August 10, 2021 08:25 AM UTC

At Least They Didn't Call It The "Contract On Colorado"

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• by: Colorado Pols

TUESDAY UPDATE #2: From fail to flail:

.@KyleClark clearly you don’t care about the average working family in CO who’s paying $1.50 more *per gallon* since November. We do.

And remind us again who’s in charge of Denver & CO w/ the current worst air quality in the world? Oh yeah…the Democrats.#copolitics https://t.co/icPiSjV3HV

— Kristi Burton Brown (@ColoradoKbb) August 9, 2021

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TUESDAY UPDATE: How big a fail was the Colorado Republican Party’s “Gas Station Manifesto?” The answer lies in both the overall paucity of coverage, with just a few outlets paying momentary attention, and in the irony-laden bad press they managed to receive from those who did. 9NEWS’ Marshall Zelinger’s report last night turned out as quizzical as his Tweet below:

“Just like the air in Denver, it wasn’t quite clear,” said Zelinger.

Denver7’s Meghan Lopez zeroed in on the contradiction between this half-baked press conference and the release yesterday of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s damning new report on human-caused climate change, all while Denver experiences some of the worst air quality of any major city on Earth:

While scientists try to raise the alarm about climate change, at a gas station in Denver, a group of Colorado Republicans held a press conference to talk about their policy priorities moving forward…

“Last November, gas was $2.19 a gallon at this gas station. Today, it’s $3.69; that’s $1.50 more per gallon that working class average families, like the one I grew up in, are paying every day thanks to Democrat policies. We’ve got to fix them,” Burton Brown said.

However, Democrats criticized the press conference afterward, saying it missed the point and proved that Republicans are out of touch with what people are experiencing.

“The other aspect of it is how tone deaf it is to roll out an agenda at a gas station and not talk about climate change when we literally just experienced the worst air quality in the world,” Majority Leader Sen. Steve Fenberg, D-Boulder, said.

The political graveyard is full of ideas that sounded good in a conference room or on a Zoom call but were in execution unqualified disasters–sometimes disasters that do much more harm than anything the gimmick in question might have gained the perpetrators.

The Colorado GOP’s press conference at a Sinclair gas station on a hot, smoky August day in 2021 will be so remembered.

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This is a first for me. News conference at a gas station. The ⁦@cologop⁩ and the majority of the state’s GOP legislature is here to talk about their agenda for the next legislative session. They are the minority in both chambers. #coleg #copolitics pic.twitter.com/CcuG9LEuWN

— Marshall Zelinger (@Marshall9News) August 9, 2021

Today, as 9NEWS’ Marshall Zelinger reports, the Colorado Republican Party, struggling for relevance after years of successive pummelings in recent elections, unveiled their new platform they’re calling the “Commitment to Colorado” literally at Sinclair gas station:

We are concerned for the next generation of Coloradans. With an increased cost of living, a skyrocketing crime rate, and an education system that has failed our students, Colorado Republicans make this Commitment…

Which will forever be known now as the Four Seasons Sinclair.

What follows (read it for yourself if you want) has got to be one of the vaguest and least inspiring political platforms we’ve ever read. Other than the usual complaints about taxes and fearmongering about rising crime rates, there’s absolutely nothing in this platform to motivate swingable Colorado voters who have been breaking for Democrats consistently in recent elections to consider voting the other way. Goals like “making Colorado affordable” sound great, but without even the pretense of a plan to actually do that the whole thing comes off as an arrogrant and tone-deaf exercise.

And then there’s self-immolating pablum like this:

Because that’s what Republicans do! Think through the last four years in your mind if you’re not sure.

It’s the party’s job to articulate the message. But when that message is total crap, it’s better to say nothing at all.