“Reckless.” “Dangerous.” “Extremist.” “Barbaric.”
Sounds like another political ad attacking GOP Senate candidate Ken Buck, except that even those brutal ads haven’t yet stooped to calling him barbaric. But barbaric was among the many epithets hurled at the mild- mannered and decidedly unflamboyant Wayne Allard back in 1996, when he first ran for the U.S. Senate.
Like Buck, Allard wasn’t afraid to speak plainly when asked a question — even one he hadn’t considered before. And those musings could get him into hot water — as when, in answer to a reporter’s question, he endorsed public hangings if social scientists proved they would radically reduce violent crime.
“Out of touch with mainstream Colorado values,” thundered Allard’s opponent in response, not to mention way too “extreme.”
“It’s beyond the norm,” lectured then-Gov. Roy Romer. “It’s an extreme position.”
Stung by the reaction, Allard soon revised his response, explaining he’d only given a “hypothetical” answer to the unexpected question. “I’m not an extremist,” he felt obliged to declare at a press conference while flanked by Republican bigwigs.
Allard of course survived the “extremist” smears and prevailed in that election — and in a second one six years later. Voters sensed something authentic and appealing about his style, even when they didn’t always agree with what he said.
In a year in which voters seem to be yearning for genuineness in candidates, will Buck possess an appeal similar to Allard’s or will the extremist label conjured repeatedly by his opponent, Democrat Michael Bennet, stick?
It depends on the credulity of voters.
For example, will they really believe the charge that “Ken Buck wants to end student loans for middle class kids,” as a Bennet ad maintains, because he has questioned whether the federal government should be the direct provider of loans to 8 million students?
Do they really suppose the government is the only possible source of such loans in the event that its role is reduced or phased out?
And what will voters make of the claim that Buck questions “whether Social Security should exist at all” (not his words, by the way) because he’s called it a “horrible” policy that shortchanges recipients and believes “the private sector runs programs like that far better”?
Extreme or refreshing? Or largely beside the point since Social Security is one of those programs for which support is so broad that Congress will never, ever do more than tweak?
For that matter, what’s the extreme position on federal education spending, which has increased fivefold since President Carter elevated the Education Department to cabinet status?
Is it extreme to call for cutting back the department’s functions or pushing most of them down to the states (Buck has suggested each strategy at different times)? Or might the opposite also be considered extreme: to dismiss all talk of trimming federal education spending as irrelevant in the larger scheme of things, as Bennet does?
The Education Department will almost certainly survive no matter who is elected in Colorado (or anywhere else, for that matter). The only question is whether its budget is put on a tighter leash or allowed to continue the galloping growth it has enjoyed for the past decade under Presidents Bush and Obama.
We can be fairly certain which side of that spectrum Colorado’s candidates will end up on if elected.
This nation is laboring under a $1.3 trillion deficit and $13 trillion in federal debt. And let’s not even talk about unfunded liabilities. Do voters understand that we will never tackle these problems if we treat every program with a strong base of support as untouchable and anyone who says they’re not untouchable as an extremist crank?
Reckless, dangerous and extremist. Aren’t those words actually a pretty good description of the budgetary status quo?
E-mail Vincent Carroll at vcarroll@denverpost.com.
