November 30, 2009 05:00 PM UTC

Penry Tries Rewriting History in Post Exit Q&A

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• by: Colorado Pols

From Sunday’s Denver Post interview with Senate Minority Leader Josh Penry, there’s so many softballs for us to swing at that we don’t know where to start:

Politicians dream of the kind of press that gubernatorial candidate Josh Penrygarnered in recent months.

Fox News reported Penry was ready to lead a national comeback of the Republican Party. The Washington Post surmised that the young state Senate minority leader might be the best hope to lay the new foundation for the GOP.

Then Penry dropped out, paving the way for his one-time boss, former U.S. Rep. Scott McInnis, to easily capture the GOP nomination…

…Q: Do you think Scott realizes the gift that was handed to him? The cliché lead here is “Christmas came early for Scott McInnis.”

A: He does. No question in my mind. Scott in these last two weeks has shown an openness and a genuine humility. Anyone at these meetings can tell you that.

The left-wing blogs and objective observers are saying the Republicans’ chances of taking back the governorship and regaining other ground we lost just increased by orders of magnitude.

Q: Orders of magnitude? O-r-d-e-r-s? What does that mean?

A: (Laughing) Say it increased by a lot.

Q: Those same left-wing bloggers keep reporting you were pushed out. There’s talk that some high-roller donor backing McInnis approached you or your people and threatened to spend a fortune attacking you.

A: Those bloggers are also sitting in their underwear in their grandmothers’ basements. They’re making stuff up out of thin air.

I wasn’t pushed out. No one approached me. I made a shrewd decision based on the realities around me.

Scott has some significant advantages that I recognize, financial and otherwise. He was in Congress for 12 years. He has a bunch of third-party money backing him. The Republican Party historically nominates people who have been down this road before. The insurgent newcomer rarely wins it. I’m not whining about it, but it’s a reality.

Enough of the spin and posturing. We’re not saying anything that isn’t completely obvious: Josh Penry is not running for Governor because he was the weaker candidate and was pushed out by a much stronger candidate. The idea that Penry just decided not to run because he is the “bigger man” is horseshit. Penry’s polling numbers were in the toilet, and he could only raise money from a small base located on the Western Slope. Democrats wanted Penry to be the GOP nominee for Governor because everybody knew that he was the weaker candidate.

Bottom line: If Penry really thought he could beat Scott McInnis, he would still be in the race. Period. Does anybody really think for a minute that Penry just got out of the race out of the kindness of his heart? He’s spinning as fast as he can here, and we understand the effort — but reality, uh, bites.

Penry actually looks pretty sad in this interview, claiming over and over that he is the bigger man for bowing out of the race.

At some point somebody’s got to be the adult and say, “I’m going to step back and do what’s right for the cause.” Ironically, it was the 33-year-old who made the decision.

Here’s a tip: If you have to tell everyone that you are the coolest guy in the room, then you’re not the coolest guy in the room. The more you try to spin your exit as though you did it because you are a leader, the more people see right through it. Penry would have been much better off sticking with “it wasn’t the right time for me, etc.” than this sour grapes silliness.

And as for the whole “bloggers sitting in their underwear in the basement” thing…really? That line is sooooo lame. Penry’s campaign blogged. Mainstream reporters blog. Everyone blogs. And it’s “sitting in their mother’s basements,” not their “grandmother’s.” If you’re going to spew cliches, at least get it right. (Not to mention the “527 that was set to go after Penry” was reported by MSNBC and the Denver Post before any ‘bloggers in their underwear’ said anything. Don’t get us wrong, we’re not offended, but that’s just incredibly stupid on several levels.)

Q: Speaking of retro, here we are talking about McInnis, Tancredo, Owens and Wadhams. It feels a little like 1998 here.

A: Look at our ticket and the vibrancy and the freshness. Look at Cory Gardner and Ryan Frazier for Congress and J.J. Ament for treasurer. We’re an alive and well and hip party. As I told Scott, you can’t be a 33-year-old candidate for governor, but you can embrace my supporters, the type of supporters who bring a new energy.

Vibrant? Fresh? Hip? Cory Gardner is running around CD-4 talking about Obama’s birth certificate and raising less and less money each month. Ryan Frazier got booted out of a Senate race that he can’t win so he could enter a Congressional race that he can’t win. And J.J. Ament? He’s not even going to win his own primary for Treasurer, and his background — check this out for “hip” — is as a banker. Yeah, that’ll sell real good.

Frankly, this entire interview sums up very well why Penry is no longer a candidate for Governor. Penry is little more than a walking talking point. He tried to play with the big boys, and he got rolled. The media made a mockery of Penry’s juvenile attempts to play “pass the blame,” and Penry damaged his own credibility by showing that he didn’t even really understand state budget or personnel issues. The “fresh faces” he mentions are cut from the same cloth and are offering absolutely nothing new other than the same failed talking points and cliches.

For all of his great press a few months ago, at the end of the day, we all learned that Penry is really just a younger version of the same failed Republican politician that has led to the Democrats’ revival in Colorado. The bright lights of the gubernatorial race showed the real Penry — the right-wing “ideologue” who will say and do anything if he thinks it will gain him political points. And what did it get him? A back seat.

More commentary from MADCO on another post.