February 28, 2009 06:42 PM UTC

Greeley Heart Scott Renfroe

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• by: Colorado Pols

For all the outrage expressed in the last week over immoderate comments from Republican state senators, there’s another component to this story worth considering–as the Greeley Tribune reports:

State Sen. Scott Renfroe found support Thursday night.

The support came from more than 70 people who packed Evans City Council chambers Thursday night at a town hall meeting Renfroe, R-Greeley, co-hosted with Rep. Glenn Vaad, R-Mead.

Renfroe and Vaad discussed the bills they are carrying in the legislature during the 90-minute meeting, but the real support Renfroe got came when the topic of Renfroe’s recent comments about homosexuality was finally breached…

Richard Ewald, of Greeley, congratulated Renfroe for standing up for what he thought was right at the meeting Thursday. His congratulations stirred applause from nearly all of the 70 in attendance.

“The word ‘marriage’ requires that there have to be a man and a woman involved,” Ewald said. Homosexuals are “asking for special privileges,” he said.

Brett Reese, who runs Greeley’s Pirate Radio, said he gave two thumbs up to everything Vaad and Renfroe spoke about Thursday night, not just the applause for Renfroe…

“I think the overwhelming majority of people in there sided with Renfroe,” Reese said, “which shows his representation of his constituency to be dead on.”

But that’s not to say that all comment at the meeting was in agreement with Renfroe on the homosexuality issue.

Bill Hopkins, who said he was chairman of the Weld County Republican Party from 1991 to 1995, told Renfroe that what he said was inappropriate.

“It made me ashamed to be a Republican,” Hopkins told Renfroe, adding that he taught his children to love and respect everyone.

Hopkins was one of the sole dissenting voices at the town hall meeting, however.

Bottom line: Scott Renfroe, inarticulate bigoted pud though he may be, probably didn’t endanger his Senate seat by saying what he said–future, larger political viability is another matter of course. And though we’re a little less sure about Dave Schultheis after his much more universally offensive statements on HIV and pregnant mothers, he is also in a very safe (by which we mean tolerant of batshit crazy representation) Reagan Highway district.

It’s one of the chief reasons the focus of criticism rightly turned this week to Senate Minority Leader Josh Penry. He’s the one with the immediate responsibility to keep control over the image presented to the public by his caucus, especially at this current low point in the GOP’s overall popularity. His passive-aggressive refusal to divorce his caucus from the fringe members hogging the spotlight was, and remains, totally unexplainable.

This is why we don’t get Penry’s “outrage machine” argument. Aside from the fact that these incidents haven’t really needed a “machine” to be, well, outrageous, continued well-publicized spectacles by Republicans from safely hard-right districts represent more of a threat to other Republicans than anything else. Democrats, at a certain level, would like nothing better than for Penry to keep fiddling while a few nutjobs further shred his–and the party’s–public image. And Republicans we talk to who don’t have the luxury of living in Greeley or Focus on the Family’s immediate environs, despite all the insistence from certain Penry-loving factions that none of this is a big deal, are at least as outraged by what has happened as any Democrat.

Probably more so, since they’re the ones who will pay the price next year.