January 14, 2011 10:32 PM UTC

GOP Hardcores Promise "Tea Party" a Fight

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• by: Colorado Pols

A fascinating post this week from former GOP Senate President John Andrews, writing for his Backbone America blog–remember all that talk after the election about bipartisan cooperation in the legislature, common-ground solutions, and working together?

According to a group of key GOP legislators, screw that.

The following report came to me [January 6th] from a friend at the Capitol:

Today Colorado Senate Minority Leader Mike Kopp and six other legislators from both the Senate and House met for 90 minutes with 25 leaders of Tea Party and 912 groups from across the state. The groups represented thousands of grassroots activists from Greeley to Pueblo, eastern plains to Grand Junction.

They agreed to forge a strategic partnership to advance a “small government agenda” with three policy themes – taxation, regulation and immigration. Leaders of the groups pledged to get their members involved in the legislative process including hearings and advocacy, and legislative leaders pledged to work with the leaders to build local membership and better awareness of state issues.

Participating with Kopp were Senators Ted Harvey, Scott Renfroe, Kevin Lundberg, and Kent Lambert, along with Reps. Libby Szabo and Chris Holbert. Speaker Frank McNulty and other members of House leadership were in DC, hence unavailable to attend. [Pols emphasis]

We noted a couple of days ago that Senate Minority Leader Mike Kopp wasn’t on board with House Speaker Frank McNulty’s lip service to a bipartisan approach, and neither were a number of freshman GOP legislators–like Libby Szabo–who had campaigned hard on the very issues that McNulty abandoned them on immediately after the election. Added to the the growing intracaucus angst is the fact that McNulty was intimately involved with the strategy for their campaigns, including the specific issues like the FASTER registration fee hikes that McNulty quickly declared off-limits after becoming Speaker-designate.

All of which would lead one to believe that McNulty is not in on this little “strategic partnership”–except that Andrews sure makes it sound like it was just a scheduling problem, doesn’t he?

With that in mind, the question is easy: despite McNulty’s remarks about bipartisanship, and not challenging FASTER or the new oil and gas rules, does he really want to be associated with a “strategic partnership” with the hard right to push for a “small government agenda?” Or is Andrews simply making excuses to cover for McNulty’s unwillingness to kiss the “Tea Party’s” ring? It’s kind of ambiguous, and usually when that happens, it’s intentional.

But we do know somebody who can clear the ambiguity right up.