February 12, 2012 05:44 PM UTC

"Today's Republican Candidates Are All Ken Buck Now"

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• by: Colorado Pols

In a column for the Washington Post yesterday, MSNBC anchor Rachel Maddow takes note of some lessons that emerged from the 2010 U.S. Senate election in Colorado–something we’ve talked about repeatedly as GOP presidential candidates like Mitt Romney likewise stumble:

In Colorado’s U.S. Senate election in 2010, the Republican candidate, Ken Buck, endorsed the “personhood” initiative during the primary. He later backed off that position, but Democrat Michael Bennet hammered Buck for it throughout the campaign. As the rest of the political map turned deep red that year, Buck lost – and lost the vote of Colorado women by a whopping 17 points.

Undeterred, the “personhood” folks tried again, getting their measure on the ballot in Mississippi last year. There were national predictions that any antiabortion ballot measure could pass in Mississippi, but it failed there, too, and by double digits. After a grass-roots campaign that included a “Save the Pill!” rally and billboards saying the measure would make “birth control a lethal weapon,” Mississippians voted it down by 16 points.

After Mississippi rejected “personhood” and its threat to contraception, after Colorado rejected it twice, Newt Gingrich, Rick Santorum and Ron Paul attended (Paul by satellite) a Personhood USA candidates forum in South Carolina. All signed a pledge to pursue “personhood” at the federal level. Mitt Romney did not attend the event, but when asked on Fox News before the Mississippi vote last year whether he would have supported such a measure as Massachusetts governor, he replied, “Absolutely.”

This is critical context for understanding the national media scrum over health insurance and contraception. Taken together – Republicans’ condemnation that birth control be a required benefit of health insurance, their insistence that Planned Parenthood lose all federal funding, their threat to cut federal Title X support for birth control and their support for “personhood” measures that threaten the legality of hormonal birth control – today’s Republican candidates are all Ken Buck now. [Pols emphasis]

It can’t be spun to us, because we were there. In September of 2010, two crucial themes emerged that would go on to decide one of the closest U.S. Senate races in the country–a significant erosion of support for GOP candidate Ken Buck among women voters, and polling models weighted toward flawed assumptions about who was “likely” to vote in the “Tea Party”-driven 2010 elections. Those flawed assumptions led to a belief at the end of September by many that Buck was “pulling away,” when in fact Buck was about to lose the election.

An election Buck wasn’t supposed to lose. A stunning exception to the “Republican wave.”

So why did it happen?

In the end, the presence of Amendment 62, a radical abortion ban, on the statewide Colorado ballot strongly motivated pro-choice liberals and independents to get out and vote–in a year otherwise characterized by conservative momentum. In Ken Buck’s Senate race, his support for Amendment 62, even after being backpedaled, was a major component of his defeat by over 17 points among women voters. Due to his initial embrace of “personhood,” later retracted, and bad press he took over actions as district attorney in an alleged rape case, Buck fundamentally alienated women voters. And that loss by 17 points among women is the single most decisive factor in a Senate race that Buck lost by fewer than thirty thousand votes overall.

So folks, the next time we write about Romney’s latest “personhood” panderings as he campaigns against Rick Santorum who adores “personhood,” and we opine that this could potentially be a very bad thing for either of them actually becoming President, please don’t answer us with a bunch of dismissive crap about how the election will be “all about jobs.”

Because of course it will be about jobs, but it will also be about this.