May 10, 2011 01:20 AM UTC

2012's Scott Tipton, Meet 2010's Scott Tipton

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• by: Colorado Pols

Last October, a campaign TV spot (above) from then congressional candidate Scott Tipton was highlighted by Colorado Springs’ KRDO-TV:

It begins with a clip from Salazar’s campaign ad with the Congressman saying, “I will always fight to protect Social Security & Medicare.”

Tipton is intenitonally pictured with a group of senior citizens, most likely because Salazar’s been claiming Tipton will cut senior entitlements…

The ad continues with Tipton saying, “Unlike John Salazar I’ll never put our seniors’ future at risk.”

This is opinon. The Salazar campaign says the congressman would never put seniors’ future at risk either.

Tipton continues, “No cuts, no privatization, no scaring our seniors just to try and win this election.” [Pols emphasis]

You would think that the phrase “no cuts, no privatization” is unambiguous. But as Rep. Scott Tipton’s legislative agenda has moved beyond the hypothetical–which isn’t to say that it was much better as a hypothetical, witness his pledge to “cut the government in half”–and into the realm of real choices and consequences, it’s become much harder to reconcile his contradictory promises. Because, obviously, you can’t promise “no cuts, no privatization” out of one side of your mouth, and promise to “cut the government in half” with the other. It’s totally ridiculous.

So what’s next for Tipton? Politico reports, for the time being anyway, the doublespeak goes on:

Friday evening, in a sign of unity after a disjointed week, GOP leadership, along with Ryan and [Ways and Means Committee Chairman Dave] Camp, released a statement saying “everything must be on the table except increasing taxes.”

Freshmen, who voted en masse for the Ryan budget, largely want entitlement reform dealt with.

“I made a promise that I’m going to protect our seniors who are receiving Social Security and receiving Medicare, and I fully intend on supporting that,” [Pols emphasis] Rep. Scott Tipton (R-Colo.) said. “We understand that going forward, the numbers don’t lie: We’re running out of workers to be able to fulfill that as baby boomers come on, so we’re going to have to be looking at those alternatives. There are some ideas on the table that Ryan put out – that’s the beginning point. That’s not the end point.”

Okay, one more time. On the campaign trail, the sound bite was simple, straightforward, and asterisk free: “No cuts, no privatization.” But now, Tipton says he only promised to protect seniors who are receiving (present tense) Medicare–obviously a statement meant to exclude those who merely will be eligible, which is of course everyone else in America.

Really, folks–how stupid does this man think the people who voted for him are?

It’s not like you can hold Tipton to a consistent set of promises anyway: he’s already abandoned his pledge to “cut the government in half,” presumably about five minutes after somebody in Washington explained just how ludicrous this sounds. Tipton’s bumbling attempts to explain his position on budget votes, repealing “Obamacare,” and other issues raises the possibility that he really isn’t capable of articulating a coherent position–it has to be given to him on a script, and the script wasn’t completely written when he was running for Congress.

Unfortunately for Tipton, he ad-libbed. And spoke too soon. And now he’s stuck.