November 19, 2009 07:49 PM UTC

"McInnis Unity" Intense Spin Campaign Underway

•  
• by: Colorado Pols

In the last couple of days we’ve seen the two most prominent conservative columnists at the Denver Post, Vince Carroll and Mike Rosen, write strained, quarrelsome op-eds about “unity” among Republicans and the virtues of GOP gubernatorial candidate Scott McInnis. We’ll give you three guesses why this is happening, and the first two don’t count.

As you know, there’s a great deal of agitation among the conservative rank-and-file over the recent surprise exit of McInnis’ main opponent Josh Penry from the race. There’s nobody who will seriously tell you Penry’s exit wasn’t exactly what it looks like, that is a cold punking of the “base’s choice” by the wealthiest GOP donors in the state, and many of the people now on the “McInnis unity” bandwagon will tell you privately this isn’t the way they wanted it to go. But it is where they find themselves today, trying like hell to bring the party together just enough to deny Tom Tancredo an opening to jump in and screw everything up.

Watch Rosen dance:

The election of a Republican governor could be the start of a GOP comeback in this traditionally red state. Paving the way is what appears to be a meeting of the minds between Scott McInnis, the presumptive Republican nominee, and key players in the party. Emerging from recent meetings between McInnis, Josh Penry, Tom Tancredo, Dick Wadhams and Republican leaders in the legislature is an agreement on a platform that all parties can enthusiastically embrace.

The agenda, modeled on the winning reform recipes of Chris Christie and Bob McDonnell in their New Jersey and Virginia gubernatorial races, gives McInnis something concrete to run on rather than merely running against Ritter. It’s sufficiently faithful to traditional conservative principles to please and reassure the Republican base, while specific, practical, and inclusive enough to attract swing-voting independents in the state. You might call it a Contract for Colorado…

Concerns that the platform would repel moderates by taking an extreme position on abortion were unfounded. It simply reinstates Gov. Bill Owens’ policy, banning taxpayer funding for abortion agencies like Planned Parenthood and making a general statement of principle defending the sanctity of human life. [Pols emphasis]

Woah, wait, what? Before this little nugget, Rosen rattled off a dozen fiscally conservative agenda items, consistent with all these recent reports about the GOP “not focusing” on the kinds of social wedge issues that had helped alienate them from the majority of Colorado voters in recent years. It all sounds believable…but then Rosen lays this oh-by-the-way on at the end?

It’s not going to work, folks–maybe it will for the purpose of fooling the GOP base, but last year Colorado voters rejected an anti-abortion ballot measure by absolutely historic margins. Any anti-abortion plank in Rosen’s “Contract for Colorado” is going to revisit everything voters hate about bedroom-obsessed Republicans–Democrats are going to make sure it happens. They’re going to make sure everybody knows McInnis is a Romney-style flip-flopper on abortion, too. After all, the anti-abortion plank is something Penry himself demanded from McInnis, in an interview late last week:

Can’t see the audio player? Click here.

Bottom line: we know, just like Rosen and Vince Carroll know, that this veneer of “unity” is what the Colorado GOP must project if it is to have any chance of winning next year. The problem is that what they must do to win the hard-line base’s consent (thus avoiding a Tancredo insurgency) are the things that will cost them dearly with the rest of the electorate.

And yes, Mike Rosen knows that, too–hence the pre-emptive spin.