Category Archives: 2020 Presidential Election

Where’s Cory? Right Next to Team Trump

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  by: Colorado Pols January 21, 2020 at 4:18 PM MST

As multiple news outlets have reported, Colorado Sen. Cory Gardner (R-Yuma) is widely expected to follow along with the wishes of Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell and President Trump’s scurrilous legal team on all issues related to Trump’s impeachment trial underway in the U.S. Senate.

Lest there be any doubt, check out where Gardner has been seated today: He literally could not be any closer in proximity to Trump’s legal team. Gardner’s typical seat in the Senate chambers is at the back of the room; Gardner is instead squatting in the seat reserved for Oklahoma Republican Sen. Jim Inhofe.

U.S. Senate chambers, January 21, 2020

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The Hits Keep Coming For Cory Gardner

5
  by: Colorado Pols January 21, 2020 at 2:15 PM MST

President Trump and Sen. Cory Gardner.

Keeping track of the bad national press for Sen. Cory Gardner of Colorado these days requires a lot of attention–hard on the heels of a damaging New York Times story about Gardner’s lack of accessibility to constituents back home over the holiday weekend, the Washington Post’s Griff Witte writes today:

[Sen. Cory] Gardner is perhaps the most vulnerable Republican of all this year, seeking a second term in a state Trump lost by nearly five points in 2016. Colorado has only shifted further left in the time since as younger, more liberal voters have flooded in and Democrats have tipped a registration deficit in their favor.

But rather than run away from Trump as the evidence mounts of an abuse of power, Gardner has drawn nearer…

While a significant majority of Coloradans disapprove of Trump’s performance, Gardner will need Republicans, who are nearly unanimous in their support of the president, if he has any hope of keeping his seat.

“…Cory’s got a tough race. The odds are 50-50 — at best,” said Dick Wadhams, a veteran Republican strategist in Colorado and a friend of Gardner’s. “There’s no doubt about it: Trump is a liability.” [Pols emphasis]

This story, which should be read in its entirety, is as fair as possible to Gardner in recounting Gardner’s condemnation of Donald Trump in October of 2016. Gardner’s journey from denouncing Trump as a man who boasts about committing sexual assault in 2016 to one of Trump’s fiercest defenders and a Trump campaign fundraising star in 2019, especially while representing a state which has only become more hostile to Trump in the time since Gardner called for Trump to pull out of the presidential race, is baffling to many taking their initial election-year look at our state and this race.

The problem is simple, and we’ve said it countless times in this space: without the loyal Trump GOP base, Cory Gardner has no base. Gardner is therefore powerless to change course and carry out the clear wishes of a majority of Colorado voters–to dump Trump like Gardner called for in October of 2016, and voting to remove Trump from office.

One thing’s for sure: an assessment this bleak from Gardner’s Republican friends who know him best will not help Gardner convince the makers of tough calls in DC that his re-election is salvageable.

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McConnell Backs Down as Impeachment Trial Begins

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  by: Colorado Pols January 21, 2020 at 1:16 PM MST

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell

As Politico reports, there are some significant happenings already as the Senate impeachment trial of President Trump gets underway:

Senate Republicans backed down from an aggressive timetable and new restrictions on evidence in President Donald Trump’s impeachment trial, changing course after protests from senators like Republican Susan Collins of Maine.

Instead of crammingas many as 48 hours of opening arguments from House impeachment managers and the White House counsel into just four days this week, McConnell’s resolution will now give each side 24 hours to speak over three days. That could ultimately extend the trial by two days. And a controversial provision in the plan that would not have automatically included the House’s evidence was also scuttled from a previous draft.

McConnell’s rule changes — which include the admission of evidence from the House impeachment process — were so last-minute that they were actually written out by hand, as NBC News reports. As the New York Times confirms, McConnell made the adjustments due to pushback from his own caucus:

Mr. McConnell made the change after key Republican senators, including Susan Collins of Maine, argued that the rules for Mr. Trump’s impeachment trial should not deviate from the rules used during the only modern precedent, the impeachment trial of President Bill Clinton in 1999.

Ms. Collins, a moderate Republican who is likely to face a tough re-election bid later this year, has significant sway with Mr. McConnell, as her votes could change the outcome of the trial.

We will update this post as more information becomes available.

 

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Marianne Williamson: Romanoff For Senate

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  by: Colorado Pols January 21, 2020 at 10:01 AM MST

Yesterday, former Democratic minor presidential candidate Marianne Williamson offered her glowing endorsement to Andrew Romanoff, who is running an underdog primary bid against the generally presumed Democratic nominee in Colorado’s U.S. Senate race former Gov. John Hickenlooper. Romanoff responded later yesterday evening that he is “deeply grateful” for Williamson’s support.

Marianne Williamson was generally regarded as a curiosity in the early stages of the Democratic presidential primary, mostly due to the fact that she was never considered a serious contender in the race. But had Williamson managed to gain more than fringe traction in the primary, there was a long list of problematic past statements on very serious issues she would have had to answer for–as CNN reported last August:

Democratic presidential candidate and author Marianne Williamson once gave a platform to the unfounded theory that vaccines are linked to autism and called on her audience to “be awake” and “do your due diligence” before making the decision to vaccinate their children. [Pols emphasis]

In a January 2012 episode of her radio show, “Living Miracuously,” reviewed by CNN’s KFile, Williamson said she “agonized” as a mother over the decision to vaccinate her children and that she could see “both sides” of the issue. Her guest, author Gwen Olsen, said on the program that she knew a number of people who were vaccinated and were later diagnosed with autism, to which Williamson responded, “Yes, absolutely.”

And Vox’s Zack Beauchamp explored substantially more troubling comments from Williamson last July on the particular subject of mental health. Apropos, Romanoff is the immediate past President and CEO of Mental Health Colorado:

Williamson has repeatedly cast doubt on the idea that clinical depression is real, calling the idea “such a scam” in an interview with actor Russell Brand and labeled antidepressants harmful, a cause of suicide rather than a cure for it. [Pols emphasis]

Williamson has apologized for the “scam” comment and tried to walk back some of the more heated tweets. She also argued that her issue is not with using antidepressants per se, which she claims to at times support, but rather with their overprescription of them.

But her rhetoric has for some time gone way beyond such reasonable concerns in a way that makes her walkbacks ring hollow. She has argued that antidepressants are often actively harmful, suggested that they caused Robin Williams and Kate Spade to kill themselves (there’s no evidence for either claim), and has insinuated that Big Pharma is pushing antidepressants on Americans who don’t need them.

There is of course debate over the widespread prescription of antidepressant drugs in this country, but responsible participants in that debate agree it’s very bad to make these kinds of sweeping statements about such a complex subject. It’s even worse to make statements with an air of authority that have no factual basis whatsoever, like false claims about high-profile tragedies, and it’s worst of all when people suffering from mental illness hear these misguided statements and take them to heart.

If by this point you have realized that Romanoff just made a big mistake in celebrating Marianne Williamson’s endorsement–assuming charitably that Romanoff didn’t ask for it–we can only agree. For a campaign already struggling for legitimacy against the growing nationwide presumption that there is no meaningful Democratic primary in the Colorado U.S. Senate race, this backfire of an endorsement only pushes Romanoff closer to his own minor candidate status.

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New York Times Can’t Find Cory Gardner, Either

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  by: Colorado Pols January 21, 2020 at 9:36 AM MST

Invisible Cory GardnerOver the weekend, the New York Times published a long, comprehensive story about the curious inaccessibility and general invisibility of Colorado Sen. Cory Gardner (R-Yuma).

They keep expecting to see Senator Cory Gardner everywhere — on the local Fox affiliates in Colorado, on Facebook, on literature crammed inside their mailboxes. They are voters who wear tasteful crepe blouses and carry structured Kate Spade totes, who like how their 401(k)’s are performing but say they could do without President Trump’s “temperament.”

They are members of one of the most coveted groups in electoral politics: suburban women. But in their field of vision, Mr. Gardner, Colorado’s top Republican officeholder, is almost nowhere to be found…

… Unlike most Republican senators, Mr. Gardner has been largely mum on the articles of impeachment against the president and the Senate trial starting Tuesday. Early in the process, he called the impeachment inquiry a “total circus,” but notably refused to answer questions about whether the president’s conduct with Ukraine had been appropriate.

Mr. Gardner hasn’t indicated one way or the other whether he’d vote to subpoena witnesses in President Trump’s impeachment trial, even as some other senators facing tough re-election fights, like Senator Susan Collins of Maine, have expressed an openness to doing so. Last week on Capitol Hill, he evaded reporters eager to pin down his thoughts, his handler hurrying him into the nearest elevator. On Thursday evening, when a local Colorado reporter caught him at the Denver airport, a smiling Mr. Gardner offered still no clarity. “We have a trial,” he said. “That’s where we’re at right now.”…

… “I’m confused as to why he’s not out on the stump more, because that’s what he was so good at in 2014,” said Colorado Republican operative Tyler Sandberg.

We took note last week about Gardner’s embarrassing run-in with 9News, in which he repeatedly said “We have a trial” in response to questions seeking much more substantial responses from a United States Senator about the most important political issue of the day. What the Times story also found, however, is that Gardner’s fellow Republicans are as mystified as everyone else by the Yuma Senator’s current political strategy:

Dick Wadhams, a veteran Colorado Republican operative, was not bashful about calling out Mr. Gardner’s fear of public exposure. “If I had one criticism of him,” Mr. Wadhams said, “it’s that his team keeps him locked up in a fortress.” (Mr. Gardner and his aides did not return multiple requests for comment.) [Pols emphasis]

Impeachment has served only to highlight Mr. Gardner’s silence, whether on his own record or the national issues du jour, according to other Colorado Republicans. His caginess has frustrated some Trump supporters in Colorado, whose votes Mr. Gardner will almost certainly need to prevail in November, when Democrats are likely to come out in force in the presidential election.

Sen. Cory Gardner waves as he exits Air Force One behind President Trump in Oct. 2018.

Gardner’s attempts at invisibility might not be paying off in the manner in which he might hope, as this closing paragraph from the Times elaborates:

Amy Conklin [a former Littleton City Council member who has supported Gardner in the past] conceded that Mr. Gardner had done some good work in the Senate. But what looms largest in her mind, what she says she’d be hardest pressed to forget, are a handful of photographs she’s seen of Mr. Gardner, including one from last winter, in which she described him as “smiling and waving, following Trump out of Air Force One.” [Pols emphasis]

The Senate impeachment trial against President Trump gets underway today. Gardner will hide as much as he can and is not expected to be anything but a loyal soldier for Senate Majority Leader “Moscow” Mitch McConnell and the White House (as Politico made clear in an impeachment preview today).

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Gardner Likely to Vote with Republicans on Impeachment, Say Political Observers

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  by: Jason Salzman January 21, 2020 at 9:20 AM MST

(Promoted by Colorado Pols)

This article, which originally appeared in the Colorado Times Recorder, was written by Jake Maher.

Sen. Cory Gardner (R).

As the impeachment trial begins in the Senate today, the scrutiny on Colorado’s Cory Gardner grows.

Speculation has filled a vacuum left by the Republican senator himself, who has made few statements to the press about how he views the impeachment trial of President Donald Trump, in which he is now a juror.  And Gardner himself couldn’t be reached to explain his stance.

Among experts on Colorado politics, though, the consensus is clear: Gardner can be expected to fall in line with the Republican caucus, except for the possibility of voting for some witnesses or a similar concession, if it’s done with a group of GOP senators.

In the words of Norm Ornstein, resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute: “He’s a partisan.”

“I would be very surprised, at least knowing what we know now, if Gardner defects from his party’s line on the final impeachment vote,” Kyle Saunders, a professor of political science at Colorado State University, wrote in an email.

Miles Coleman, associate editor of Sabato’s Crystal Ball at the University of Virginia Center for Politics, wrote that he “wouldn’t expect Gardner to deviate from the Republican leadership.”

Gardner himself became a member of the Senate’s Republican leadership in 2016, and he currently serves as deputy whip.

A Possibility of a Smaller Act of Rebellion

As senator of a purple state, simply following the Republican party line may be too divisive of a political tack, and some experts saw the possibility of a smaller act of rebellion via a vote on allowing additional witness testimony—but only if the crowd is already moving that way anyway.

“If there is a vote taken on witnesses, and it appears that a majority supports limited witnesses, I could see Gardner making the calculus to support something like that, but only if it’s some sort of limited scenario,” wrote Saunders. “I don’t see Gardner supporting a free-for-all ‘as many witnesses as can be called’ scenario unless things are going very badly for Trump.”

“And it’s still not likely that it will go badly for Trump with Leader McConnell running point,” wrote Saunders.

According to Ornstein, he’s likely to follow the lead set by Senator Susan Collins of Maine and allow a few more witnesses, including Hunter and Joe Biden, and possibly reprimand the president.

But ultimately, “people don’t vote alone,” according to Seth Masket, a political scientist at the University of Denver. “[Gardner is] not going to stand that far out.”

Democratic political consultant Steve Welchert said Gardner is already “off-script” in his public communications on the Senate trial by not defending Trump more aggressively, besides calling the House impeachment vote a “total circus.”

Some experts said this tactic—maintaining a neutral public image while reliably voting along party lines—has been a characteristic of Gardner’s style of politics since the beginning of his term.

Ornstein noted that No Labels rated Gardner a “moderate” during his 2014 election, as he billed himself a solutions-oriented “problem solver” at the time.

“There is nothing in the record—no votes—to suggest he is a moderate,” he said.

A similar scenario played out during the Senate votes to repeal Obamacare in 2017, when Gardner’s noncommittal public statements cane in advance of repeated votes in favor of repeal.

Gardner “will signal open-mindedness, but is likely to vote with the rest of his caucus,” said Masket.

According to Coleman, Gardner’s voting record as a whole demonstrates his adherence to the Republican agenda at all turns, his public statements notwithstanding.

“He voted for both Trump’s Supreme Court picks, the GOP tax bill, ACA repeal, and was supportive of the President’s emergency border declaration last year,” he wrote.

“Throughout his tenure, on the big votes, he usually seems more like a senator from deep red Wyoming instead of a light blue state like Colorado,” said Coleman.

CORRECTION: Gardner remains on the U.S. Senate leadership team, currently serving as deputy whip. Due to an editing error, this post initially stated that he was no longer a GOP Senate leader.

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“We Have a Trial,” Says Ridiculous Cory Gardner

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  by: Colorado Pols January 17, 2020 at 10:58 AM MST


Colorado Pols readers are well aware that Sen. Cory Gardner (R-Yuma) has taken extreme measures to avoid talking publicly about President Trump’s actions and the looming impeachment trial in the U.S. Senate. Gardner regularly flees from reporters at the U.S. Capitol building by ducking out back doors and sliding into little-used elevators; journalists in Colorado just flat don’t get a response from Gardner or his staff — on any questions, really.

Gardner has given no reason to indicate that he will be anything but a loyal soldier for Trump and Senate Majority Leader “Moscow” Mitch McConnell, but media outlets keep trying to press him for information about how he’ll approach impeachment discussions. And sometimes, Gardner actually gets cornered.

On Thursday, 9News had no luck (again) getting a real response from Gardner’s office on impeachment issues, but later reporter Marshall Zelinger serendipitously found himself on the same flight from Washington D.C. to Denver. That’s how 9News reporter Steve Staeger ended up waiting for Gardner at Denver International Airport and chasing him through the concourse:

We’d encourage readers to watch the entire exchange, but here’s the gist of it:

STAEGER: Are you open to hearing from more witnesses in a Senate trial?

GARDNER: We have a trial, and that’s where we’re at right now.

“We have a trial.”

Staeger later asks Gardner about Thursday’s bombshell news that the nonpartisan Government Accountability Office (GAO) believes Trump “broke the law” by withholding foreign aid from Ukraine in order to coerce an investigation into a potential political opponent.

STAEGER: There was a report released today from the nonpartisan GAO that the President broke the law in withholding aid to the Ukraine. Where do you stand on that?

GARDNER: We have a trial, and I’m sure that will be part of the discussion.

“We have a trial.”

Gardner’s absurd non-response to Staeger is being picked up nationally, and rightfully so. As we’ve said before in this space, Colorado voters should be embarrassed by their junior Senator.

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Susan Beckman Gets Last Laugh On Ken Buck

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  by: Colorado Pols January 17, 2020 at 9:35 AM MST


UPDATE: The Denver Post’s Alex Burness:

[Beckman] did not specify what her new job will be, nor did she immediately respond to a call from The Denver Post. The White House has not yet responded to a question about Beckman, and a spokesperson for the state GOP declined to comment…

In late March, Beckman narrowly lost the election for the next Colorado Republican Party chair, a role that would have led to her resignation from the legislature. Promising to “shine a light on the backpack consultants that are getting millions and millions of dollars on the backs of Republican losses,” [Pols emphasis] Beckman grabbed a plurality of votes on the first ballot but couldn’t capture the majority needed.

—–

The subject du jour at the Colorado Capitol today is the announcement this morning that Republican Rep. Susan Beckman of Arapahoe County will resign, effective immediately, to take a job in the Trump administration. She’s the third GOP state lawmaker from Colorado to take this particular route out of electoral harm’s way:

Rep. Beckman’s last election in 2018 was one of the night’s big nailbiters, with Beckman only narrowly prevailing over her Democratic challenger Chris Kolker by 374 votes. It’s possible that this brush with defeat inspired Beckman to start looking elsewhere for career advancement, but Beckman failed–again by a narrow margin, and this time fraught with controversy–to defeat Congressman Ken Buck in the race to lead the Colorado Republican Party.

Since then, of course, Buck’s absentee mismanagement of the party has given Beckman plenty of grounds to feel vindicated. And with Arapahoe County leading the state’s blueward shift that accelerated in 2018, we may look back in a year and observe that Beckman bailed out at exactly the right time.

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Get More Smarter on Thursday (January 16)

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  by: Colorado Pols January 16, 2020 at 10:50 AM MST


Happy “National Nothing Day.” We’re not sure if you are supposed to celebrate or not. It’s time to Get More Smarter. If you think we missed something important, please include the link in the comments below (here’s a good example). If you are more of an audio/visual learner, check out The Get More Smarter Show or The Get More Smarter Podcast. And don’t forget to find us on Facebook and Twitter.

TOP OF MIND TODAY…

► And so it begins. From The Washington Post:

The historic impeachment trial of President Trump got underway Thursday with the arrival in the Senate of the seven House managers to formally present the two charges of abuse of power and obstruction of Congress.

John G. Roberts Jr., chief justice of the United States, is headed to the Senate later Thursday, where he is expected to be sworn in to preside over the trial focused on the president’s conduct toward Ukraine. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) has said the trial will get underway “in earnest” next week.

Fallout also continued Thursday from new allegations by Lev Parnas, a former associate of Trump’s personal lawyer Rudolph W. Giuliani, that Trump knew of his efforts to dig up dirt in Ukraine that could benefit Trump politically. The impeachment charges — abuse of power and obstruction of Congress — center on the allegation that Trump withheld military aid and a White House meeting to pressure Ukraine to investigate his political rivals, including former vice president Joe Biden.

The Washington Post has more on the latest allegations from Lev Parnas that do not look good for President Trump.

 

► The Government Accountability Office says the Trump administration broke the law in attempting to restrict foreign aid to Ukraine. From the New York Times:

The Trump administration violated the law in withholding security assistance aid to Ukraine, a nonpartisan federal watchdog agency said on Thursday, weighing in on a decision by President Trump that is at the heart of the impeachment case against him.

The Government Accountability Office said the White House’s Office of Management and Budget violated the Impoundment Control Act when it withheld nearly $400 million for “a policy reason,” even though the funds had been allocated by Congress. The decision was directed by the president himself, and during the House impeachment inquiry, administration officials testified that they had raised concerns about its legality to no avail.

“Faithful execution of the law does not permit the president to substitute his own policy priorities for those that Congress has enacted into law,” the G.A.O. wrote. “The withholding was not a programmatic delay.”

“Trump did nothing wrong” was never a sustainable argument, but it has become downright silly now.

 

► Ahead of the Senate impeachment trial, all 100 U.S. Senators will take an “oath of impartiality” given by Chief Justice John Roberts that will go something like this:

Getty Images

 

Colorado Sen. Cory Gardner (R-Yuma) continues to run in terror from reporter questions about impeachment and President Trump, though late Wednesday he veered away from pretending to have not seen the articles of impeachment so that he could pay lip service to the idea of being “an impartial juror.” Meanwhile, it seems even some of the more unflappable Republican Senators are starting to snap under the pressure of trying to support a corrupt President:

 

► Congressman Jason Crow (D-Aurora) is getting lots of attention as one of the seven House impeachment “managers” appointed by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi on Wednesday. You can read more from The Denver Post, The Colorado Sun/CBS4, Denver7, and Colorado Public Radio.

Elsewhere, Rep. Diana DeGette (D-Denver) played a part in the historic decision to transmit articles of impeachment to the U.S. Senate.

 

 

Get even more smarter after the jump… (more…)

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Time To Stop Claiming Trump “Did Nothing Wrong”

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  by: Colorado Pols January 16, 2020 at 10:11 AM MST


Donald Trump.

Politico with today’s major development in the impeachment case against President Donald Trump–a clear determination by the Government Accountability Office (GAO) that Trump’s withholding of hundreds of millions of dollars in aid to Ukraine was in violation of federal law:

President Donald Trump ordered the hold on the critical security assistance in July, a slew of senior White House officials testified to House impeachment investigators late last year. It was a move that coincided with an effort by the president and his allies to pressure Ukraine to investigate Trump’s Democratic rivals.

“Faithful execution of the law does not permit the president to substitute his own policy priorities for those that Congress has enacted into law,” the GAO wrote in an eight-page report released on Thursday.

Trump’s decision to withhold nearly $400 million in military aid, which he reversed in September after House investigators began probing the move, is at the heart of the articles of impeachment the House passed last month, and it will be a central focus in the Senate’s impeachment trial that begins later Thursday.

The report undercuts an oft-stated defense of Trump’s decision to hold the aid back: that it was a lawful exercise of the president’s authority. [Pols emphasis]

The defense that Trump’s actions were not a violation of federal law has been the go-to talking point for Rep. Ken Buck, Colorado’s Republican on the House Judiciary Committee, from the beginning of the impeachment process–along with his bizarre contention that every President commits impeachable offenses so why bother impeaching them at all. That’s obviously difficult to say with any credibility now, though we expect plenty of Republicans will respond by simply disparaging the GAO. At the very least it seems like it will be necessary for Republicans to fall back to the next logical defensive position, “okay you win, it’s a crime but it’s not an impeachable offense.”

As for Sen. Cory Gardner? He’s still telling reporters he hasn’t seen the articles of impeachment. Now that the articles have been formally delivered to the Senate, Gardner will need obviously to ditch that excuse–but what will he say about the GAO’s unambiguous conclusion that Trump’s actions against Ukraine were criminal?

It’s true you’ll have to catch him first. But Gardner is quickly running out of rhetorical cover.

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Reporters Still Looking for Cory Gardner’s Spine

3
  by: Colorado Pols January 15, 2020 at 3:25 PM MST


Colorado Sen. Cory Gardner (R-Yuma) was busy today firing off Tweets about trade agreements and speaking in front of an empty Senate chamber about the four corners of Colorado and…something.

What Gardner was NOT doing today is the same thing has has NOT been doing for months: Commenting in any way, shape or form on the pending impeachment trial against President Trump.

Justin Wingerter of The Denver Post has noted Gardner’s refusal to talk about the most important political subject in the entire country, but he’s not alone in trying to track down the elusive junior Senator from Colorado. As The New York Times reported today:

For Republicans in difficult re-election races — with the possible exception of Ms. Collins, who is her own brand in Maine — the political calculations are complex. Senators Joni Ernst of Iowa, Thom Tillis of North Carolina, Martha McSally of Arizona and Mr. Gardner all face tough contests in states that are not nearly as conservative as they used to be…

…The pressure on Mr. Gardner mounted on Monday when the Lincoln Project, a group of Republicans that describes itself as “dedicated to defeating President Trump and Trumpism,” targeted him in a brutal advertisement that described the Colorado senator as “just another Trump servant — weak, frightened, impotent — a small man, terrified of a political bully.”

“Colorado voters want a fair trial in the Senate and honest leadership,” the ad said. “Either do your job, or Colorado will find someone who will.”

In the Capitol on Tuesday, Mr. Gardner was making himself scarce. When Republicans wrapped up a luncheon featuring a discussion of trial procedure, he zipped out a back door and headed for a little-used elevator, avoiding a throng of waiting reporters. 

“I’m sorry, he’s got to get going,” an aide to Mr. Gardner told a reporter who followed him, as the elevator doors opened and the senator slipped inside. Then Mr. Gardner jumped in, begging off any discussion of whether he could be the elusive fourth vote who could upend hopes of a quick acquittal of Mr. Trump. [Pols emphasis]

Gardner’s, um, “spinal problem” is quite a contrast with another prominent member of Colorado’s Congressional delegation. This morning, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi announced that Rep. Jason Crow (D-Aurora) was among seven Representatives chosen to prosecute the House impeachment case in the upcoming Senate trial.

One man is standing up to fulfill the Congressional duties set forth in his oath of office. The other is hiding from reporters in elevators. If you’re embarrassed by the ridiculous charades of Sen. Cory Gardner in this critical moment in American history…well, you absolutely should be.

Rep. Jason Crow (D-Aurora) at far right of image.

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Get More Smarter on Wednesday (January 15)

3
  by: Colorado Pols January 15, 2020 at 11:48 AM MST


Happy “Korean Alphabet Day.” Please celebrate responsibly, or whatever. It’s time to Get More Smarter. If you think we missed something important, please include the link in the comments below (here’s a good example). If you are more of an audio/visual learner, check out The Get More Smarter Show or The Get More Smarter Podcast. And don’t forget to find us on Facebook and Twitter.

TOP OF MIND TODAY…

► The House of Representatives will vote today to send articles of impeachment to the U.S. Senate. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi made the announcement today and introduced the seven House Members who will serve as “impeachment managers.” One of them is Colorado’s own Rep. Jason Crow (D-Aurora).

The Washington Post breaks down how Crow ended up being among Pelosi’s chosen few:

The Democrat from Colorado is in his first term as Congress. Before Congress, he served as an Army Ranger, leading combat units in Iraq and Afghanistan. He was also partner in a law firm in Colorado. According to the Almanac of American Politics, he wasn’t a prosecutor, but he “conducted internal investigations nationwide, responded to emergency events and handled a wide-range of government inquiries.” He also represents the kind of district — a suburban one in a swing state — that Democrats will need to hold onto in November to keep their majorities.

He is the only manager who does not sit on any of the impeachment inquiry committees, but he had a role in swaying Pelosi to authorize the impeachment inquiry. He was one of seven House freshmen with national security backgrounds who co-authored a Washington Post op-ed calling Trump’s actions on Ukraine impeachable, a move that signaled a significant momentum shift within the Democratic caucus. Pelosi announced the impeachment inquiry a day after that published.

Crow’s selection provides a stark contrast to the impeachment involvement of another key Colorado elected official: Sen. Cory Gardner (R-Yuma). As Justin Wingerter writes for The Denver Post, Gardner just keeps ducking questions about President Trump:

Gardner’s office declined again Tuesday to answer questions from The Denver Post about whether he would support a motion to dismiss the two charges against Trump or vote to allow witnesses in a Senate trial that’s expected to begin next week. Republican Sens. Susan Collins of Maine, Lisa Murkowski of Alaska and Mitt Romney of Utah have said they want to keep open the option of hearing from witnesses after opening arguments.

CBS reported Monday that the White House expects at least four Republicans will vote to call witnesses in the Senate trial. That “possibly” includes Gardner, according to the report, though he has said nothing to indicate that he will. There are 53 Senate Republicans, and a simple majority of 51 votes will be needed to pass trial rules.

Silence has become the norm for Gardner on the topic of impeachment. His office previously declined to say whether witnesses should be called and whether he agrees with Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell’s “total coordination” with the White House.

The New York Times apparently wasn’t able to corner the squirrelly Senator, either:

In the Capitol on Tuesday, Mr. Gardner was making himself scarce. When Republicans wrapped up a luncheon featuring a discussion of trial procedure, he zipped out a back door and headed for a little-used elevator, avoiding a throng of waiting reporters.

“I’m sorry, he’s got to get going,” an aide to Mr. Gardner told a reporter who followed him, as the elevator doors opened and the senator slipped inside. Then Mr. Gardner jumped in, begging off any discussion of whether he could be the elusive fourth vote who could upend hopes of a quick acquittal of Mr. Trump.

 

► Evidence continues to mount against President Trump ahead of a Senate impeachment trial. As Jennifer Rubin writes for The Washington Post:

One can only imagine what evidence we have yet to see during the impeachment proceedings against President Trump. With each new tranche of evidence — including emails regarding the hold on military aid to Ukraine and now documents from Lev Parnas, an associate of Trump lawyer Rudolph W. Giuliani’s — the conclusion that Trump abused power and obstructed the investigation becomes incontrovertible…

…Constitutional scholar Laurence Tribe tells me the new evidence is ” jaw-dropping” and “highly incriminating of both Giuliani and Trump.”

 

► Candidates for the Democratic Presidential nomination met for another debate on Tuesday in Des Moines, Iowa — just three weeks ahead of the Iowa caucuses. Who won and who lost the big debate? Here are a few takes from The Washington Post, CNN, Politico, The New York Times, and The Des Moines Register.

 

► Today is the deadline for open enrollment for health care coverage through Connect for Health Colorado.

 

 

Get even more smarter after the jump… (more…)

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Jason Crow Among House Impeachment Managers

13
  by: Colorado Pols January 15, 2020 at 8:58 AM MST


Rep. Jason Crow (D-Aurora)

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi announced this morning the names of seven Democrats who will help prosecute the House impeachment case in a U.S. Senate trial as soon as next week. Colorado Rep. Jason Crow (D-Aurora) was among the names selected.

As Politico reports:

The seven lawmakers will be tasked with prosecuting the case against President Donald Trump in the Senate’s trial, giving them a high-profile role and a chance to be at least a footnote in history.

The long-awaited announcement comes as the House is scheduled to vote later Wednesday to send the managers and the two impeachment articles over to the Senate — a formality that triggers the start of the trial.

Pelosi’s list reflects her desire for geographic, racial and gender diversity among the impeachment managers, and it draws from the Democratic Caucus’ wide swath of legal and national security-related experience.

Here’s Politico’s rundown of Crow’s selection:

Crow, 40, was a surprise choice, but Pelosi has leaned heavily on the so-called “national security freshmen” in the Democratic Caucus during her deliberations for the impeachment process. [Pols emphasis] Crow, serving in his first term, doesn’t sit on any of the committees charged with investigating Trump. But he is a former Army captain who served in Iraq and Afghanistan, and he received his law degree at the University of Denver. He was one of seven national security-oriented freshman lawmakers who wrote an op-ed in September calling for an impeachment inquiry after the Ukraine scandal came to light. He serves on the House Armed Services Committee.

This is a very big deal for Crow and for Colorado in general.

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Hickenlooper Posts Massive Fundraising Haul

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  by: Colorado Pols January 14, 2020 at 1:34 PM MST


Former Gov. John Hickenlooper

Democrat John Hickenlooper released some jaw-dropping fundraising numbers today in the race for U.S. Senate, with $2.8 million raised in the last three months of 2019.

According to a press release:

Ninety-three percent of contributions the campaign received were $200 or less, and the average grassroots contribution was $26.

This quarterly total sets a record for Senate campaigns in Colorado in the off year. In 2019, Hickenlooper received contributions from each of the state’s 64 counties and $0 from corporate PACs.

Hickenlooper for Colorado heads into the election year with $3.2 million cash on hand.

Hickenlooper’s $2.8 million quarter in Q4 (2019) is easily the best quarterly fundraising period for an off-year election in Colorado — particularly for a non-incumbent candidate. Senator Cory Gardner (R-Yuma) raised $2.4 million in Q3 last year with the power of incumbency and a Republican Senate Majority in his favor.

Hickenlooper’s Q4 bests his initial fundraising haul of $2.1 million in Q3, which itself was more than four times the amount raised by his closest Democratic competitor (Andrew Romanoff).

We’re still waiting to see what Gardner raised in Q4. For comparison’s sake, Arizona Republican Sen. Martha McSally raised more than $4 million in Q4 but still trailed Democratic challenger Mark Kelly, who hauled in an incredible $6.3 million.

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Cory Gardner Smokescreens Crucial Impeachment Question

2
  by: Colorado Pols January 14, 2020 at 11:41 AM MST


CBS News reported last night, and politicos coast to coast took note:

The White House is preparing for some Republican senators to join Democrats in voting to call witnesses in President Trump’s impeachment trial, which could get underway in the coming days.

Senior White House officials tell CBS News they increasingly believe that at least four Republicans, and likely more, will vote to call witnesses. In addition to Senators Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, Susan Collins of Maine, Mitt Romney of Utah and possibly Cory Gardner of Colorado, [Pols emphasis] the White House also views Rand Paul of Kentucky as a “wild card” and Senator Lamar Alexander of Tennessee as an “institutionalist” who might vote to call witnesses, as one official put it…

Gardner and Alexander have both said the Senate trial should be fair and impartial. Paul has said the president should be able to call his own witnesses, including the whistleblower whose complaint about Ukraine sparked the impeachment inquiry in the first place.

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell and Sen. Cory Gardner.

The possibility that Sen. Cory Gardner might break with the White House and vote to call witnesses in the Senate trial, such as Gardner’s admirer and Donald Trump’s former national security adviser John Bolton, would be a noteworthy move for Colorado’s vulnerable incumbent Republican Senator–a change from what has been steadfast support for the President and disdain for the impeachment process up to now.

But as The Hill reports, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell is not interested in calling witnesses. And as readers know, Mitch McConnell outranks Cory Gardner:

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) on Tuesday knocked talk of calling additional impeachment witnesses, arguing that Democrats want the Senate to go “fishing” during the soon-to-start impeachment trial.

“If the existing case is strong, there’s no need for the judge and the jury to reopen the investigation. If the existing case is weak, House Democrats should not have impeached in the first place,” McConnell said from the Senate floor…

Democrats are planning to force votes on calling four witnesses, including Bolton and acting White House chief of staff Mick Mulvaney. They need four GOP senators to successfully call a witness.

McConnell, however, argued on Tuesday that demands for additional witnesses “do not show confidence” in the House case. [Pols emphasis]

McConnell’s opposition to witnesses in the Senate trial of President Trump blatantly contradicts his vote in 1999 to call Monica Lewinsky and other witnesses to testify in the trial against former President Bill Clinton–and like all questions about the hypocrisy of Republicans who voted to convict Clinton shamelessly covering for Trump twenty years later, there’s not even really an attempt by Republicans to justify it.

But if McConnell has decided that there will be no witnesses against Trump, and it comes down to a single deciding Republican vote to allow this crucial step in the trial to take place, we’ll wager hard money that deciding vote will not be Cory Gardner. Based on Gardner’s long record of misdirection ahead of important votes, whatever Gardner is saying now to create uncertainty is subterfuge ahead of what he does in almost every such case: toeing the party line.

If Gardner does defect on this specific question, it’s still most likely just a feint to reduce the damage from his near-inevitable vote against conviction. But it would nonetheless show further weakening among Republicans as the day of reckoning approaches, and that would be significant.

In the end, though, the last thing Gardner needs right now is a negative Tweet from the boss.

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Get More Smarter on Tuesday (January 14)

1
  by: Colorado Pols January 14, 2020 at 11:35 AM MST


Happy “Feast of the Ass” day. Please celebrate responsibly, or whatever. It’s time to Get More Smarter. If you think we missed something important, please include the link in the comments below (here’s a good example). If you are more of an audio/visual learner, check out The Get More Smarter Show or The Get More Smarter Podcast. And don’t forget to find us on Facebook and Twitter.

TOP OF MIND TODAY…

► The House of Representatives will vote on Wednesday on the issue of sending articles of impeachment to the U.S. Senate in advance of a Senate trial on President Trump’s misconduct. Senate Majority Leader “Moscow” Mitch McConnell, meanwhile, says he still opposes the idea of calling witnesses in a trial — yeah, read that sentence again — as word leaks that some Republican Senators might support such an idea. From The Hill newspaper:

McConnell on Tuesday knocked talk of calling additional impeachment witnesses, arguing that Democrats want the Senate to go “fishing” during the soon-to-start impeachment trial.

“If the existing case is strong, there’s no need for the judge and the jury to reopen the investigation. If the existing case is weak, House Democrats should not have impeached in the first place,” McConnell said from the Senate floor…

…A small number have suggested they are open to calling witnesses midtrial, but they’re getting public pushback from their conservative colleagues, who warn that if Republicans support calling former national security adviser John Boltonthey also have to support calling witnesses Trump might want such as Hunter Biden or the whistleblower at the center of the House impeachment inquiry.

Democrats are planning to force votes on calling four witnesses, including Bolton and acting White House chief of staff Mick Mulvaney. They need four GOP senators to successfully call a witness.

CBS News reported late Monday that Colorado Sen. Cory Gardner (R-Yuma) might be among those Republican Senators who are supportive of calling witnesses in a Senate trial — though the odds are long that Gardner will do anything other than whatever McConnell tells him to do. A recent poll from Quinnipiac University found that 66% of Americans support the idea of witness testimony from former National Security Adviser John Bolton.

Elsewhere, James Hohmann of The Washington Post ponders 10 questions now that the House is poised to send impeachment articles to the Senate.

 

► A Republican group called “The Lincoln Project” absolutely blasted Sen. Cory Gardner (R-Yuma) with a new advertisement on Monday. A subsequent “Truth Test” from 9News was equally brutal.

Says 9News anchor/reporter Kyle Clark: “Calling Senator Gardner a weak, impotent, small man? Let’s assume they’re speaking figuratively, and label that opinion.”


► Candidates for the Democratic Presidential nomination (most of them, anyway) will debate once again tonight in Des Moines, Iowa — just three weeks ahead of the Iowa caucuses.

 

Get even more smarter after the jump… (more…)

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The Get More Smarter Podcast: Weak, Frightened, and Impotent

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  by: Colorado Pols January 14, 2020 at 10:28 AM MST


The Get More Smarter Podcast drops its 25th episode with a look at a killer new (Republican-led) advertisement against Sen. Cory Gardner; the Trump administration makes Iran foreign policy more problematic for Colorado Republicans; and we preview the first full week of the Colorado legislative session with another discussion featuring House Majority Leader Alec Garnett.

Questions? Comments? Complaints? Hit us up at AngryRants@getmoresmarter.com.

Subscribe: Apple Podcasts | Google Podcasts | Spotify | Stitcher | TuneIn

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James Carville Knows Something You Don’t*

9
  by: Colorado Pols January 14, 2020 at 9:25 AM MST


The Hill reports:

James Carville.

Veteran Democratic strategist James Carville has formally endorsed Sen. Michael Bennet’s (D) long-shot presidential campaign, saying he thinks that the Colorado senator is the best candidate to face President Trump due to what he calls stark differences between the two men.

“The best way to beat Donald Trump is to show you’re not him in any way, shape or form,” Carville said in a statement released by the Bennet campaign Monday…

Carville predicted that Bennet will “surprise people,” specifically predicting the senator will do well in the New Hampshire primary next month.

“I think Sen. Bennet is uniquely suited for New Hampshire,” Carville said. “It’s a historical fact that people like him do well there.”

* Legendary Democratic strategy man James Carville knows a lot of things that other people don’t. As for when or where Carville proves accurate in the long run, of course, nobody who has been in politics as long as he has can claim a 100% perfect prognostication record. While most of the political class in America has written off Sen. Michael Bennet’s resolute but persistently second-tier presidential campaign, Bennet has vowed to stay in the race in hopes of achieving exactly what Carville is forecasting–a surprisingly strong showing in the New Hampshire primary that rockets Bennet back from the nether reaches of the pack.

In that event, James Carville will be here to say he told you so.

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Trump Keeps Digging on Iran; Colorado GOP Getting Buried

7
  by: Colorado Pols January 13, 2020 at 3:06 PM MST


Clockwise from top left: Cory Gardner, Ken Buck, Doug Lamborn, and Scott Tipton.

The House of Representatives voted last week on a resolution to restrict President Trump’s ability to attack Iran without provocation. The vote was split along party lines among Colorado’s delegation, with all four Democrats in approval and all three Republicans voting “NO.”

Colorado’s three Republican Members of Congress — Reps. Scott Tipton (R-Cortez), Ken Buck (R-Greeley), and Doug Lamborn (R-Colorado Springs) — may soon be looking for avenues to walk this vote back. As Aaron Blake explains for The Washington Post, President’s Trump’s ever-changing rationale for the killing of Iranian Gen. Qasem Soleimani “has utterly fallen apart”:

Trump has said in recent days that Soleimani was planning to “blow up” the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad and also that he was going after “four embassies.”

But Defense Secretary Mark T. Esper revealed on talk shows Sunday that the idea that Soleimani was about to attack four embassies wasn’t based on intelligence. Instead, he said it was simply something Trump and others “believed” to be the case.

Here’s Esper trying to explain Trump’s comments on CNN’s “State of the Union” over the weekend:

“What the president said was, he believed it probably could have been. He didn’t cite intelligence.”

“He believed it probably could have been.”

Trump administration officials are scrambling to understand and explain Trump’s Friday comments. Members of Congress who were briefed last week on the Iran strike said this was the first they had heard about a potential attack on American embassies. If there was such intelligence indicating this type of attack, nobody bothered to alert any of the embassies that would have theoretically been at risk.

Senate Democrats are pushing for a vote on a similar War Powers Resolution as soon as this week. Though Colorado Sen. Cory Gardner (R-Yuma) hasn’t yet had to cast that vote, he is in a worse spot than his Colorado colleagues after he came out last week in full-throated defense of the killing of Soleimani. Said Gardner:

“I commend the administration for taking decisive action last week in Baghdad against Tehran-backed terrorists planning an imminent attack on American targets. The administration’s action, with regard to Qassem Soleimani, was not only decisive, but necessary and legal under longstanding presidential authority to protect American lives from imminent attack.”

Decisive? Only in that Soleimani is definitely dead, since the threat from Iran is probably stronger now than ever before (according to polling from Quinnipiac University, most Americans polled now think that we are less safe as a result of Soleimani’s death).

Necessary and legal? Was it necessary and legal to kill an Iranian General and bring the United States to the brink of war based on something that “probably could have been” a threat? That’s almost a rhetorical question now.

Gardner has long portrayed himself as something of a foreign policy expert in the U.S. Senate, but now Democratic Senate candidates can tee off on Gardner as uninformed and dangerous when it comes to dealing with foreign threats. Much of what Jennifer Rubin writes about Trump for The Washington Post today could also apply to Gardner:

The ever-shifting explanations for Trump’s conduct are emblematic of how his utter lack of credibility in the national security realm has come back to haunt him. He has gone from smearing the intelligence community, to praising it, to inventing intelligence. The media too often pretend that there is credence to his assertions or that maybe there is some super-secret intelligence that cannot be shared with them.

Trump has a consistent pattern of misleading the public and out-and-out lying. He has ignored uncontroverted intelligence, hyped false allegations and now given what seems like false justification for launching offensive military action without congressional authorization.

Colorado’s Republican Members of Congress bizarrely decided to take Trump’s word on Iran when they came to his defense. Now they’ll need to decide on which Iran story to take seriously from here on out.

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George Conway’s Lincoln Project Rips Cory Gardner

17
  by: Colorado Pols January 13, 2020 at 9:39 AM MST



The Lincoln Project, a group of dissenting high-profile Republicans led by attorney George Conway along with longtime GOP strategists Rick Wilson and Steve Schmidt, fired off its first volley against a fellow Republican–with blistering minute-plus video spot slamming Sen. Cory Gardner of Colorado for “putting Trump ahead of Colorado every time.”

Last month the Lincoln Project’s principals laid out their red-on-red mission in a New York Times op-ed:

Over these next 11 months, our efforts will be dedicated to defeating President Trump and Trumpism at the ballot box and to elect those patriots who will hold the line. We do not undertake this task lightly, nor from ideological preference. We have been, and remain, broadly conservative (or classically liberal) in our politics and outlooks. Our many policy differences with national Democrats remain, but our shared fidelity to the Constitution dictates a common effort.

The 2020 general election, by every indication, will be about persuasion, with turnout expected to be at record highs. Our efforts are aimed at persuading enough disaffected conservatives, Republicans and Republican-leaning independents in swing states and districts to help ensure a victory in the Electoral College, and congressional majorities that don’t enable or abet Mr. Trump’s violations of the Constitution, even if that means Democratic control of the Senate and an expanded Democratic majority in the House…

[Trump] has neither the moral compass nor the temperament to serve. His vision is limited to what immediately faces him — the problems and risks he chronically brings upon himself and for which others, from countless contractors and companies to the American people, ultimately bear the heaviest burden.

But this president’s actions are possible only with the craven acquiescence of congressional Republicans. They have done no less than abdicate their Article I responsibilities.

Today, Conway said of Sen. Gardner in particular:

When he ran for the Senate six years ago, Sen. Cory Gardner (R-CO) promised that “when my party is wrong, I’ll say it.” Now Gardner is so scared of Donald Trump, he won’t even say it’s wrong for a president to ask a foreign government to investigate a political rival.

If Sen. Cory Gardner can’t do his job, and can’t comply with his oath of office by considering the impeachment charges against Trump on their merits, then he should go.

We haven’t heard the size of the ad buy for this compelling spot, but we expect it to be widely circulated even without much money behind it. This is a message aimed directly at Trump-averse unaffiliated voters who joined with Democrats in 2018 to punish Colorado Republicans at all levels in a clear referendum against the President.

With Gardner fighting a rear guard action to keep the Republican base behind him by backing Trump at great cost to his own credibility, Colorado’s majority anti-Trump coalition has no incentive to split their ticket.

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Marianne Williamson WAS Still Running for President

3
  by: Colorado Pols January 10, 2020 at 11:52 AM MST


Apparently Marianne Williamson was pursuing the Democratic Presidential nomination as recently as yesterday. But not anymore.

From CNBC:

Williamson, who consistently polled near the bottom of the pack of Democrats vying to defeat President Donald Trump, said she stayed in the race “to take advantage of every possible opportunity to share our message.”

“With caucuses and primaries now about to begin, however, we will not be able to garner enough votes in the election to elevate our conversation any more than it is now,” she said. “The primaries might be tightly contested among the top contenders, and I don’t want to get in the way of a progressive candidate winning any of them.”

“As of today, therefore, I’m suspending my campaign,” Williamson said.

Williamson wrote on Twitter shortly after her announcement that “A politics of conscience is still yet possible. And yes….love will prevail.”

Peace out!

 

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Cory Gardner Praises Dear Leader’s Glorious Targeted Killing

6
  by: Colorado Pols January 10, 2020 at 11:42 AM MST


President Trump and Sen. Cory Gardner.

9NEWS reports, Sen. Cory Gardner is not just backing President Donald Trump’s recent aggressive actions in the Middle East–while fellow Republican Senators denounce the administration’s arrogance in consultation with Congress as “insane” and “demeaning”–he’s laying it on thick:

“The president made the right call at the right time to neutralize the threat and to save American lives. Imagine having done nothing, having done nothing and allowing the attacks to proceed,” Gardner said. “At yesterday’s classified briefing, General Milley and our national security personnel made it clear — the death of General Soleimani saved lives.”

The briefing Gardner referred to was a classified briefing on the airstrike that killed Iranian Gen. Qassem Soleimani, held by the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Mark Milley and other high ranking security officials on Wednesday.

“I commend the administration for taking decisive action last week in Baghdad against Tehran-backed terrorists planning an imminent attack on American targets. The administration’s action, with regard to Qassem Soleimani, was not only decisive, but necessary and legal under longstanding presidential authority to protect American lives from imminent attack,” Gardner said.

As we noted yesterday, Sen. Mike Lee of Utah was incensed by the high-handed treatment of U.S. Senators by administration officials in an earlier briefing, where it was suggested that even questioning the President’s war powers would be seen by the administration as “emboldening the enemy.” As a result, a deeply offended Sen. Lee and fellow Republican Sen. Rand Paul say they will vote in favor of a resolution passed by the House to limit the President’s authority to strike Iran. As for proving that the assassination of Iranian Gen. Qassem Soleimani was a defensive action in response to an “imminent” attack, as Vox reports:

“The president has not supplied convincing evidence that his strike stopped an imminent attack on US forces. Nothing we’ve seen has changed my mind,” Sen. Tom Udall (D-NM), who has proposed a bill to withhold funding for an Iran war unless Trump seeks congressional authorization, said on the Senate floor after the briefing.

Paul referenced claims by O’Brien, Trump’s top national security aide in the White House, who has said the 2002 authorization for war with Iraq supported the legal rationale for killing Soleimani — an Iranian — in Baghdad. “That is absurd, that is an insult,” he said.

And according to a Democratic Senate aide, the briefers didn’t touch on anything that would provide evidence of an “imminent” attack. [Pols emphasis] “There was no way they could know for sure,” the aide said after speaking with their boss on what happened inside the room. “There was nothing specific they could point to.”

No problem for Sen. Gardner, who seems to have heard only what the White House wanted him to hear and not a word more. Gardner has learned in the last three years to talk his way around even the worst foreign policy mistakes by Trump, and follow the proselytized MAGA base’s lead in effusively praising the President no matter how poorly that praise may age–like when Gardner praised Trump for holding a summit with North Korea’s Kim Jong Un, and then watched helplessly as Trump’s engagement with North Korea devolved into the usual insults and renewed missile tests.

The moral of the story? If you want honesty, you won’t get it from Gardner–even when fellow Republicans are no longer restrained.

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Get More Smarter on Friday (January 10)

1
  by: Colorado Pols January 10, 2020 at 11:26 AM MST


The First Son-in-Law is 38 years old today. It’s time to Get More Smarter. If you think we missed something important, please include the link in the comments below (here’s a good example). If you are more of an audio/visual learner, check out The Get More Smarter Show or The Get More Smarter Podcast. And don’t forget to find us on Facebook and Twitter.

TOP OF MIND TODAY…

► The House of Representatives voted on Thursday to limit President Trump’s ability to take unilateral military action without Congressional approval. As CNN reports:

The vote was 224-194. Republican Reps. Matt Gaetz of Florida, Thomas Massie of Kentucky and Francis Rooney of Florida crossed party lines to vote in favor while Democratic Reps. Max Rose of New York, Ben McAdams of Utah, Anthony Brindisi of New York, Joe Cunningham of South Carolina, Elaine Luria of Virginia, Josh Gottheimer of New Jersey, Kendra Horn of Oklahoma and Stephanie Murphy of Florida voted against the resolution.

Now that the resolution has passed the House it will next go to the Senate.

Freshman Democratic Rep. Elissa Slotkin of Michigan, a former CIA analyst and senior Defense Department official, is the sponsor of the resolution, which calls on the President “to terminate the use of United States Armed Forces to engage in hostilities in or against Iran” unless Congress declares war or enacts “specific statutory authorization” for the use of armed forces.

You read that correctly — Florida Republican Rep. Matt Gaetz voted IN FAVOR of the resolution.

Of course, the Senate is where all good things go to die; it is unlikely that Senate Majority Leader “Moscow” Mitch McConnell will even entertain a vote on the matter if he can avoid it. Some Republican Senators have expressed support for a “War Powers Resolution” after a disastrous White House briefing on Iran earlier this week.

Meanwhile, President Trump may have decided to kill Iranian Gen. Qasem Soleimani to perhaps appease Republican Senators whose support he needs in a coming impeachment trial.

 

► House Speaker Nancy Pelosi says her chamber may send impeachment documents over to the U.S. Senate as soon as next week. From the New York Times:

In a letter to colleagues Friday morning, the speaker moved to end a weekslong impasse over the impeachment process that had left the president’s fate in limbo. She did not announce the members of the team she will ask to manage the case, but said the House should be ready to vote to appoint them sometime next week.

“I have asked Judiciary Committee Chairman Jerry Nadler to be prepared to bring to the floor next week a resolution to appoint managers and transmit articles of impeachment to the Senate,” Ms. Pelosi wrote after lawmakers departed the Capitol for the weekend. “I will be consulting with you at our Tuesday House Democratic Caucus meeting on how we proceed further.”

Once the House votes and the articles are transmitted, the Senate’s proceeding, only the third impeachment trial of a sitting president in American history, will begin promptly — as soon as Wednesday based on Ms. Pelosi’s timeline.

 

► If you thought that Republican lawmakers in Colorado might be more reluctant to embrace their lunatic right-wing base after last year’s string of recall failures…well, we know you probably didn’t think that. The GOP still loves itself some lunatics.

Meanwhile, Colorado Republicans made it very clear during Thursday’s “State of the State” address that they have zero fucks to give about immigrants or refugees in Colorado.

For more on Gov. Polis’ “State of the State” speech, check this recap from The Denver Post or this annotated version of the entire speech via The Colorado Sun.

 

► Don’t miss the first 2020 episode of The Get More Smarter Podcast, featuring an in-depth interview with House Majority Leader Alec Garnett.

 

Get even more smarter after the jump… (more…)

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The Get More Smarter Podcast: More Smarter Legislating

0
  by: Colorado Pols January 10, 2020 at 10:23 AM MST



In the first 2020 episode of The Get More Smarter Podcast, we kick off the Colorado legislative session from the State Capitol with House Majority Leader Alec Garnett. We also discuss Iran and impeachment (and how Sen. Cory Gardner is screwed on both), and Rep. Garnett faces off against Ian Silverii in the world’s best worst game, “Duke or Donald.” 

Questions? Comments? Complaints? Hit us up at AngryRants@getmoresmarter.com.

Subscribe: Apple Podcasts | Google Podcasts | Spotify | Stitcher | TuneIn

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