January 20, 2010 03:19 AM UTC

Suthers Burned By "Clear The Bench" Nutters

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• by: Colorado Pols

As the Denver Post reports:

A Republican blog is reporting that Attorney General John Suthers won’t support three of the four Colorado Supreme Court justices on the ballot in November.

The Republican attorney general isn’t talking, except to say that he wishes he had kept quiet.

“I should not have gotten into any of that,” Suthers said Monday. “I regret the conversation.”

But Republicans who want to oust Supreme Court members up for retention this year are thrilled to have the law-and-order heavyweight on their side…

The organization is trying to rid the high court of most of its members – including all four on the ballot this year. Clear the Bench maintains that the court is making unconstitutional decisions that favor Democrats.

The movement worries some Coloradans.

“The idea of sweeping four judges out at once is radical and very disruptive,” said state Sen. Pat Steadman, D-Denver.

The thing is, Attorney General John Suthers wants, as soon as the lights are shined, nothing to do with the fringy perennial “Clear the Benchers.” Every election in recent memory has featured former Senate President John “Bad Elf” Andrews laying on the thick sauce about the judicial branch’s depredations (if only the politicians could do their thing without those meddling courts!), and every year whatever he manages to get on the ballot–if anything–tanks miserably. This year, they’re apparently focusing their efforts on retention elections for several Colorado Supreme Court justices, where historically one sees little-improved prospects for success.

The problem for Suthers is much simpler: he has to argue cases before the Supreme Court, and if this right-wing blog had its way he would be on record that at least three of them should get fired. That’s a pretty huge breach of decorum from a sitting AG, and Suthers knows it: that’s why he is apologetic. We’ve heard Suthers hates being accused of politics influencing his judgment, so we are not surprised to see him trying to downplay one of his most pointedly political attacks yet–especially after joining the ‘judiciary haters’ scorned by the legal world, Democrat and Republican alike.