April 27, 2011 05:10 PM UTC

Tipton Slammed During Pinon Canyon Visit...Over Medicare?

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• by: Colorado Pols

Don’t say we didn’t warn you, as the Pueblo Chieftain’s John Norton reports:

Tipton, a freshman in Congress, and staff members met with the commander at Fort Carson and then headed south for a tour of the Pinon Canyon Maneuver Site before an evening town hall meeting at Trinidad State Junior College.

Even though the Army has put its plan to expand the maneuver site on hold, area residents remain suspicious and continue to criticize the Army for the way it uses the 230,000 acres it already controls…

Criticism of the Pinon Canyon project was just part of the rough comments Tipton faced during a nighttime Trinidad town hall meeting. The crowd also was critical of Republican plans to deal with the deficit and overturn health care reform. [Pols emphasis]

…Asked if he would support congressional action to put in place a permanent funding ban for expansion, Tipton said there needed to be more dialogue.

That didn’t satisfy the crowd, though, as people complained that bankers were not willing to lend money in a time of uncertainty over the future of ranches that could be taken by eminent domain.

We’re looking for video from this town hall and will post once we get some; it’s a shame that we didn’t get more than a single paragraph on Tipton’s rough night in Trinidad, or the questions posed to him regarding his glowing support for the 2012 Paul Ryan budget plan. But if the crowd was anything like the one that heckled Rep. Ryan into the ground last week in Wisconsin?

That’s some footage Rep. Tipton won’t want you to see–we hope to have it soon. And it serves as further demonstration: everything we said about political peril for the new Republican congressional majority, and the grave risk of horrifying 2012’s voters simply by keeping their 2010 campaign-trail promises to the hard right, was, though unheeded, very good advice.