I don’t know how to break this to you, but the weirdest campaign season on record might just get weirder still.
I know, you’re skeptical. We’ve already got U.N. tinfoil plots. We’ve already got plagiarism and 82-year- olds tossed under a bus. We’ve already got Tom Tancredo.
We’ve got high heels. We’ve got elk steaks. We’ve got sell-your-house attack ads. We’ve got what-happened-to-all-my-money defense ads. We’ve got 24-hour bus rides. We’ve got Tom Tancredo.
We’ve got John McCain on the trail, Barack Obama on the phone, the American Constitution Party in the house. Did I mention we’ve also got Tancredo?
But I’m telling you, the real plot here — deeper even than Dan Maes’ you-can’t-get-much-mileage-reimbursement-on-a-U.N.-bike conspiracy theory — may just be unfolding.
It goes this way:
You have a guy in Maes who starts it all off by making the craziest statement any mainstream Colorado gubernatorial candidate has ever uttered. (To my friend John Andrews: You and the mung beans are now officially off the hook.)
The conspiracy that Maes is, uh, peddling is so strange, so outrageous, so unexpectedly loony-tunes that it makes Tancredo’s strategy of bombing Mecca sound almost sane.
Even crazier than the conspiracy theory itself is how Maes stumbled upon it. A woman at a Maes event handed him what he is calling “a well-documented portfolio” showing how Denver and presumably other cities are signing away their sovereignty to the United Nations by — yes — sharing bikes.
Now maybe if you had been approached by this woman, you would have called for security. Maes called for a second reading. To him, this looked like a campaign issue.
Follow along with me here. Maes took papers from someone he didn’t know and decided, without really knowing anything about it, to go on record, in the middle of a governor’s race, that bike-sharing was somehow “converting Denver into a United Nations community,” whatever that means. Maybe it is all about the bike.
This was obviously the latest in a series of disasters in the Republican gubernatorial primary, which already had two damaged candidates. Let’s see, you had cheating and lying and plagiarism and fraud. And then you had the Tancredo Ultimatum, which called for everyone to get out or else he’d get in, guaranteeing John Hickenlooper a free ride — on his scooter, I guess — to the statehouse.
Maes wouldn’t drop out — because he apparently doesn’t have another job. Scott McInnis wouldn’t drop out — because he’s Scott McInnis.
And Tancredo got in, even though he doesn’t particularly want to run or, for that matter, want the job. He got in because it was something only Tancredo would do.
Meanwhile GOP chairman Dick Wadhams had no idea where to turn. And then Maes came to the rescue — inadvertently, of course. He had no idea what he was doing — which may be a trend line.
He came to the rescue by turning himself into a national laughingstock, a Colorado answer to Basil Marceaux. (If you don’t know him, do yourself a favor and go directly to YouTube.)
The only way the Republicans can possibly save themselves is for Maes to lose. The only way Maes could lose is by showing himself to be so unqualified he couldn’t possibly win.
And if my theory is correct, you’ll see Wadhams sneaking into your neighborhood post office desperately trying to liberate Republican primary ballots. I just know there’s never been a better argument against the mail-in vote.
If the vote were to begin Tuesday, Maes would have to lose. I mean, wouldn’t he? The problem is, the voting is well underway, and everyone feels sure Maes is leading. In the pre- U.N. days, if it was anyone vs. McIn nis — or no one vs. McInnis — anyone, or no one, would win.
I wouldn’t say the McInnis campaign was dispirited, but McInnis was last spotted in a 7-Eleven copying the contents from a package of elk jerky. But the question now being researched is whether it’s legal to steam open your own ballot.
For Republicans to have any chance in November, Maes has to lose. If McInnis wins, then it’s up to him. Even though he has insisted he would not drop out of the race, does he really have a choice? It’s the only way he can be a hero. Then Tancredo drops out, too, because he never really wanted to run — and it’s the only way he can be a hero.
Republicans would then get to pick a replacement/patsy, who gets to be a hero, at least for a day.
I just don’t know who would agree to do it. Josh Penry is too smart. Mark Hillman is too. Some Republicans dream that the Buck-Norton loser would get in the race, which seems so bizarre.
But, face it, bizarre is just the starting point this season. And it’s still a long, long way to the finish line.
Mike Littwin writes Sundays, Wednesdays and Fridays. Reach him at 303-954-5428 or mlittwin@denverpost.com.
