I like watching how Tea Party radio plays a role in the care and feeding of radical ideas. Here’s a small example.

This summer, I had a good honest conversation with Ken Clark, co-host of Grassroots Radio Colorado (KLZ 560AM), about what would happen to kids if the state of Colorado required their parents to pay more for their children’s government health insurance.

Clark agreed with me that there’s a risk that some kids’ health would suffer, but he said there are risks with running up more government debt too. (Sen. Greg Brophy has said the same thing.)

Then my on-air conversation with Clark moved to the bigger picture. He talked about how individual generosity, not government, should replace the safety net in America. That’s a theme you hear a lot on conservative talk radio, and often Ayn Rand’s name gets tossed in the mix.

Around the same time I had my conversation with Clark, Rep. Mike Coffman published an op-ed in the Littleton Independent taking a similar stand, but pointing to a place, a model, where the economy is booming in the absence of the economy-killing safety net.

Coffman refers to the China, which he presents as a model free-market economy, saddled unfortunately with political repression.

Here’s what he wrote in the Independent May 22 about a trip he took to China:

Coffman: “No doubt, it felt strange to travel to a country that is the largest holder of U.S. debt, continues to expand its industrial base at the expense of ours, and has enjoyed sustained economic growth based on the free market principles that we have long abandoned in favor of the redistributionist policies of a welfare state. The ruling elite of China are communists in name only but cling to power based solely on an ideology of economic growth that most of the population accepts in exchange for a complete lack of political freedom. The government knows that if they are unable to sustain economic growth then the Chinese people will question their authoritarian rule and unrest will follow. The Chinese are nationalistic in their pride; in only three decades this economic experiment has already lifted a third of their nation out of abject poverty.

Coffman voted for the Ryan budget, which, among other things, phases out Medicare, but this sounds like Coffman wants to go further, to the Grassroots-Radio-Colorado zone, where freedom means the poor and sick and lowly folks rely on donations.

And, lo, who picked up on Coffman’s point in early November? Michele Bachmann! For those of you who haven’t been paying attention to her lately, here’s what she said:

Bachmann: “The ‘Great Society’ has not worked, and it’s put us into the modern welfare state. If you look at China, they don’t have food stamps. If you look at China, they’re in a very different situation. They save for their own retirement security…They don’t have the modern welfare state and China’s growing. And so what I would do is look at the programs that LBJ gave us with the Great Society and they’d be gone.”

Bachmann puts more meat on Coffman’s China concept. No Social Security. No food stamps. No pesky Great Society programs to sink the economy and hold back the poor from thriving.

Now I’m expecting Grassroots Radio Colorado to start talking about the beauty of economic freedom in China, to bring things full circle in the Tea Party echo chamber.

You wonder how anyone could read former Colorado Senator Hank Brown’s recent comments to Republicans, that a federal candidate’s position on abortion really doesn’t matter, and not think of failed Colorado Senate candidate Ken Buck, Rep. Cory Gardner, and others who made similar statements, even though a quick Google search shows just how incredibly important abortion issues are in politics at the federal level.

Here’s what Brown said Thursday, as quoted by the Colorado Statesman:

Noting that he suspected most of the Republicans in the room disagreed with him about that — and adding that “Colorado, as you know, is the second-most pro-choice in the nation” — he argued that the [abortion] issue shouldn’t take center stage in elections because it’s out of the hands of politicians in Washington and just divides voters.

“The reality is, that’s a constitutional interpretation. The people you elect on that issue don’t have anything to do with that. You don’t vote on allowing or not allowing abortion in the U.S. Senate or the U.S. Congress. It’s never even an issue,” he said, adding that most Republicans agree the federal government shouldn’t subsidize abortions.

“So for Republican candidates, there isn’t any aspect of that pro-life, pro-choice issue that ever results in a vote in Congress,” he said, noting that in rare cases Senators can weigh in on the fitness of Supreme Court nominees and influence longer-term policy on abortion.

Thank goodness reporters in Colorado didn’t let Ken Buck get away with it when he said essentially the same thing last year.

Here’s a fine example of a reporter holding Buck’s feet to the fire in one televised debate, if you want to take a trip down memory lane. That’s just one case of Colorado journalists doing their jobs and mapping out the steps of the abortion buckpedal for citizens. The Ft. Collins Coloradoan didn’t let Gardner forget his stances on abortion either.

If you look at what happens in Congress, you can see that reporters are obviously right that these issues are not just abstract theoretical distractions, like Hank Brown would have you believe.

They make a big difference in politics as practiced in the Beltway, where you can’t predict what votes will be taken for what reason and when.

Remember that Obamacare almost fell apart over abortion wedge issues, with Democrats and Republicans falling on both sides.

And in March, abortion issues, including a dispute over funding for Planned Parenthood, nearly shut down the federal government, as negotiations stalled, with Gardner and Tipton among those digging in their feet on abortion. Also on the disputed chopping block were federal funds for international organizations that provide women’s health care in the world’s most impoverished countries, where the absence of these services translates into hundreds of thousands of deaths each year.

Maybe some people don’t want to take it seriously that the national GOP platform calls not only for an anti-abortion amendment to the U.S. Constitution, but also for legislation changing the definition of a person under the 14th Amendment to include fertilized eggs, or zygotes. But how can you not take this seriously, given the strange unpredictability of abortion politics and that the GOP has a shot at controlling both houses of Congress and the White House in about a year?

Herman Cain, Newt Gingrich, Cory Gardner, Mike Coffman, Doug Lamborn, Scott Tipton, or any other federal candidate, can’t say they favor personhood and then expect it to mean nothing to reporters. Sorry.

Reporters know that one of their most basic functions is to air out issues so citizens can understand where the candidates stand and what they’ll do if elected.

And so, Hank Brown, with due respect, journalists were right in 2010 not to accept the GOP post-primary cries that abortion issues mattered so little compared to jobs that they need not be discussed. And they should continue to matter a lot to journalists today and every day.

You learn lots of little things when you listen to talk radio, and many of them you could do without knowing, like lawyer Dan Caplis’ assessment of Tim Tebow’s football skills.

But other small stuff catches your attention, like the fact that Colorado Attorney General John Suthers wants everyone to have health insurance.

You might think Suthers is the last person in Colorado who wants universal coverage, given that he’s pushing a lawsuit to stop Obamacare.

But that’s what he told KNUS morning host Steve Kelley Nov. 18:

SUTHERS: The founders never envisioned the federal government would be in the healthcare business. The individual mandate requiring every individual to buy insurance is premised, Congress said, on their Commerce Power, their power to regulate commerce among several states. In fact, the Commerce Power has been broadly construed to allow Congress to essentially regulate any economic activity that impacts interstate commerce. But therein lies the rub: this would be the first time in history that Congress will be reaching out to every individual American and saying we are going to punish you for your economic inactivity. For not engaging in commerce because your failure to do so impacts the marketplace by imposing burdens on other people who do buy insurance.

KELLEY: But aren’t they assuming [Obamacare] is for our own good though? Really, the betterment of everyone.

SUTHERS: Well, that’s right and that is kind of the typical liberal response. And that is what I get most. Gee, this is a good thing. And indeed it is. We want everybody to have insurance. [BigMedia emphasis]

So, how do we get everyone covered, like Suthers wants?

Why Steve Kelley didn’t ask him is beyond me, because it’s the most basic follow up question you can think of for anyone who trashes Obamacare in one breath and says they want the 44 million uninsured Americans to have health insurance in the next.

Now back to the little things you learn on talk radio.

Back in February, Suthers told KOA’s Mike Rosen that the states can require citizens to buy health insurance, not the feds:

SUTHERS: The state can exercise any power that the citizens don’t deprive them of in the Constitution. So unless you put a provision in the state constitution saying the state couldn’t force you to buy auto insurance or health insurance…that was one that we just voted on that in November, that’s what that was all about. Then the state can force you to do that.

You might wonder if I was mistakengly quoting Mitt Romney not John Suthers, because he’s been saying Romneycare is well and good for Massachusetts, but Obamacare is sick and bad for America.

And if you’re thinking that Suthers must have been talking to Romney, you might be right, because Suthers backed Romney in 2008 and remains on the Romney train to this day. Suthers didn’t endorse Romneycare, as far as I know, but he seems open to it, and it’s a question Kelley should keep in mind for next time.

UPDATE: This blog post was corrected on 8-7-2-12. Scott Tipton did not support the personhood measure in 2010, as previously reported here.

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Another attempt at passing a personhood amendment, defining zygotes as people, would almost certainly fail if it makes the Colorado ballot next year, given that it’s gone down decisively twice in a row.

So journalists covering the announcement today by personhood backers that they are petitioning  to put the measure on the ballot shouldn’t get bogged down in the old questions of which forms of the Pill this amendment would ban. It’s well-known to Coloradans that common forms of birth control would be banned.

The focus for reporters should be the politics of having a personhood measure on the ballot in 2012, in a swing state like Colorado.

So I attended today’s news conference announcing the personhood petition drive to make sure these issues were raised by reporters, and since they were not, I filled in the journalistic gap.

I asked Kristi Brown, who’s changed her name from Kristi Burton since she sponsored the first personhood amendment with her father in 2008, if she expected to get the same support from major candidates that her measure had gotten previously.

Kristi Brown announces effort to put personhood on 2012 ballot

I mean, you can argue that without a Republican primary, GOP candidates like Mike Coffman and Cory Gardner might not endorse the 2012 measure, given its apparent unpopularity with voters, especially women.

“I haven’t personally talked to [Coffman and Gardner],” Brown told me.

“I know Cory Gardner is very conservative, has really good stands. I talked to him on the 2008 amendment. He was very, very supportive. He was one of our main supporters. So I would guess that he would.”

When she says a main supporter what does she mean?

“Very supportive,” she said. “He would come to events for us. He talked about it.”

Here’s Gardner at one personhood event.

Colorado Right to Life’s website lists Mike Coffman as a supporter of personhood 2010 as well, with the statement: “Incumbent Republican Mike Coffman is on record supporting Personhood and is on record as Pro-Life with no exceptions. However, he does not appear to have co-sponsored the Personhood legislation introduced in Congress. We hope that he would vote to support such legislation if he had the opportunity, as he has pledged.”

I asked Gualberto GarciaJones, who wrote this year’s amendment, which has more expansive and precise language than last year’s, if he thought presidential candidate Mitt Romney would support his amendment this time, given that he’s changed his position over the years. Garcia Jones said Romney is known as a flip flopper and that his group would persevere regardless of the positions of Democratic or Republican politicians. (No major Democrats support the effort, as far as I know, but Michele Bachman, Herman Cain, and Newt Gingrich back personhood, and it’s endorsed in a plank of the national GOP platform.

Asked if he thought he’d get Gardner on board for personhood this time, former gubernatorial candidate and “Generations Radio” host Kevin Swanson, said, “I think so,” adding that he hopes to get Democrats as well. (In his prepared remarks, Swanson repeated his view that said Dr. Suess summed up the amendment best when he wrote, “A person’s a person no matter how small.”)

“I think it’s real possible we could get some strong Republican support,” but he said he hadn’t been in touch with Tipton or Gardner.

In response to the personhood petition drive, Planned Parenthood of the Rocky Mountains’ President Vicki Cowart said in a statement: “Colorado voters spoke loud and clear in the 2008 and 2010 elections when they voted down the so called “personhood” amendments by a 3-to-1 margin each time. No means no, yet Personhood USA and Personhood Colorado continue to ignore the wishes of Colorado voters. Planned Parenthood of the Rocky Mountains will for the third time since 2008, work with our over 90 coalition partners to educate Colorado voters about this initiative which aims to ban abortion in all circumstances.”Historically, Colorado has been a state that votes in favor of trusting women and doctors. At the end of the day, Coloradans trust women to make personal, private decisions about their own body with their doctor, their family, their faith and without interference from the courts or lawyers.”

As Mississippi debated then defeated a “personhood” amendment that would have granted legal rights to fertilized human eggs, multiple media outlets reported that GOP presidential contender Mitt Romney refused to clarify whether he supported the measure, which would ban not only abortions but also common forms of birth control.

But no media outlet that I could find reported that four years ago Romney said he supported the federal equivalent of the Mississippi personhood measure.

The federal version would expand the definition of a “person” under the 14th Amendment of the U.S. Constitution to include the “unborn.”

And if you’re Mitt Romney, and you aren’t shy about your position that life begins at conception, then your support of legislation granting legal rights to the “unborn” is an endorsement of personhood at the national level.

On August 6, 2007, Romney was asked on ABC’s “Good Morning America” about the following plank of the Republican platform, which, incidentally, remains in the national GOP platform to this day:

“We support a Human Life Amendment to the Constitution, and we endorse legislation to make it clear that the 14th Amendment’s protections apply to unborn children.”

Romney was asked, “Do you support that part of the Republican platform?”

“You know, I do support the Republican platform, and I support that being part of the Republican platform, and I’m pro-life,” Romney told ABC.

So, for almost 4 years, you had to assume Romney supported federal personhood.

But things changed in September of this year, at a GOP presidential forum in South Carolina. When Princeton Professor Robert George asked Romney specifically about the federal personhood measure, Romney flipped, saying he’d oppose it.

George asked Romney and other GOP candidates:

Section Five of the 14th Amendment expressly authorizes the Congress by appropriate legislation to enforce the guarantees of due process and equal protection contained in the amendment’s first section. Now, as someone who believes in the inherent and equal dignity of all members of the human family including the child in the womb, would you as president propose to Congress appropriate legislation pursuant to the 14th Amendment to protect human life in all stages and conditions?

Michele Bachmann, Herman Cain, and Newt Gingrich all said they would do so. But Romeny replied:

That would create obviously a constitutional crisis. Could that happen in this country? Could there be circumstances where that might occur? I think it’s reasonable that something of that nature might happen someday. That’s not something I would precipitate.

Two months later, in October, Romney told Fox News’ Mike Huckabee that he “absolutely” would have signed an amendment to the Massachussets constitution establishing that life begins a conception.

Journalists (from The New York Times, The New Yorker, and others) tried to get Romney to clarify whether his response to Huckabee meant that he supported Mississippi’s personhood amendment, but his campaign did not issue a clear statement.

For example, asked about personhood last week, Romney’s spokesperson Gail Gitcho told Politico’s Ben Smith, that Romney believes that life begins at conception and favors a “Human Life Amendment that overturns Roe vs. Wade and sends the issue back to the states,” but she stopped short of saying Romney opposes a state personhood measure. (A “human life amendment” would overturn Roe v. Wade, without giving legal protections to a fertilized egg as a person.)

Gitcho’s statement to Politico above, and her additional comments that Romney is “supportive of efforts to ensure recognition that life begins at conception” and that “these matters should be left up to states to decide,” leaves open the possibility for support of a Mississippi-style personhood amendment. In fact, that would be consistent with support for “efforts to ensure recognition that life begins at conception,” wouldn’t it?

Similarly, Romney’s own statement last month to a voter in Iowa, who asked if he wants to ban birth control, sheds no light on his view of the personhood issue: “I don’t,” Romney replied. “I’m sorry, life begins at conception; birth control prevents conception.” This is meaningless because, as you know if you follow the complexities of this issue, personhood supporters don’t oppose “birth control,” like condoms that don’t wipe out fertilized eggs. And they don’t use the term “birth control” for IUDs and some forms of the pill that do destroy fertilized eggs, or have the potential to do so. Those are called abortifacients. So Romney’s statement that birth control prevents conception is perfectly acceptable to the personhood crowd, and he used the same logic to veto a bill allowing the use of the morning-after pill in Massachusetts in 2005.

Romney’s changing position on the personhood issue, which may reflect his campaign’s concerns about polling on the issue as well as the experience of failed GOP Colorado Senate Candidate Ken Buck, has frustrated the folks at Personhood USA, which has backed state-based initiatives like the one in Mississippi.

“Romney made positive comments on Mike Huckabee’s show, but we’ve heard mixed messages,” Jennifer Mason, Communications Director for Personhood USA told me, adding that at one point in the past she viewed Romney a Personhood backer. “We would like to know if he does support Personhood. America wants to know specifically how he falls on the pro-life issues. We haven’t heard anything since the Huckabee show about his position on Personhood. We’re still waiting.”

Asked if appropriate changes with respect to the definition of a person in the 14th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution would constitute “personhood” at the federal level, Mason said:

A federal personhood amendment is our ultimate goal, but it really depends on the language.  If it protects every human being , no matter of stage of development, size, location, gender or race, then we would support it. In fact that is what we are hoping for.

What if someone like Romney believes “life begins at conception” and also supports 14th Amendment protection of the “unborn?” Does that combination do the trick for Mason?

“I believe so,” she replied.

Like Personhood USA, Planned Parenthood also views changes to the 14th Amendment as the federal approach to personhood.

“Yes, it is fair to say that Planned Parenthood believes the effort to change the 14^th amendment is a federal version of ‘personhood’ measures we’ve seen in the states,” said Monica McCafferty, Director of Marketing and Communications for Planned Parenthood of the Rocky Mountains. “They are all seeking to provide constitutional protection to fertilized eggs, embryos, and fetuses at all stages of development, regardless of viability.”

So, until Romney stops hiding from journalists, and announces where he stands on personhood, reporters should no longer state, as as the Las Vegas Sun did Thursday that “he has never voiced explicit support for it.” or even, as Politco stated Nov. 9, that it’s unclear “he supports the Mississippi law or others like it.”

Instead, the most fair and accurate way for journalists to describe Romney’s position on personhood is to write that he’s flip flopped on the issue over the years, first for personhood on the federal level (in 2007), then against it (in Sept. 2011), and finally maybe in favor a state version (last month).

On Kevin Swanson’s “Generations Radio” show, broadcast Nov. 11 from his basement in eastern Colorado, Colorado Right to Life Vice President Leslie Hanks vowed to press ahead next year with a third try at passing a Personhood Amendment in Colorado.

Hanks sounded mildly disappointed with Mississippi’s rejection Tues. of a Personhood measure by a 58-to-42-percent margin, but she told Swanson that the Personhood movement is “moving in the right direction,” gaining 27% in CO in 2008, 30% 2010, and 42% in Mississippi this week.

Hanks invited Swanson’s listeners to a “March for Life” Jan. 21 at noon on the west steps of the CO Capitol, where the third attempt to pass a Personhood Amendment in Colorado will be officially launched and petitions for gathering signatures to put the measure on the ballot will be available. Mike Adams of conservative Townhall.com and others will speak, Hanks to Swanson, at the “Round Three Personhood Colorado” event.

She told Swanson that Personhood activists in Florida are gathering signitures now, as are supporters in Ohio and Montana. Coloradans were the first in the country to vote on a Personhood amendment in 2008.

“We won’t quit until justice has been served for all those innocent children who have been killed,” Hanks told Swanson.

“This is the kind of thing that bothers the other side,” Swanson concluded at the end of his broadcast. “They realize, we’re not giving up. And that really irritates them. And I’ll tell ya, to be honest, I kind of enjoy that.”

Swanson, who’s Nov. 11 broadcast was titled “Making Progress on Personhood,” is a pastor, who tells his listeners that his radio show “is trying to put some things back together during the decline of western civilization, the breakdown of faith, family, and freedom, the breakdown of morality, and of course the massive, massive increase in the state, that is statism, tyranny, government tyranny.”

The following fictitious conversation between GOP presidential candidate Mitt Romney and failed Colorado Senate candidate Ken Buck illustrates the questions reporters should ask Romney, now that he’s told Fox News that he “absolutely” would have signed a “constitutional amendment that would have established the definition of life at conception.”

Romney: God I wish the Personhood folks would take a hint from last night’s vote in Mississippi and just disappear.

Buck: Mitt, the Personhood folks don’t go away. They stick around, they don’t compromise, and they pay attention. That’s why I endorsed their amendment in the primary. I needed every primary vote I could get, like you do down in Iowa.

Romney: Then what happened?

Buck: After I squeaked by in the primary, reporters started asking questions, and the whole Personhood thing got way complicated.

Romney: Why?

Buck: Well, first good reporters are going to want to know if you oppose birth control. You got it wrong the other day in Iowa, Mitt, when you said, “Life begins at conception. Birth control prevents conception” Some forms of birth control, including some forms of the Pill kill fertilized eggs. Those are post-conception eggs, Mitt. Any journalist worth her press credential will figure this out, as reporters in Denver did. And if not, a blogger will. And you can’t be against the Pill.

Romney: hmmm.

Buck: And another fair question reporters asked me was, of course, about the morning after pill or Plan B, which is routinely offered to women who are raped. The Personhood amendment would ban the morning-after pill, as Denver reporters pointed out.

Romney: So that’s easy. You un-endorse the Personhood Amendment.

Buck: Exactly. You got that answer right real fast. You must have some experience doing that kind of thing. That’s what I did, though I told reporters I still supported Personhood “as a concept.” But, if they’re doing their jobs, reporters will ask you a bunch of other questions that hang there logically.

Romney: Like what?

Buck: First, if you continue to say that life begins at conception, good reporters will ask you if you think a women who’s raped should have the option of having an abortion. One talk radio host in Denver asked me if I thought a teenage girl raped by her teenage brother should be forced to give birth to a baby fathered by her rapist brother. I had to say yes.

Romney: Maybe you should have said no.

Buck: I had already un-endorsed the Personhood Amendment. Reporters were paying too much attention to let me flip flop, without generating big headlines, if I abandoned principled not-even-in-the-case-of-rape-and-incest stance.

Buck: As the campaign moved along, my opponents began running ads saying I was against common forms of birth control and against a women’s right to choose, even in the case of rape and incest. So these issues kept coming up.

Romney: Couldn’t you just say, hey, it’s the economy.

Buck: My supporters and I tried that. I said these are settled matters, and jobs are what people care about. But good reporters jumped all over me and said that women care about these issues, and they matter to women voters.

Romney: Jobs matter more.

Buck: Maybe. But I watched my lead in Colorado vanish as these issues seemed to take hold among swing voters, particularly women.

Romney: I think I can dodge reporters better than you did, Ken.

Buck: We’ll see, Mitt.

Denver talk show host Bob Enyart says Mitt Romney is lying to the GOP base when he says he’s a “pro-family, pro-life” conservative, and Enyart launched a national campaign to spread to spread the word.

Enyart has also been a tireless supporter of Colorado’s “personhood amendments,” which would have codified Enyart’s belief that life begins at conception.

So, now that Romney is on the record saying he “absolutely” believes, like Enyart, that life begins at conception (and Romney would sign a Constitutional Amendment to make it law) has Enyart’s view of Romney changed?

“Romney needs the Republican base and so he is happy to lie to them for their votes,” Enyart emailed me. “But of course, slavery ended here and elsewhere in the world even though many who eventually supported emancipation in reality hated the slaves themselves. Similarly with child killing, the goal is to make open support of abortion unthinkable, regardless of the hardness of one’s heart.”

With the vote on Personhood taking place today in Mississippi, reporters should find some way, somehow to ask Romney what he thinks about Personhood supporters like Enyart, who has national standing on this issue, who say he’s lying. Or, for that matter, what Romney thinks of Democrats who say his support of Personhood makes him unelectable.

Enyart is the only media figure in Colorado who’s been tracking the Mississippi Personhood vote closely.

On a Nov. broadcast, Enyart interviewed his wife, Cheryl Enyart, who’s on the ground in Mississippi, along with Colorado Right to Life Vice President Leslie Hanks, fighting for passage of the Personhood, called Amendment 26, there.

Bob Enyart asked his wife to compare the response she’s getting in Mississippi to the response from Colorado.

“It’s overwhelmingly positive, whereas in Colorado we didn’t get as much positive response,” Cheryl Enyart replied.

In Colorado, her husband joked, “The most common response is migrating birds, whatever that is.”

“Out here, it seems like some doctors really are supporting the amendment, whereas we didn’t receive that kind of support back in Colorado.”

“Of course, there were some in the medical community that were pro-personhood,” Bob said, “but it seems basically a different culture there [in Mississippi]. And we can thank God for that.”

You’d expect campaign workers like Enyart’s wife to be optimistic, but whether Personhood wins or loses in Mississippi, today and tomorrow would both be good days to see more in the media on Romney’s thoughts on personhood.

An Oct. 9 story on 9News presented an intelligent overview of the importance of Colorado in the next presidential election.

The piece was set against the backdrop of real-life 5^th graders on a playground, looking mystified.

They were no doubt there to catch the attention of the apolitical TV viewer.

For the political junkie, the kids also might have been the most interesting part, because they were, in fact, cute. And the information and interview with pollster/consultant Floyd Ciruli was actually really important for the mass audience, but pretty much standard stuff.

That is, until Ciruli delivered his closer:

“If the Republicans can come up with a strong candidate, then it’s [the presidential race] going to be an unbelievable knockout.”

It sounded like something a fifth grader might have said. So I listened again, to make sure he said it. He did.

Then I thought, which GOP candidate is going to hit Obama with an unbelievable knockout?

Romney? No. Cain? No. Perry? No. Bachmann? No. Gingrich? No. Huntsman? No. Any realistic Republican candidate? No.

These Republicans might deliver an unbelievable knockout to each other, but to Obama? Nothing would lead you to think so. Winning would be a trick for any of them, if you believe the polling.

So I emailed Ciruli and asked him.

He wrote back to me that he meant to say that a “strong Republican candidate will produce a knock down fight.”

I thanked Ciruli and asked Reporter/Anchor Matt Flener at 9News if his station corrects stuff like this.

I was happy to hear back from him that 9News will update Ciruli’s quote on the web story.

UPDATE: Talking Points Memo picks up on the post below, adding, among other things, the quote from Lakey that it’s cruel to criticize Michelle Obama’s clothes, but “”It’s cruel for her to talk about my hamburgers that I want to eat all the time.”

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Colorado Springs talk-radio host Jimmy Lakey was sitting at a cigar club at some point, he didn’t say when, and he heard someone refer to Michelle Obama as “Chewbacca.”

He’d never used the word himself, he told his radio audience Aug. 14, but “at the cigar club, someone used the phrase Chewbacca, and everyone knew or assumed who this person was talking about.”

“I’ve tested it,” Lakey said on 740 KVOR, laughing. “I’ve done group testing, and I’ve said, if I say Chewbacca, what do you think? And, I’m telling you. I’m in so much trouble right now.”

In trouble, he said, with his wife, whom he told about the Chewbacca talk at the cigar club.

“She lectured me, and told me that was wrong, and that was crossing the line, and how rude that was,” Lakey said into his microphone for the world to hear.

But then one day Lakey showed his wife some photos from Facebook of Michelle Obama dressed in different outfits.

His wife, the “nice one,” he said,  told him she looked like a halfback.

“If you’re the First Lady, you shouldn’t wear things that make you look like a halfback,” she said to him.

Lakey replied to his wife: “What’s the difference between you saying she looks like a halfback and someone else saying the name Chewbacca? I don’t get the difference. I just don’t get the difference.” [Editor’s note: A halfback is a football player. Chewbacca is an ape-like character in Star Wars films.]

After he started telling this story on the radio, Lakey said he got a Facebook message from a listener. The caller claimed to be the guy from the cigar club, Lakey said, the person Lakey first heard using the name Chewbacca. The guy who started this whole thing.

It turns out, this guy’s wife gets mad at him, too, for referring to Michelle Obama as Chewbacca.

“I had a guy just post on my Facebook fan page,” Lakey told anyone who hadn’t turned off the radio yet. Then he read the Facebook post:

Hey Jimmy, I smoke cigars, and I referred to Michele Obama as Chewbacca since 2009 (laughs). I wonder if I’m the guy you heard call her that. …My wife has told me not to call her that in front of my kids. But my boys, got bless them, have picked up on it and they have marched forward with it…. I wanted to identify myself and state that I cannot stand the Obamas. I took my boys out of school to attend the Tea Party rallies, and they were magnificent.

Along the way, Lakey had told his audience that he thought calling Michelle Obama Chewbacca was “crass and a little bit much.”

But that didn’t stop him from saying everything he said, plus Lakey offered up this:

Chewbacca! I didn’t say it! (laughs) No! I will not take the heat on this. I did not call her Chewbacca.  No. I get in trouble. My wife, when I told her this, she yelled at me. I thought it was kind of funny.

After I listened to a recording of Lakey’s story last week, I sent him an email with this question:

You said on the radio Aug. 14 you thought it was “kind of funny” for Michele Obama to be called Chewbacca. You also said the comment was “crass and a little bit much,” but you went on to repeat the phrase and laugh repeatedly. Do you really think that using “Chewbacca” to describe Michele Obama is kind of funny?

I didn’t hear back from him.

Neither did he tell me a couple weeks ago why he laughed hysterically and grotesquely when a caller compared Michele Obama to a character in the Planet of the Apes.

And, as I explain here, Lakey deleted questions about his on-air behavior that I posted on his Facebook fan page, where he describes himself as “humanitarian & entrepreneur, and a former candidate for U.S. Congress in Colorado’s CD7 and…a frequent guest host for radio talk shows across the USA.”

I don’t take his brush-off personally, because he didn’t respond to the Colorado Springs Gazette either.

So that’s where the story ends for now.

If you want to ask him what the @?!!!** he’s thinking and why, here’s his email address: jimmy.lakey@cumulus.com. Lakey’s station, KVOR, was just recently bought by Cumulus Media, Inc, one of the biggest radio conglomerates in the U.S.

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Below are the segments of the show during which Lakey tells his Chewbacca story.

If you thought the written version above was scary or offensive, you’ll find the radio-show clips below even worse, because his laughter adds a creepy dimension that could not convey.

Lakey: “Chewbacca! I didn’t say it,” Part 1:

Lakey “Chewbacca! I didn’t say it,” Part 2 (later in the show):