You can’t win if you’re Rep. Ken Buck and you go on Tea-Party radio, just after you’ve voted to retain Tea-Party anathema John Boehner as Speaker of the U.S. House.

You’ve already been called out for treason on Facebook, and you have to say that’s wrong. On the other hand, you have to show that you understand why liberty listeners hate Boehner so much.

Under tough questioning by guest-host Nancy Rumfelt on KFKA last week, here’s how Buck threaded the needle.

Buck (at 12:40): “I want to face people.  And especially the people that thought they were being cute in putting ugly things on my Facebook.  You know, if you want to say something nasty to me, say it to my face.  Don’t put something on Facebook.  What happened yesterday was just a disgrace.  You know, go to Trey Gaudy’s town hall meeting and call him traitor. Say that he committed treason. It’s just ridiculous.  And yes, we voted for John Boehner.  We thought it was the best path forward, but it is not an act of treason.  And it’s just silly to use those terms.”

But don’t even think Buck will slide toward the middle:

Buck (at 6:50 below): “Speaker and the leadership team know that they cannot count on me when they move to the middle, that I will be voting against leadership’s efforts in certain areas, especially is true when it comes to the fiscal issues, the appropriations bills and the regulatory issues. And I include Obamacare in that. But absolutely. The people in the 4th Congressional District can count on Ken Buck to be with the conservative votes when it comes to the bills that are coming up in the future.”

Listen to Ken Buck on KFKA’s Amy Oliver Show, Jan. 7, 2015, guest hosted by Nancy Rumfelt.

One line of thinking, on talk radio, in response to the funeral of a lesbian woman being booted from New Hope Ministries in Lakewood is: blame the grieving friends and family!

Check out this excerpt from KNUS’ Kelley and Company, with hosts Steve Kelley and Krista Kafer yesterday:

KRISTA KAFER:  Well, at first blush, it sound like those that wanted to put the picture [of the lesbian married couple kissing] up really are the ones that are at fault here.  You know, churches have rules.  I mean, – we have had a conversation for the last week about, you know, the Muslim church is saying you have to cover your hair if you want to come in.  Organizations, places have rules about how you – you know, you go into certain schools, for example, you can’t wear t-shirts that have emblems on them or messages on them.  Different organizations have different rules about what you can publicly display.  They did not want a picture of her proposing to her wife.  They didn’t think that was appropriate because it is antithetical to the scriptures.    This is a Christian church.  That would be antithetical.  Why would you necessarily want to have that up?  I can understand that they’ve got these rules, and they ask that people abide by them.

STEVE KELLEY:  [reading from, or referring to a report of the incident]  […]  [Gary] Rulando, who is the pastor, says it’s a shame that Collier’s friends are using her death to push an agenda.  But her friends are angry.  They believe more than 100 people – including Collier’s family—will show up to this rally.  Uh, arg, I – you know, somebody died, here, and you — [sigh of exasperation]

KAFER:  I think the blame, obviously, is with the friends for pushing an agenda.  They could have had a very dignified funeral at this church.  The church has specific rules in accordance with their scriptures, and you have to remember that the church  exists because of those scriptures.

KELLEY:  We’ve got to call this church!  We have to understand what are some of the nuances to this.  Was she a member of the church?  About this video, or was she – was the family a member of this church?  And why – and I don’t want to be critical of a family, especially after the loss of their relative – but why would you not make that known? I don’t know, logistically, if you’re going to say – if you’re going to look at a video and she’s proposing to another woman, and so forth.  And then the church, I think, has a responsibility as well, to have vetted this to some extent duri— right before the service is to begin, to have this —

KAFER:  Maybe that’s when they got the video.  Maybe  they hadn’t had a chance to vet it beforehand.  And again, I think the fault lies with the friends.  And there is a bit of a trend, here, where people want to force Christian institutions – be it the church, be it Christian owners of a business like Hobby Lobby, be it Jack the Baker – where you want to force other people  to condone, celebrate, you know, go along with – more that go along with – actually celebrate and be part of decisions that they disagree with.

KELLEY:  Something that is antithetical to their belief system, or whatever.  And everybody is entitled – at least, this was a free country.  I don’t know over the last six years, anymore.  Chad, can we make an attempt to reach out to this pastor Rulando at this church?  Okay? And, this would be the New Hope Ministries in Lakewood.  Let’s get a call out there and talk about — and respectfully, if you would ask about the Vanessa Collier funeral and this related rally, here.  Since he was willing to talk to 9news, I can only imagine that he would be willing to talk to us here at 710 KNUS.

KAFER:  Don’t you see a trend?   I mean, they would like to force this church to air that video.  Right?  Or to have aired that video during the funeral.  I see individuals and organizations out there that want to push an agenda, and want to force businesses to, you know – ‘celebrate’ is not the right word, but to condone, to actively push or promote,–

KELLEY:  To accept, basically, in essence.  “Accept.”

KAFER:  Yeah and it—well, and it’s more than – it’s actually ‘promote’.  It’s not – I mean, this church was willing to say, “You know what?  I understand she was not living a Biblical lifestyle, but we want to honor her life.  We want to make sure that we have a beautiful funeral for her, and they made that choice.  But please, please keep this side of her life — .  We can’t promote it.  It’s antithetical to our scriptures.  We can’t have this piece in the video.  We want to send the whole video, but – or air the majority of the video – but we can’t have this picture because it promotes something that is antithetical for our very existence.  The reason that church exists is because of those scriptures.

KELLEY:  This is – it’s similar but much different than Jack Phillips at the Masterpiece Cake Shop.

KAFER: Well, similar in the sense that he has many people who have same sex attractions, many homosexual customers that come in and buy cookies and cakes.  But he says, “You know what?  I don’t want to actively promote same sex marriage because that is not the Biblical definition of marriage.  And I feel it that it would be antithetical to my mainstream Christian values.”

KELLEY: In the context of weddings.  So, here we are – weddings and funerals, two of the highest esteemed ceremonies in humanity, arguably.  I mean, you have various brisses and so forth.  But, in essence, culturally, weddings and funerals.  So, here we are with Jack Phillips saying, “I’m not going to participate.  I’m not going to use my God-given talent because it’s my – it violates my internal faith system.” And he has been roundly criticized, and threatened basically to be run out of business through regulation.  And he has had to—uh, he is not acquiescing, by the way.  It would be helpful, in the context of this too, but now we have a funeral—

KAFER: Well, I —

KELLEY: –where a church is saying, “No! You’re going to have to edit this video.  We cannot.”  How does this promote sexual—I mean, sexual promiscui—or homosexuality? — playing a video at this woman’s funeral?

KAFER: I think they had rules and the family and friends weren’t willing to actually accept those rules.  You have to remember that tolerance means that we are able to coexist peacefully with those with whom we disagree.  Um, tolerance does not mean that we get to coerce people into promoting things that they disagree with.

Last year, conservative talk-radio hosts wrapped their loving arms around a baker for discriminating against a gay couple by refusing to bake them a wedding cake.

The baker said his cake-selling preferences flowed from his religious views, but, as a judge nicely articulated, it was actually factually illegal discrimination based on sexual orientation.

Radio hosts did live broadcasts from the cake shop, hot bigotry was served to anyone listening, and the baker was fined by the great State of Colorado.

Now Colorado Republicans are proposing a law, like they did last year, allowing student clubs to violate campus anti-discrimination policies and still receive university benefits (funds, facilities, etc.). Sponsors include Tim Neville and Laura Woods on the State Senate side, and son Patrick Neville and Stephen Humphrey on the House side.

Similar legislation, allowing raw discrimination against women, gays, or potentially any of us, is under consideration across the country. One, for example, could allow restaurants to refuse service to LGBT people. Or pharmacists to stop filling prescriptions for birth-control pills. Another would permit adoption agencies to reject potential same-sex parents.

Collectively, these bills are referred to as religious-freedom-restoration bills, but a more accurate name is discrimination-restoration legislation. Political observers expect CO Republicans to introduce broader discrimination restoration bills this session, beyond the narrow university-focused proposal currently on the table.

Colorado Attorney General John Suthers was on the radio last month, urging listeners, who were upset about the bigoted baker, to push their legislators to enact bills that allow discrimination under the guise of religious freedom.

Suthers: I think what’s different, Jimmy, and 1964 and the time of the Civil Rights cases is, if a black person when into a restaurant in the South in 1963 and was refused service, he couldn’t walk into a restaurant next door and get service, for the most part.  Everybody was refused service. That’s not the atmosphere we have today. We have this guy, who as a matter of his religious beliefs, would prefer not to do that. We have plenty of guys down the street who are perfectly willing to do it. I just don’t think it’s the same atmosphere. I think the legislature ought to be sensitive to that fact. But the Colorado legislature, with the majority at certain points in time, has not been.

I asked Denise Maes, Public Policy Director of the American Civil Liberties of Colorado, which brought the initial complaint against the baker who refused service to the gay people, to respond to Suthers’ comment:

Maes: The Attorney General is arguing that one should be able to break the law and discriminate because others “down the street” aren’t or won’t.  He misses the entire point and ignores the damage done both to the people who are discriminated against and the business community at large.  No one wants to live or do business in a state where discrimination is the law of the land.

Totally agree.

Suthers himself agrees that, as of now, the law of land forbids the cake-baker-type of discrimination. That’s why, as AG, he pursued a case against the baker, Suthers said on the radio. Below, Suthers explains how he sees Colorado law now. It’s a nice articulation of the way things stand. The problem is, Suthers wants to toss this out the window.

Suthers: We have a law in Colorado, our Public accommodations law. And a couple years ago when Democrats were in charge of both houses, they inserted sexual orientation along with race and gender as protective classes. And so in Colorado, essentially, sexual orientation has essentially the same protection as race in terms of anti-public discrimination laws.

So, if you have a business, whether it be a motel business, restaurant business, cake shop, and hold yourself out to the public, you must abide by this public accommodations law. And in this case, it was alleged, that a gay couple who’d been married in another state, wanted to have a celebration in Colorado, went into this cake shop, were very frank with the owner about what they wanted to do, and he refused to bake them a cake, despite the fact that they could have walked a blocked and got the cake at another bake store….it does appear this individual violated the public accommodations law, so the case was brought…”

Sengenberger: “We’re talking about First Amendment freedom of religion, and if gay activities are in violation of that, and they want to run their business in accordance with their religious views, do they not have legal protection?”

Suthers: “Only if the practice is part of the practice of religion. Therein lies the problem, Jimmy. The reason why I think the state is going to win this case throughout is that baking cakes is not the exercise of religion. If you told the Catholic Church they had to marry gay couples, then you’re violating the First Amendment. It’s complicated, and there is a long line of cases about it, but sadly enough, I think the State is going to win this case.”

Suthers nails it, doesn’t he? The only problem is, he actually wants to make baking cakes a religious activity! And not just baking but everything. Taking photos of a wedding, issuing marriage licences, counseling gay students. Suthers wants religion to be everywhere and in everything, allowing discrimination against anyone anywhere. That may sound extreme, but the potential is seriously there.

It’s what discrimination restoration bills, like the one proposed here in Colorado, would do.

LISTEN TO SUTHERS ON KNUS’ JIMMY SENGENBERGER SHOW, AIRED DEC. 20, 2014. (@ 1:36:00)

CORRECTION: An early version of this post named Patrick Neville as Tim Neville’s brother, instead of as his son.

On KLZ 560-AM’s “Wake Up with Randy Corporon” Friday, former Republican gubernatorial candidate Steve House officially announced his bid to dislodge Ryan Call from his job as Chair of the Colorado Republican Party.

“My phone rings all the way until 10 o’clock at night with people calling me the last three or four days, saying ‘I’m glad you’re going to do it. It is time for a change,’” announced House, whose intention to run against Ryan Call was reported by the Colorado Statesman last week.

Call has weathered a barrage of criticism over his two terms as state chair, mostly from the “liberty” or “Tea-Party” wing of the state GOP for not doing enough to support “grassroots” Republicans.

In November 2013, for example, now State Senator Laura Woods, who was using the name “Laura Waters,” blasted Ryan Call for obstructing the recall effort against Democratic State Sen. Evie Hudak.

On KNUS Peter Boyles’ radio show at the time, Woods, who was organizing the Hudak recall effort, indicated she hadn’t voted for Call as GOP chair, and she said that, thanks to Ryan Call, “at certain doors and in certain phone calls, we’re even fighting against our own party.”

This year, Woods, with heavy support from Rocky Mountain Gun Owners and despite opposition from committees like Protect and Defend Colorado, squeaked by Republican Lang Sias in the GOP primary. She went on to narrowly Democrat incumbent Rachel Zenzinger to take the Westminster State Senate seat, which Woods has to defend again next year, making it a key battleground for control of the Colorado Senate.

The GOP central committee is scheduled to vote on the Call-House contest March 7, but this may change to accommodate the schedules of Republican congressional representatives, House said on air. Call is running with Vice Chair Mark Baisley.

On KLZ, House emphasized the need to help Republican County Chairs respond to the on-the-ground needs of candidates immediately, without obstruction–and with adequate resources.

“Every single county in this state, and there are some that do a great job, needs to better funded, more stable, more capable of training and recruiting candidates so we can win races,” said House on air, adding that Ryan Call has improved things a bit but not enough. “We’re not going to win races from the top down.” He added he will not take a salary.

And, music to the ears of talk-radio hosts like “Righty” Corporon, House offered to set up a regular time to be on KLZ radio and elsewhere to take phone calls and discuss issues.

“Office hours with the chairman will be a big thing for me,” said House, promising to make himself available in multiple venues and platforms to interact with Republicans.

Radio-host Corporon told listeners that Ryan Call has refused to go on his radio show, despite promises to do so.

“I’m blessed in part because I live in a country that has a constitution that is a framework for a just society in my opinion,” House told Corporon. “We don’t adhere to it the way I really want to adhere to it. But it gave me opportunity. So if you start to see that under threat, if you see that this state may not live under conservative principles, constitutional principles, capitalism, you have to get involved to defend the lifestyle you’ve been given.”

Pueblo GOP County Chair called in and endorsed House, because, she said, he believes in “bottom-up, not top-down, management.” House also appears to have the support of  State Attorney General Cynthia Coffman.

“I don’t owe people who are here illegally anything.”

That’s Republican Rep. Ken Buck, making us proud just hours before he was sworn in today as a U.S. Representative from Colorado.

One wonders if Buck would have said the same thing about my interred illegal immigrant Italian inlaws (IIIII), but it doesn’t matter because Buck is in Washington now, not a hundred years ago.

Buck told The Denver Post’s Mark Matthews that he wants to establish a kick-ass guest-worker program for immigrants and then move on, piecemeal, to deal with the 11 million undocumented immigrants already in our country.

But how will he do this for people to whom he owes nothing?

Does Buck feel he owes undocumented human beings no respect? No compassion, not even some level of honor for the work they do in our country–and for the contributions they make to our communities? Apparently not. Nada.

How about a vaccination or two for the undocumented kids? Does Buck owe them that?

Owing nothing to the undocumented people in Colorado amounts to hating them. What else to call it?

Maybe I’m skewed from too much talk radio, but the hate toward immigrants from respectable people in Colorado, like Buck and State Sen. Vicki Marble (who said they spread “the disease”), seems to be on the rise.

Yet, I don’t see reporters noticing. Marble’s ugly comment stunk up my blog post and went nowhere else. Buck’s line was at least reported, which counts for something, but was left hanging. Ugh.

In a piece yesterday outlining the partisan agendas at the state legislature, Denver Post reporter John Frank reported that state Senate and House Republicans are unified in wanting to return tax-surplus funds to taxpayers, as stipulated by TABOR.

Frank wrote Democrats are split on the issue, noting that Senate Democrat Morgan Carroll “supports a move to seek voter approval to spend the money if it comes from an outside ballot initiative effort.”

For perspective, reporters covering this apparent impasse should seek opinions of partisan leaders away from the Capitol, including the bipartisan leaders of Referendum C, which was approved by voters in 2005 and allowed Colorado to hold on to funds that would otherwise have been returned to taxpayers under TABOR.

Opinions from outside-the-dome could be surprising.  In an interview with Colorado Public Radio’s Ryan Warner, Colorado Treasurer Walker Stapleton said he was open to not returning TABOR refunds:

Warner: “You were a vocal critic of Amendment 66, which would have raised taxes to pay for education. In the way that you got involved with that, would you throw your support behind something that you felt was responsible and meant the state held on to the TABOR refunds?”

Stapleton: “Absolutely. TABOR is the popular whipping post, but Gallagher and Amendment 23 have also created a Gordian Knot of automatic ratchets in the budget and we need to free ourselves of automatic ratchets and get more control over where we spend dollars and more results-oriented spending for our budget going forward in the future. But I’m not opposed reflexively to anything, other than I’m opposed to anything that doesn’t give taxpayers a voice in where their money is being spent.”

Stapleton also said: “The more hopeful way to look at it is, if we in government do a good job and do our jobs in hopefully explaining to people where money is going to go and why resources are needed, that people will be reasonable enough to support fixes to our budget problems in Colorado.”

In what appears to be his first comment on his legislative activities, State Rep. Gordon “Dr. Chaps” Klingenschmitt told Rocky Mountain Community Radio’s Bente Birkland last month:

Dr. Chaps: I feel like I’m drinking from a fire hose. There has been so much information thrown at us, and the budget process is very complicated. You have the Joint Budget Committee. You have the Appropriations Committee. You have the Finance Committee. And then you have the fiscal-note staff.

I’m just honored to be here, following the footsteps of all the people who’ve gone before us for 150 years.

The Colorado General Assembly convenes this week, and reporters from across the country will naturally be drawn to Klingenschmitt, as they should be. But does he deserve to be quoted even for the “drinking-from-the-fire-hose” cliche?

I say yes. He’s a star, having most recently been named one of “America’s 20 Craziest Politicians” by GQ magazine. (The men’s magazine zeroed in on his battles against lesbians.) People are legitimately curious about him.

But the key in covering Klingenschmitt will be to find out if what you think he’s saying comports to what he’s really thinking. Like the fire hose comment. Seems innocuous enough to a normal person. But with Klingenschmitt, you never know until you ask him about it. When else, for example, did Dr. Chaps feel like he was drinking from a fire hose? And what does it mean to him?

Yesterday, I wrote about a couple of campaign-finance lawsuits, filed by conservative Matt Arnold’s Campaign Integrity Watchdog, which  could possibly expose whether top Republicans in Colorado knew about GOP-funded attacks on gubernatorial candidate Tom Tancredo.

Arnold has filed numerous other campaign-finance complaints this year on a variety of topics. See them by clicking on “Complaint Search” here and typing “Campaign Integrity Watchdog” in the “organization” line.

One complaint, in particular, illustrates Arnold’s persistence and shows the public benefits of disclosures required by campaign finance laws. Its story starts during this year’s GOP primary after Arnold noticed a website and Facebook ads attacking Republican State Senate candidate Laura Woods. This was clearly direct campaign activity, said Arnold, but the website didn’t disclose who paid for it, as required by Colorado law.

But the website’s host was listed, and after Arnold’s Integrity Campaign Watchdog filed a lawsuit, a judge issued a subpoena requiring the company to disclose who paid for the site. Arnold said the hosting company disclosed that it was working for GOP operative Alan Philp, who’s now associated with Aegis Strategic, a Koch funded outfit set up to elect “winnable” candidates.  Its president is talk-radio host and former Republican congressional candidate form Colorado Springs, Jeff Crank.

The case dragged on all summer, Arnold said, but eventually Philp “fingered Protect and Defend Colorado as responsible for the Woods website.”

So Arnold pursued a case against Protect and Defend Colorado, a registered campaign committee that supported GOP state senatorial candidate Lang Sias and opposed state senatorial candidate Laura Woods.

A hearing is scheduled, and Arnold, who’s not being paid for his work, says he now faces big bad lawyers from Brownstein, Hyatt, Farber, Schreck, who are representing Protect and Defend Colorado.

“It’a people playing dirty in primaries. I was a victim of it, when I ran for CU Regent,” says Arnold. “So I’m sensitive. When your whole point is to hide behind a proxy server while you’re smearing someone, I think that’s despicable. If you want to criticize someone, man up and do so publicly, but don’t hide behind a shield of anonymity.”

An earlier version of this article referred to Aegis Strategic as Aegis Consulting, and it did not name Jeff Crank as President of the company. Sorry for the error

During this year’s GOP primary, top Colorado Republicans, including Colorado GOP Chair Ryan Call and Attorney General John Suthers, claimed to have no knowledge of a GOP-funded campaign attacking Republican candidates Tom Tancredo and Laura Woods.

Matt Arnold, who runs Campaign Integrity Watchdog, has a hard time believing this, and he thinks a couple of campaign-finance lawsuits he’s filed have a chance, even if it’s a bit of a long shot, of  clarifying things. See them by clicking on “Complaint Search” here and typing “Campaign Integrity Watchdog” in the “organization” line.

Arnold’s legal action follows up on revelations in July that the Republican Governors Association (RGA) funneled money through the Republican Attorneys General Association (RAGA) to attack GOP gubernatorial candidate Tom Tancredo.

The question is, can the discovery process during technical and narrow campaign-finance legal proceedings illuminate broader information indicating, for example, whether Ryan Call knew about RAGA’s involvement in the Tancredo attacks? Like Call, Colorado Attorney General John Suthers, who’s on the board of RAGA, has also said he didn’t know about RAGA’s or the RGA’s role in the anti-Tancredo campaign.

Experts told me Arnold will have to be lucky if he can even use the discovery process during legal proceedings to turn up this information. Bu it’s not impossible and will depend on the timeline and substance of the cases, judicial discretion and other factors. Normally, campaign-finance lawsuits, especially if they don’t allege collaboration, are decided rather quickly, leaving little time between the hearing and a trial for much discovery, like depositions and document requests.

One of Arnold’s complaints alleges that Colorado Campaign for Jobs and Opportunity, a state campaign committee, violated campaign finance laws by listing contributions from Campaign for Jobs and Opportunity, a federal superpac that received money from RAGA, as in-kind expenditures.  And the federal Campaign for Jobs and Opportunity also failed to make any disclosure when it contributed to Colorado Campaign for Jobs and Opportunity, as required by state law, according to Arnold.

Another complaint alleges that the Colorado Republican Party Independent Expenditure Committee (CORE) did not report its website’s attack ads against Democrats during the final 60 days of the last election.

Arnold also alleges in this complaint that CORE illegally “coordinated fundraising activities (contributions), expenditures, and electioneering communications with one or more candidate committees”—opening up a legal process that could illuminate who knew about the anti-Tancredo campaign.

“Through ignorance or not caring, Ryan Call set up his donors to take a fall,” said Arnold, who is not known to defend Democrats very often and normally espouses conservative causes, like Clear the Bench.

“To me, it’s not about partisan politics,” said Arnold. “It’s about integrity. The political class is more interested in making themselves look good than in doing the right thing.”

For his part, Tancredo, who’s so angry at RGA President Chris Christie that he’s started a Stop Chris Christie PAC, praises Arnold’s legal work. Talking with his good friend KNUS’ Peter Boyles Dec. 17, Tancredo said:

TANCREDO: “I’m hoping that what happens with these complaints that have been filed by [Integrity Campaign Watchdog] and by Matt Arnold, I hope that most Republicans will at least find out about it, and remember this when it comes time to vote for leadership in this Party, here in Colorado, which will be, by the way, in February and March.”

Tancredo did not tell Boyles whom he’d back as a replacement for Call, but he did say:

TANCREDO: “Obama was the reason why, across the nation, the Republicans did as well as they did.  And in Colorado, they should have done a lot better, of course.”

“You understand that I believe — this is my personal belief, here–that Ryan Call, the Republican Party chair here in Colorado, is up to his nose in [the RGA/RAGA attacks]. I believe he knew about it,” Tancredo said to Boyles.

On another radio program, KNUS’s Jimmy Sengenberger Show, replayed on Saturday, Suthers responded to Tancredo directly:

SUTHERS: “I’m understanding that on your program, Tom Tancredo accused me of having knowledge of [the RAGA involvement in the Tancredo attacks], and I have no knowledge whatsoever of it,” said Suthers, adding later that he didn’t think it was appropriate for RAGA to attack Tancredo. “I don’t know how it happened. I do think, unfortunately, that some of these organizations are used for conduits. And it appears the governors came to the Republican AGs. I will tell you, it did not go through the executive committee as a whole. Whether the chairman sanctioned it or not, I don’t know. And to this day, I don’t know. And I’ve never had that clarified. I do not know how that happened.”

Whether you’re a leftist blogger, a right-wing talk-radio host, or a sad-eyed dog, you know by now that a government shutdown would be a blow to the economy.

So if you hear of a politician saying he’d risk shutting down the government by voting against bipartisan budget legislation in Washington, you should ask for his thoughts about the well-known damage from such a vote.

But Fort Morgan KFTM radio host Jon Waters didn’t question former state Sen. Greg Brophy, U.S. Representative-elect Ken Buck’s new spokesperson, today when he stated that Buck would have voted against the Cromnibus bill.

BROPHY: Ken has said he wouldn’t have voted for it. I think he said that publicly on a radio show, so I’m not speaking out of school. I’ve got to be a little careful because I’m not speaking for myself. But, I mean, the whole thing represents absolute failure by Washington [D.C.] to work, and you have to put the blame squarely on Harry Reid’s shoulders….

WATERS: You mentioned that, right at the end, ‘governing by crisis,’ and passing legislation to avert crisis at the eleventh hour, which has been standard operating procedure for a number of years, now.

BROPHY: It has, and I think they like it that way back here, frankly, because it lets them put stuff into a bill that they otherwise may not be able to get passed. It’s a lack of leadership. And so, when there is no clear leadership, and there’s no clear lines of authority, bad things have happened throughout history. And, you know, when you don’t have regular order, you’ve got disorder. And that’s what we’ve had back here, and that’s what the Cromnibus and all the previous omnibus bills represented. And, you know, the Republicans have tried to stop this stuff, and most of the time the media blame them then for shutting down the government. And heck, it’s really Harry Reid and Barack Obama’s fault, but our team takes the blame. So, it’s made some of them gun shy, and that’s arguably why a bunch of the guys voted for the Cromnibus bill. And I think, you know, that maybe some of them are thinking, “Let’s just get this garbage behind us so that we can get on to starting fresh and doing things right, come January — show the people of America what real leadership looks like, what a government that’s here to work for them actually looks like. And it will be transparent and it will be done on time, and it won’t be crisis after crisis, which is where bad things happen. You let people jam stuff through, just because it’s a crisis, and you have to do it.