On the radio Monday, State Sen. Greg Brophy said there’s “element” of “folks who just don’t like Christians” in Colorado, and “they are well represented at the State Capital right now.”

Citing Obama’s victory, as well as the passage of a measure legalizing and taxing marijuana, Brophy said on the radio:

BROPHY: “That’s what leads me to say that we’re kind of a Libertarian/Left state. You know, and geez, I hate to say this, but it sure seems like there is an element of an anti-Christian bent in Colorado which probably does also play into that Libertarian/Left side of things…and they’re well represented at the State Capital right now.”

KFKA radio’s guest host Krista Kafer didn’t ask Brophy to reveal his list of anti-Christian folk up at the State Capitol. So I called him to find out whom he was thinking of.

Brophy referred me to an opinion piece he wrote arguing that Senate Democrats were attacking hospitals for their religious convictions. They passed a bill, which did not clear the House, that would have required hospitals to post services that they elect not to provide due to religious, not medical considerations (e.g., abortion and some contraception services), but Senate Democrats rejected an amendment requiring all hospitals to list services they don’t provide, Brophy wrote.

“If you remember,” Brophy told me, “when I was [on the radio], I said I don’t want to say this because it’s kind of a harsh thing to say, but I think it’s an accurate observation.

So it’s based on that? Or are there other things?

“That’s a very public observation that’s been out there,” Brophy said. “Other stuff is certainly more subtle. You never can tell for sure, Jason, what someone’s thinking or what motivates them. You can only tell what they do. And when I wrote that op-ed I specifically went into what they did.”

I thought it was ironic that Brophy was raising the specter of anti-Christian bigotry at the State Capitol, given his comments about gays in the same KFKA interview Monday.

Brophy said he believes civil unions are one thing, but it would go too far to require an adoption agency, for example, to award a child to a traditional couple over gay couple based on the adoption agency’s alleged religious beliefs about the morality of homosexuality.

BROPHY: “But isn’t there a happy medium here where you can also have an adoption agency that says, “All things being equal, we would prefer to have a male-female married couple work with our adopted children – all things being equal.” I mean, I think most people believe that too, and I would hope that we could find a happy medium. I suspect that we will end up settling this question at a U.S. Supreme Court level within just a couple of years, because there are some cases that are testing this. For instance, say, if you run a Bed and Breakfast and want to cater to folks who are on, you know, bible study-based family vacations, and you refuse to rent a room to somebody who isn’t married, or who is in a same-sex marriage, you can be sued for discrimination. And your– that’s a direct contradiction between the civil rights protection and the religious liberty protection.

We heard a lot about religious liberty during the election, as Republicans argued that restrictions on abortion and women’s health should be accepted as religious freedoms instead of as a war on women.

Brophy’s comments, about gays and Christian haters, leave me thinking that he’s not going to back away from the election rhetoric. He didn’t talk about Republicans working with each other or with Democrats, but instead about Republicans picking sides within their own party and fighting, building a movement of social conservatives prior to the next primary.

BROPHY: “And there’s an element, there’s a leg, or an element of the Republican Party that has always been rather embarrassed by the Christian conservative component of the Republican Party. I don’t know what to do with them. I mean, you know, we form our coalitions in U.S. politics before the primary and so, pick your side. And as for me, I’m going to be on the side that argues for fiscal restraint, and that argues for religious liberty and individual liberty, limited government and less spending by the government, but either people buy that argument or they don’t.”

If I’m a reporter, and I hear Brophy, I’d be watching to see if the election collapse had any impact at all on him and like-minded Republicans. It appears it did not.

In a run-of-the-mill interview Friday on KFKA radio’s “AM Colorado,” State House candidate Skip Carlson made this off-hand comment to hosts Devon Lentz and Tom Lucero:

“Do we need additional taxes? Unlike a lot of Republicans, I think we do on some things,” Carlson told Lucero, as an aside. “We just have to be careful. First of all, let’s make sure we are spending our taxes correctly. Then, let’s fix the infrastructure that needs to be fixed now, so that our children don’t have to pay for it later.”

Some Republican talk show hosts, like Lucero, would have simply ignored Carlson’s comment on the taboo topic of favoring a tax increase.

Other GOP hosts would have tried to talk Carlson out of it, saying something like, “Are you crazy? My entire audience and my Republican co-host will hate you if you really mean that.”

But Lucero, a former CU Regent, took the gentler approach of trying to clarify things. He just wanted to make sure the facts were on the table.

So he asked Carlson, whose running for House District 50, a clarifying question:

LUCERO: So the state legislature is required to prioritize on spending. Your number one priority is to figure out how we prioritize, how we get the [in]efficiencies out of government. And at that point, after you’re done going through it, you’re unsatisfied that we have the resources necessary, you would support raising taxes?

CARLSON: Oh, yeah! I mean, this is — that’s business. I’m in business.

LUCERO: Okay.

CARLSON: I ran my business, you’ve run a business. You get up to a certain point and you say, “Okay, business has gone so far with this. Do I have to increase my investment for my business to go even higher, to become even better?” And you say, “I can spend this now, and it will cost me a lot less than spending it later.” We have to, however, be very, very careful about that—very diligent about it and see to it that we don’t have the waste before, to start with.

I appreciate Lucero’s approach. He didn’t jump all over Carlson. He didn’t hyperventilate. He didn’t even let his own opinion be known. He tried to get it straight.

But, still, Lucero didn’t clarify the situation well enough for me.

Lucero should have asked, specifically, what “things” Carlson thinks we need to raise taxes on. Carlson stated that there are, right now, unnamed things that need funding through new taxes. At least that’s how I hear his statement.

[Listen here: Skip Carlson discusses taxes on KFKA AM Colorado 8-31-2012]

It sounds like bridge and highway repairs are two of those things, since Carlson’s comment about taxes came up in the context of the FASTER bill, which raised vehicle registration fees to pay for highway and bridge repair.

Asked by Lentz if he’d repeal FASTER, Carlson said, “Absolutely! I mean, if it’s going to be a tax, let’s make it a tax!”

So for Carlson, you’d guess that basic safety upgrades on roads and bridges might merit a tax increase. But what else?

This would make for a good conversation next time Carlson is on AM Colorado.

If you’ve been soaking up the sound waves from talk radio the past month, you know that Rep. Cory Gardner has been talking a lot about the horribleness of President Obama and the greatness of Romney vice presidential selection Paul Ryan.

For example, here’s Gardner on KFKA’s AM Colorado Aug. 23:

HOST TOM LUCERO: So, Cory, give us your thoughts on the selection of your colleague, Paul Ryan—vice presidential pick by Mitt Romney.

GARDNER: I think it’s a brilliant selection. This is a guy who understands the budget and the economy perhaps better than anybody other than Mitt Romney. This is a person who actually knows the numbers. He has –I’ve seen him personally, I’ve witnessed him personally explain to the president of the United States why his policies have been such a disaster, and why the policies we have pushed forward would actually get this country back on track, [and] do so in a way that was simple for everybody to understand across the country. I’m not sure the president understood it because he continues with his failed policies. But the fact is, Paul Ryan adds a level of excitement and certainly a level of solutions that we were missing. [Listen to the audio here.]

It would be nice if AM Colorado’s co-hosts, Lucero and Devon Lentz, aired out a couple of the controversial issues dogging Ryan.

A good one for Gardner would be personhood, because Gardner, like Ryan, supports it, and has left no doubt about it in the past.

Gardner didn’t co-sponsor it federal personhood legislation, like Ryan did, but he’s been a full-on endorser of personhood amendments in Colorado.

This means both Gardner and Ryan oppose common forms of birth control, as well as all abortion, even in the case of rape and incest.

So, is this part of the reason Gardner thinks Ryan is a brilliant selection?

Or does the brilliance emanate from Ryan’s proposal to partially privatize Medicare? Is Gardner worried that a disproportionate number of healthy retirees would use their Medicare vouchers to buy health insurance from private companies, leaving Medicare to serve the less healthy population, which, in turn, could cause Medicare costs and Medicare premiums to rise, sending even more of the healthier retirees to the private sector as Medicare costs spiral out of control?

A report from the liberal Center on Policy and Budget Priorities concluded in March:

The budget resolution developed by House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan (R-WI) would make significant changes to Medicare. It would replace Medicare’s current guarantee of coverage with a premium-support voucher, raise the age of eligibility from 65 to 67, and reopen the “doughnut hole” in Medicare’s coverage of prescription drugs. Together, these changes would shift substantial costs to Medicare beneficiaries and (with the simultaneous repeal of health reform) leave many 65- and 66-year olds without any health coverage at all. The plan also would likely lead to the gradual demise of traditional Medicare by making its pool of beneficiaries smaller, older, and sicker — and increasingly costly to cover.

How about Ryan’s votes against the Dream Act, which would allow the best and brightest undocumented teenagers, brought to the U.S. illegally by their parents, to become productive members of our society?

Why is that so brilliant?

The list of interesting topics goes on and on, and it’s more interesting to debate it than to hear Gardner’s platitudes about Ryan.

As it happens, I’ll be discussing “media bias” tomorrow morning at 7:40 on KFKA’s “AM Colorado,” with Lucero and Lentz.

Maybe I’ll be able to convince them to bring in more viewpoints on their show more often, or at least bring back Lynn Bartels, who was on their program weekly during the legislative session.