Alexander Solzhenitsyn once observed: “Leaders need victories. The people need defeats.”
Now, Coloradans will learn whether the Republican Party can learn from its most far-reaching defeat in a half century.
The great Russian dissident’s point was that victories only encourage political leaders to keep on doing what they’ve been doing. Defeats lead to soul-searching and reforms that ultimately benefit the people the politicians are supposed to serve.
There is no doubt that Republicans suffered a historic thrashing Tuesday in once-red Colorado. Democrats captured control of the governorship and both chambers of the state legislature for the first time since the late Gov. Steve McNichols led them to the “hat trick” in 1968.
The late Gov. John Love led a Republican comeback in 1962 that led to 42 years of legislative dominance during which Democrats captured the House just twice, in 1964 and 1974, and the Senate only once, in 2000.
Then the 2001-03 recession forced massive budget cuts. As a result, in 2004 Democrats gained the Senate 18-17 while winning a 35-30 edge in the House.
The question for both parties this year was simple: Was the 2004 election just another anomaly that would be rectified as Colorado reverted to GOP rule? Or did it mark a real shift in the political balance of power?
Democrats answered that question by upping their majorities to 20-15 in the Senate and 39-26 in the House and electing Bill Ritter governor.
So the kind of defeat that Solzhenitsyn believed would benefit the people came to Colorado Republicans. Now, the struggle has begun to define the causes of that defeat and set the future course of the GOP.
There is one camp that argues with a straight face that Republicans lost because they weren’t extreme enough. Jon Caldara of the Independence Institute declaimed: “Ref C, RTD tax increase, Medicaid expansion, debt, exploding spending and earmarks, smoking bans, McCain- Feingold, No Child Left Behind, failing to stand up to Amendment 23. I don’t need to list all the Republican betrayals that demoralized the base.”
But surviving legislative Republicans seemed to be taking a different view when I visited them in the Capitol Wednesday. They re-elected minority leaders Andy McElhany in the Senate and Mike May in the House. Sen. Nancy Spence and Rep. David Balmer were picked as assistant minority leaders.
All four are solidly conservative. But they embody the constructive conservatism of John Love – not the nihilism of Caldara or the strident xenophobia of state Sen.-elect David Schultheis of Colorado Springs.
Love today would be derided as a RINO (Republican in Name Only) by the likes of Caldara. But in fact, Love brought the concept of supply-side economics to Colorado two decades before Ronald Reagan unfurled that banner in Washington. Love cut the McNichols-era taxes sharply, then launched a “Sell Colorado” program to lure new businesses to the state.
Eventually, the economic growth nurtured by Love produced higher revenues, which Love and his like-minded Republican legislators then used to build the schools, highways and other infrastructure necessary to support that growth.
The Economics of Love (doesn’t that sound much better than “supply-side economics”?) ruled Colorado until 1992, when voters approved Douglas Bruce’s TABOR amendment. TABOR prohibited the state from using the revenue produced by economic growth to provide the infrastructure necessary to support that growth. Because the state could increase spending by only enough to offset population growth and inflation, it couldn’t use the money generated from real economic growth to generate more growth.
As they were certain to do at some point, TABOR’s contradictions eventually strangled state finances, forcing Gov. Bill Owens and a bipartisan coalition to lead the 2005 fight for Referendum C. The current economic rally, fueled at least in part by renewed confidence in the business community triggered by the five-year timeout from TABOR’s follies, came too late to avert disaster for the Colorado GOP. But it does validate anew Love’s vision.
As a postscript, anti-tax fanatics tried to export TABOR to three other states this year – only to be crushed. Oregon voters defeated a TABOR clone 71 percent to 29 percent; Nebraska pummeled it 70-30 percent, and Maine rebuffed it 54-46 percent.
I salute the wisdom of other states in learning from Colorado’s misfortunes. In the future, if other states want to copy something from Colorado, I suggest that they import Rocky Mountain Spotted Fever.
It’s not good for you, of course. But it’s not nearly as toxic as TABOR.
Bob Ewegen (bewegen@denverpost.com) is deputy editorial page editor of The Denver Post. He has written on state and local government since 1963.
