Just as folks in Arizona, California, Maine, Nevada and numerous other states are studying the Taxpayer’s Bill of Rights as a means of constraining the spending habits of out-of-control politicians, Coloradans walked away.
It’s bad news for working families, but it’s not the end of the world.
Tax-cutting “zealots” and “radicals,” as we’re known around here – and there are about 533,000 of us still in Colorado at last count Tuesday – have plenty of other problems to worry about, namely Referendums E and F and G and so on.
How soon until we face our next fiscal crises? Days? Months?
Conservative bellyaching about voters being swindled, however, is a waste of time. Voters either see through deceitful campaigns and daily (sometimes twice daily) scare-mongering editorials or they don’t.
Likewise, a lawsuit to stop Referendum C, such as the one the Independence Institute’s Jon Caldara has floated, is equally a waste of time. Worse, it would undermine the will of the people.
So what happens next? Democrats have their victory – a huge tax increase. And as a bonus, they have front-row seats to a mud-wrestling match between conservatives and various apostates.
Will these two groups get together for a heartwarming “Kumbaya”? Practicality says they will. How boring.
“This wasn’t just a difference of opinion among Republicans; this got more personal than that,” says political analyst Eric Sonderman. “The zings being thrown back and forth, these were not philosophical; they got to be pretty down and dirty.”
We all know down and dirty is best. Not for personal reasons, but for ideological ones. Most of us don’t vote for politicians because we want to see bipartisan spooning. We vote for people who we believe will implement our belief system into policy.
Nationally, this has caused a mutiny of sorts. Conservatives have begun to push back when it comes to the unrestrained spending habits of the supposedly conservative Bush administration. They’ve had enough of the pork-producing plant, sometimes known as Congress.
They had no patience for the administration’s cronyism and mediocrity of a recent Supreme Court pick. Now, they have themselves a qualified and, hopefully, staunch defender of the Constitution.
Perhaps this trend will continue in Colorado. If pusillanimous Republicans can’t stand up for limited government, perhaps someone else can.
“There was a generalized perception that the state budget was a mess, and in 2004, it was looking like Republicans and the legislature were fiddling with all these fringe issues while Rome was burning,” Sonderman said.
They were fiddling around with silly social issues, and during the C and D campaign, they were fiddling around at the Mexican border or worried about hurting the governor’s feelings.
The dividing lines in the Republican Party, according to Sonderman, are between “governing” Republicans and “ideological” Republicans, who have a core philosophy.
But now that TABOR has been “fixed,” Sonderman explains, the average voter is going to perceive that the budget is healthy again, that state government is awash in funds.
“Given that, who do you want to give the car keys to?” wonders Sonderman. “The people who have been whining about TABOR for years or those who have traditionally been fiscal conservatives?”
Fact is, Democrats, who have been beating the pants off Republicans in this state for the past two years, have foreseen this dilemma.
In Sunday’s Post, for instance, Speaker of the House Andrew Romanoff – after quoting Ronald Reagan, no less – writes that, for the Democratic legislature, “accountability will be our watchword.”
That is great news, if it comes true.
Still, when a leading Democrat sounds more conservative than governing Republicans, you know something is wrong in Colorado.
David Harsanyi’s column appears Monday and Thursday. He can be reached at 303-820-1255 or dharsanyi@denverpost.com.
