview he describes Democrats in the new CD 6 this way:

I feel pretty good about the race because I grew up in really what is the most Democrat part of the district, in original Aurora and northern Aurora. They are not traditional Democrats. They are blue-collar, working-class Democrats. They do not share the radical environmental views of the Democrat Party in Washington D.C. They are very pro-military. I have a military background. Probably, quite frankly, on some of the class warfare rhetoric, they’re probably going to buy on some of that, as well as certainly strong labor support. But they certainly don’t line up on every issue. And so there are some avenues in there.

(Listen to Coffman on Grassroots Radio Colorao 7-5-12.)

Anyone except the most sympathetic questioner would be curious about what aspects of the “class warfare rhetoric,” as Coffman puts it, appeal to Dems in his district.

Is he referring to the idea that tax breaks shouldn’t be extended for people earning over $250,000?

Is he referring to the notion that Social Security is more than the “ponzi scheme” that Coffman has said it is?

Does Coffman think Democrats in his district go for these types of things? If so, why?

We won’t be hearing answers to these questions as long as Coffman continues to sidestep real reporters, and his fans in the talk-radio world don’t make their shows more interesting by asking a follow-up question or two when Coffman is on the line.

During an interview on KLZ’s Grassroots Radio Colorado yesterday, Colorado State Treasurer Walker Stapleton came out in support of a lawsuit alleging that the 2009 FASTER law, which raised Colorado vehicle registration fees to pay for road and bridge upgrades, is unconstitutional.

Here’s the key exchange on the radio show:

WALKER STAPLETON: Well, you know, my friend Rich Sokel is at the tip of the spear, there. And I think it’s a great thing. And I hope they prevail because, you know, the FASTER tax was one of many taxes and fees that was passed without our input as voters in Colorado. And it was passed and given cover by a liberal activist Supreme Court. And so I hope that it gets some traction, because these fees need to be called what they are, and that’s tax increases.

Host: Absolutely. So I’m going to wish them luck on that and we’re going to do everything we can to support those guys and their efforts. Walker Stapleton, Colorado state—

STAPLETON: Thank you, guys! I appreciate you!

HOST: We appreciate you and everything you’re doing and you know you’ve got a friendly voice here, so use us whenever we can and we’ll help you fight this battle. That’s Walker Stapleton, Colorado State Treasurer.

Listen to Walker Stapleton on KLZ 6-7-12

It’s painful to hear a public official, who claims to be the standard bearer for fiscal responsibility, support striking down the FASTER law without explaining how he’d fund road and bridge repair in the state. And this is of course not the first time Republicans have exhibited this problem.

So, please, all you entertaining people over at KLZ, put this question to Stapleton when you have him back on Grassroots Radio Colorado: Does he 1) want to fix Colorado’s crumbling roads and bridges, and, if so 2) how does he propose to pay for it ($300 million in bonds issued and $400 million to be issued in 2017).

I spend a lot of time criticizing conservative talk-radio hosts, and some people think I’m beating my head against the keyboard.

Too bad for me. Here I go again.

I can’t accept that KLZ host’s Ken Clark and Jason Worley agree with Sen. Ted Harvey when he says, on the radio, that Sen. Morgan Carroll’s bill requiring hospitals to post a list of services that they do not provide is like “putting yellow stars on the door of religious hospitals.”

Even if you disagree with her bill, proposed legislation like Carroll’s and Nazi Germany have zero in common with one another.

You may think it’s ridiculous that I even write the above paragraph, but that’s what we bloggers have been reduced to, particularly because the legacy media is mostly ignoring the Colorado GOP’s Nazi talk this year.

The Nazis killed people and Carroll’s bill informs them. Carroll’s bill would’ve helped consumers make a purchase. That’s it.

Even if you’re anti-abortion, Carroll’s bill can’t be remotely linked to genocide in any way.

So, if you’re Ken Clark and Jason Worley, how could you possibly listen to this exchange without objecting?

Sen. Kevin Grantham (at 16:30 in the podcast):  “Ken, I kind of wonder if Patrick Malone would have made the same statement, or did even ask the same question to Rep. Carrol when she was running her Senate Bill 93, wondering whether she is going to have a legacy… or she’s worried about her legacy as a bigot for what she’s doing to hospitals and to private religious hospitals.  Doesn’t that make her a bigot as well?” 

Asked to explain, Grantham said that SB 93 would require “religious hospitals to post the services they do not provide,” which would be a requirement targeted specifically at catholic hospitals. This is not correct, since it would apply to all hospitals, but Grantham maintained that the bill was targeted specifically at abortion issues and other life issues.

Later, in a discussion about how the Democrats’ strategy on civil unions will backfire, Harvey said:

Sen. Ted Harvey (at 39:32): I don’t like to repeat the negative and talk about what their talking points are.  And what my talking points are is that this is an attack on religion.  This is [an] attack on the right of conscience, and the ability of people to exercise their faith the way that they believe is best for them. And I think that the people of faith are seeing this for what it is, and it’s a direct attack on them and they are now not sitting on the couch, not sitting in the pews, and just trying to live their lives and take their kids to school, and go to work and do those kinds of things. They are truly scared of what this is we’re talking about. We’re talking about an entire party in the United States that thinks it’s okay to force people of religious faith to do something against their religion. And that’s never happened in the United States before.  You heard Kevin [Grantham] talking about Senate Bill 93 where it forced hospitals to put on their door a yellow star, for all practical purposes.  To say, ‘this is who we are, and we have to tell you who we are.’  Never in American history have we had a major political party say that that’s okay.  And that is what you are seeing right now. And people of faith across the country  are rising up and saying, ‘No, not in our country.’ SB-93 is like putting yellow stars on the door of religious hospitals.

I have to preface this blog post by telling you I’m a critic of the American Legislative Exchange Council, known as ALEC. I don’t like the legislation that the outfit promotes (for example, discouraging registered voters from voting, encouraging people to fire guns at innocent people).

I also don’t like the way ALEC teams up in secret with conservative legislators and big corporations to draft anti-consumer laws.

I signed a petition as a hopeless gesture to get giant businesses to abandon ALEC, and I was floored when Coca-Cola, PepsiCo, MacDonald’s, and Proctor & Gamble dropped their sponsorship of ALEC in recent weeks, after it came to light that ALEC pushed legislation that may have led to the Trayvon Martin shooting.

My problems with ALEC may sound innocent enough to you, even pathetic given the power of big corporations, but to ALEC co-director Jonathan Williams, my views of ALEC and my actions against ALEC make me a Marxist. On Denver’s KLZ radio April 26, he said:

“You know,” Williams told KLZ, “at the end of the day though, companies should realize that capitalists are the folks who buy their products. The Marxists that are coming after us and coming after them are the folks who want to see them gone anyways.”

I had no idea I was a Marxist. I spent a lot of time studying Marxism in college, hoping I could be a Marxist someday, but I never could bring myself to agreeing with it.

But did Grassroots Radio Colorado hosts Ken Clark and Jason Worley object at all to Williams’ accusation? Nope.

Maybe that’s because you hear the Marxist card thrown around so much these days on conservative talk radio that it’s become standard fare?

Just this morning, KOA’s Mike Rosen pointed out on Facebook that President Obama’s new campaign slogan “forward” has “very well-established links to Marxism and Socialism.”

Forward? I thought it had roots in the old hippie slogan, “Never go straight. Go Forward.”

So, with Obama, I’m in good company as a not-yet-self-actualized Marxist.

Still, I consider myself fringe, but Williams doesn’t see the Marxists behind the anti-ALEC campaign as a rag-tag group. He didn’t mention Obama as being in the Marxist fold, but Williams sees real, serious power in the hands of American Marxists these days as they go after ALEC:

“There is a very coordinated intimidation campaign against some of our corporate sponsors and against many of our legislators across the country by folks who disagree with free-enterprise policy,” ALEC’s Williams told KLZ. “And they try to use extortionist techniques to intimidate the corporate members from getting involved.  It’s been a really sad state of affairs that we’ve been seeing over the last few weeks and some of the companies crumbling under these intimidation tactics.”

 Extortion? Intimidation?

I wish the KLZ talk-show hosts had delved into those bad things more. I thought the backlash against ALEC was an anomalous case study of successful citizen activism, with organizations like the Center for Media and Democracy creating an informative website, ALEC Exposed, and state groups like ProgressNow pushing out information about local legislative ties with ALEC.

And what about Williams saying ALEC’s corporate sponsors were “crumbling?”

I almost started to feel sorry for him, for his disappointment, but then I remembered I’m a Marxist, and I realized the weakening of ALEC, with corporations crumbling,  is the first step toward the proletarian revolution I’ve been waiting for since college.

Listen here to ALEC’s Jonathan Williams say that critics of ALEC are “Marxists”

Follow Jason Salzman on Twitter @bigmediablog

At the top of the home page of Colorado Hispanic Republicans’ website sits this quote by President Ronald Reagan:

“Latinos are Republicans. They just don’t know it yet.”

It’s not a quote that I’d slap across the top of my website if I were trying to make friends with Hispanics, but I have to admit I’m not a Republican.

But what would you do if you were a Republican, and it was your job to convince Democratic Hispanics to vote for your people in November?

It’s a good question, and a group of Republicans tried to answer it in an honest and illuminating discussion on KLZ’s Grassroots Radio Colorado April 11.

Radio host Ken Clark didn’t sugar coat the GOP’s problem in his first question to Pauline Olvera, a board member of Colorado Hispanic Republicans, whose website features the Reagan quote above.

“So the biggest problem I’ve seen in the Hispanic community and the black community is that they share our values; they just hate the Republican Party,” said Clark. “So what are you doing about that?”

Olvera gave a big broad answer, as she’s done before on the radio, practically bereft of specifics, saying her organization is trying “to connect with those communities’ values of ‘faith, family, and freedom.'” (Olvera is also a vice chair of the Denver Republican Party.)

Then Solomon Martinez, the Northern Colorado Chapter Chair for Colorado Hispanic Republicans, explained how Hispanics mindlessly cling to the Democratic Party because that’s the way they’ve always been. He cited his own parents.

How does he deal with these stubborn Hispanic Democrats?

Martinez: “I tell people, ‘Take the test.’ There’s websites you can go onto. You know, it’s Republican Democrat Test. Take the test. If it still shows that you’re a Democrat, then stay the Democrat Party. But you’re going to find that you’ll probably be a Republican, in most cases.” [Listen to Martinez suggest that Hispanics take Republican-Democrat test here.]

So now you see how the Reagan quote fits in.

It may sound condescending for Martinez to say that Colorado’s Hispanics are so clueless about politics that they don’t know the difference between Democrats and Republicans. But just take the Republican-Democrat test anyway. It’s about being open-minded. Hispanics will probably find their inner Democrat and forget any possible condescension involved in getting them there.

Another angle for the Colorado Hispanic Republicans, and the radio segment gives you the sense that this is the core strategy, is to encourage Hispanic Democrats to vote for Republicans without leaving the Democratic Party.

Forget the online Democrat-Republican test if you must, there’s no need to be a Democrat to vote Republican.

Martinez: We’re saying, ‘Come and join us! Come and talk to us! I’m not going to try and switch you over to Republican. Come and talk. Hear our values, hear our views. If you align with that, join us!’

This would be done by somehow identifying disaffected Hispanic Democrats, and connecting with them.

Everyone on the Grassroots Radio Colorado radio show was happy to discuss their own periods of disaffection with the Republican Party, and therefore show how they can relate to Hispanics who might be alienated by the Democratic Party. They seemed to be saying to Hispanics that it’s okay not to love your political party. We haven’t always loved ours, but we stuck to our party (though you should abandon yours), and our Republican Party has changed!

Olvera: I know I woke up when we had McCain, and I thought that here is a man that is going to sign that TARP bill, this is a man who is for amnesty – blanket amnesty, and I thought, “is this what the Republican party is giving us?” There really wasn’t that much difference. So it could have been something on that line that had people disenfranchised from the Republican Party. But now we stand a firm line in the sand, as to where we stand as a Republican Party. We have to stand firm on those principles, and get in there and do the right thing. [On Grassroots Radio Colorado, Republicans Discuss Complacency of GOP toward Hispanics 4-11-12]

Some conservative radio hosts might have let this go, without bringing up the name of Mitt Romney, whose name almost no one would think of when Olvera said that Republicans are now “firm line in the sand” when it comes to where they “stand as a Republican Party.”

But to his credit, Clark said later in the interview:

“I don’t know what’s going to happen when we throw Romney up there. I really don’t. I mean we had some real conservative choices, and the only thing that I would say to people is that Obama is so much worse.”

Olvera said previously that the Colorado Hispanic Republicans will be at Cinco De Mayo in Denver with a big banner, trying to put their tactics into action. This radio interview made me want to go see how they’re received.

A tea-party radio crowd is mad at Fox 31 reporter Eli Stokols for failing to report what they see as the real story behind Rep. Chris Holbert’s lone no vote against the state budget bill April 12.

Citing unnamed sources, Stokols reported Friday:

“Republicans privately groused that Holbert’s vote amounted to ‘sour grapes’ after the House GOP caucus refused to allow him to run an amendment dealing with abortion on Wednesday, when the House spent hours debating a few dozen ‘message amendments’ to the budget that aimed to make political points.”

Stokols’ story came after Holbert issued a news release stating he voted against the budget bill because it didn’t set aside any money for a so-called “rainy day fund,” to be used for unanticipated state needs.

Stokols reported Holbert’s explanation, as well the view that allegedly “swirled around the Capitol” that Holbert was essentially lying about his real reason for the “no” vote.

“If I’m Eli Stokols and I’m a crack reporter, it’s not that hard to get a hold of the people,” Grassroots Radio Colorado’s Jason Worley told listeners Monday. “It took me ten seconds to figure out everything [Stokols] says here [in Stokols’ piece], which is complete supposition and rumor, is false, completely wrong.”

On the radio, Worley claimed that it wasn’t Holbert who wanted to run an amendment banning public funding of abortion in Colorado. Instead, it was Marsha Looper, who’s in a primary battle with House Majority Leader Amy Stephens.

But leading House Republicans didn’t want Looper to be able to say that she was fighting for an anti-abortion bill, because championing such a bill would help her in her primary campaign against “I-am-the-Christian-Coalition Amy Stephens” in “one of the most conservative districts in the state,” according to Worley.

So, Worley said, Republicans made it look like the anti-abortion amentment was Holbert’s, so that Looper couldn’t take credit for it.

Looper told me that, in fact, it was she who took the lead on the abortion amendment, not Holbert.

“Chris and I talked to each other about a month ago,” Looper told me. “And that was it. I was prepared to run the amendment to remind everybody that public funding for abortion is prohibited in Colorado.”

“I had conversations with individuals, and they weren’t happy with my running the bill, and [later] lo and behold, it was already in the bill,” she told me adding that she didn’t run the amendment when she found that it had been inserted in the “long bill on page 363.”  (Indeed, you can find it in a footnote in the state budget bill on page 363, as well as, and this is the funny part, in the Colorado Constitution.)

“I’m sure Mr. Stokols isn’t going to reveal his sources, but whoever his sources were, they pinned it on the wrong guy, ” Worley said on the radio.

Asked if he still stood behind his sources for this story, Stokols told me via email:

I stand by my sources.

Rep. Holbert made the conscious choice to send out his own press release and statement the day after the vote. Obviously, he felt the need to explain his vote for some reason. I wrote the story because he sent the press release, which ran counter to the other things I’d been hearing.

I don’t blame Stokols for using anonymous sources. He’d almost certainly never have gotten anone to comment on the record, and given the importance of abortion issues in politics these days, airing the views is clearly in the public interest.

So Worley shouldn’t be directing his anger at Stokols, who just reported what he was told.

Worley should focus on finding out who spread the Holbert story and give reporters specific names.

That’s what Worley did Monday, saying on the radio: “And, you know, Reps like B.J. Nikkel who spread these rumors should know better.”

I called Nikkel yesterday for comment, but have not heard back yet.

Unlike Worley, Holbert won’t say who he thinks talked to Stokols.

All he’d tell KVOR talk-radio host Jimmy Lakey Sunday was, “Somebody planted that story.”

Last year, someone came to Holbert with a bill to defund Planned Parenthood, and he was going to run it, but it was too late, Holbert told Lakey.  This year, Holbert continued, he decided to look into it, but the language was too complicated. And when he heard that Rep. Marsha Looper was working on a similar bill, he figured he didn’t have to run it.

LAKEY: …But this sour grapes, and so do you know who the sour grapes are up there [at the Capitol]?

CHRIS HOLBERT:  I…

LAKEY: You want to name names here?

CHRIS HOLBERT:  No…

LAKEY: No, I know you don’t.  You’re a nice guy.  I’ll name na…!  No, I don’t know who they are either… Well, we’ll come back, I want to wrap it up with Representative Chris Holbert.  He stood firm and he voted ‘no’ on budget that spends every penny, every year, where it continues to kick some problems down the way.  But Chris Holbert says he wasn’t pouting.  So there you have it.  We’ll continue to talk about this, wrap it up with Chris Holbert, and uh, I’ll be glad to, in just a moment, tell you how you can contact Chris Holbert, or maybe help him out.  He’s the lone vote!  Voting against some crazy stuff up there, and you ought to support a guy like that.  So stick around!  More to come!  I’m Jimmy Lakey.

If you think tea-party radio shows are done with this strange story by now, a week after Stokols reported it, you’d be wrong.  Worley was still talking about it Wednesday on KLZ. And he’s still angry at Stokols.

My advice for Worley is, don’t get mad at Eli Stokols. You should be thanking him for reporting what was said to him. You just need to find people with the guts to name names, and present other evidence of below-the-belt politics, if it’s true, on the record.

Even if you weren’t paying attention, you probably remember back in 2010 when GOP gubernatorial candidate Dan Maes spoke up against then Mayor John Hickenlooper’s bicycle programs, which, along with other policies,  was “converting Denver into a United Nations community.”

“These aren’t just warm, fuzzy ideas from the mayor,” Maes was quoted as saying in The Denver Post, which broke the story.  “These are very specific strategies that are dictated to us by this United Nations program that mayors have signed on to.”

“This is all very well-disguised, but it will be exposed,” Maes said.

This prompted the progressive blog ColoradoPols to comment:

“Oh, Dan Maes! We don’t know where you came from, and we’re still amazed at how you got here, but we can’t deny that you are one amusing fellow. Even if you don’t mean to be.”

We know that one of the places Dan Maes came from was the Colorado tea party and its allies on conservative talk radio.

Now, however, the tea-party radio show “Grassroots Radio Colorado” has a specific policy to refer to Maes as the “Mr. Irrelevent” or the one “who shall not be named.”

Still, it’s clear that the themes of Maes’ once energetic campaign still live in tea party circles, incuding the U.N. paranoia stuff.

The other day, Rich Bratten with right-leaning Principles of Liberty Colorado gave listeners of KLZ’s Grassroots Radio Colorado a legislative update, specifically addressing Senate Bill 130, which would create the Office for Child and Youth Development in the Department of Human Services in Colorado.

The bill, which would simply consolidate various government functions, is the culmination of several years of work, going back to Gov. Kofi Bill Ritter’s administration.

A Colorado Springs church called this bill a “United Nations conspiracy,” which Bratten wouldn’t do.

“I don’t think this was a U.N. conspiracy…,” he said on the radio March 30.

But the funny part is, he went on, without objection from the radio-show hosts, to say that the Office of Child and Youth Development would lead to a  socialist takeover of America, possibly leadin’ to a U.N. power grab.

“However,” Bratten said, “[the Office of Child and Youth Development] is very consistent with the Convention on the Rights of the Child of the UN, if you’ve done any research on that.  You’re listeners might be more familiar with the UN Small Arms Treaty….

HOST:  Yeah, they’re very familiar with that one ….

BRATTEN:  Right, which would put constraints upon if we  .…   You know, of course, Clinton adpopted the UN… that treaty, but it hasn’t been ratified by the senate.  Obama says he would like to get it ratified by the senate.  If we were bound to that treaty, we would  basically be giving up our second amendment rights.  And you guys are very familiar with Agenda 21?

HOST:  Very! We spent half the day on it yesterday.

BRATTEN:  This Convention on the Rights of the Child is kind of a similar animal.  And so, is it a UN conspiracy?  No, of course not!  However, is it that inex-OR-orable slide that we’ve been seeing our federal government make towards European Socialist Democracy type of government?  And, you know, the answer is yes — honestly, it is.  So, I’m thrilled to see Speaker Mc Nulty assign this quickly to that committee, and I hope that it gets a quick hearing.

Who knew how much of a threat the U.N. is? I’ve been depressed that it was in decline, but I guess I was wrong.

In any case, no one thought Maes was a lone ranger in Colorado’s battle against the United Nations, but his view, or permutations of it, is alive and well on talk radio, even if the name Maes has been banished.

Mike Rosen likes to present himself as a stern parental figure on the radio, sounding rational even when he isn’t.

He builds this persona by pouncing on guests when their logic doesn’t add up. If you’ve heard Rosen, you know he can be effective (and mean) at this, often demolishing innocent callers who really don’t deserve the punishment.

So you wonder why Rosen can’t bring himself to demanding rational responses from a formerly high-paid lawyer, who’s used to verbal assaults like Rosen’s.

I’m thinking of Secretary of State Scott Gessler, who was on Rosen’s KOA show April 2.

Rosen and Gessler discussed a number of issues, but the one that caught my attention focused on the ASSET legislation under consideration in the state legislature. It would give qualifying undocumented high-school graduates a special in-state tuition rate at Colorado universities that elect to participate.

With his usual air of rational certainty, Rosen told Gessler that the ASSET bill is “transparently part of a strategy to court Latino voters.”

“Yeah,” Gessler responded. “I think one of the challenges the Democrats have is Latino voters, in my experience and sense is that, I mean, they’re fundamentally conservative folks. I mean, they’re oftentimes very socially conservative. They’re people who put their heads down and work hard and aren’t looking for government handouts. And the Democrats’ stock and trade is government handouts. So they sort of have to rile ’em up as a way to try and get their votes.”

Rile ’em up? As if the Hispanics are like children who should be winding down before bedtime?

Yes, Hispanics are upset, and rightly so.

As Gessler should know, with all his knowledge of Latino voters, it’s the GOP that’s doing the riling. There’d be no issue here if Republicans took the advice of conservative Denver Post columnist Vincent Carroll and supported the ASSET bill.

But did Rosen even gently question Gessler’s condescending and irrational comments, like he might have if a first-time caller was on the line? No.

So I called Ricardo Martinez, Co-Director 0f Padres y Jovenes Unidos, for his perspective on Gessler’s comments.

“ASSET has passed in thirteen other states,” Martinez told me. “Among them are Texas, Utah, Kansas, and Oklahoma, which are all Republican-controlled. They saw it as an economic benefit. They didn’t let ideology stand in the way of common sense.”

So, I guess Gessler would say that it’s the GOP in Texas that’s riling up Hispanic voters?

Martinez also pointed out that the ASSET bill doesn’t provide any free benefits, so Gessler’s statement about handouts is irrelevant.

“They would be paying the standard tuition,” he said, adding that no tax dollars would support the tuition of undocumented students. “This is not a hand out.”

Rosen and Gessler also discussed the Colorado Democratic Chair Rick Palacio’s suggestion that Gessler resign or be removed from office.

Rosen read Gessler a portion of an article from a March 30 Denver Post by Sara Burnett, quoting University of Colorado Professor Ken Bickers’ view that Democrats are calling on Gessler to step down to appeal to Latino voters who are critical to the re-election of President Obama.

Rosen read from The Post:

Bickers speculated Democrats may have an ulterior motive [in calling on Gessler to resign or removed from office]: creating “a storyline” to appeal to a particular group of voters. Most likely that’s Latinos, who are among those voters Democrats say will be disproportionately affected by Gessler’s efforts, and a voting bloc that will be key to President Barack Obama winning re-election this fall.

“To me it’s a sign that they think they have a weakness in the presidential election,” Bickers said.

Gessler responded:

Well, it’s good that we’ve got some good professors at the University of Colorado because every now and then they nail it. And I think that’s absolutely correct as to what’s going on.

So, not only are Democrats are riling up Hispanics, but they’re creating a story line, with Gessler as a main character, in a cynical ploy to get votes?

I wish Rosen had asked Gessler if he thinks undocumented high-school graduates, who can’t go to college because Republicans like Gessler are blocking them, see the ASSET bill that way, as an empty story line or a useless riler upper.

Or do they see it as real? As a chance to work hard and get ahead?

If Rosen had asked questions like those, maybe more Hispanics and others who believe in all-American opportunity would get riled up.

But that wouldn’t be good for Rosen or Gessler, would it?