December 08, 2009 07:57 PM UTC

McInnis/Teabagger Schism Intensifies, Maes Seeks Opening

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• by: Colorado Pols

We’ve been watching this build up for almost a week, and today the Denver Post reports:

A move by gubernatorial candidate Scott McInnis to clear opponents from the Republican primary field and unite the state party under one banner has instead driven away some factions he had hoped to court.

A band of conservative Tea Party activists, along with less vocal officials elsewhere in the GOP, continue to bristle at what they see as a circumvention of their rights to choose a candidate and a platform.

The dissatisfaction has recently manifest itself in angry e-mails and vows of support for long-shot Republican candidate and Evergreen businessman Dan Maes, in protest of national media reports suggesting McInnis has won over conservatives in Colorado.

McInnis unveiled a Platform for Prosperity on Nov. 23, in part to appeal to conservative voters, as he accepted the endorsements of two possible Republican opponents who bowed out of next year’s gubernatorial race…

Folks, we are witnessing something very important here. Despite the best efforts of all parties involved–from the GOP kingpins who muscled Josh Penry out of the gubernatorial primary, to Tom Tancredo who provided a week’s worth of absurd “hard negotiation” theatrics, to the overly accommodating editors and columnists at the Denver Post who rolled out the insistent red carpet for “McInnis Unity”–despite everything they did to avoid this moment, the monkey of Dede Scozzafava is squarely on McInnis’ back. The Post’s Jessica Fender continues:

McInnis’ troubles underscore the unpredictably of these new protest groups, which are sometimes in alliance with Republicans but remain an unknown quotient in Colorado politics, said John Straayer, a political science professor at Colorado State University.

“The noise they can make could be a bigger problem for (McInnis) than their numbers,” Straayer said. “If they command a lot of attention, they are basically helping the Democrats out with a critique of the Republican nominee.”

Wadhams rejects the idea that the party’s top dogs have stifled choice…

The problem for Colorado GOP chairman Dick Wadhams, in a nutshell, is that nobody believes him anymore. Wadhams has talked out of both sides of his mouth about the “value” of primaries for too many election cycles, while the base has watched Republican primary fields mysteriously evaporate—over and over again, year after year. They know he’s full of crap now and he can’t assuage their anger.

We agree with Straayer that the danger of a full-scale “Tea Party” rebellion for McInnis exceeds their likely real numbers. As yesterday’s Rasmussen poll showed, a great many more conservatives than you actually see at these protests would vote for a “Tea Party candidate”–analogous to Doug Hoffman in the NY-23 special election–over a generic Republican candidate.

With all this in mind, it makes a great deal of sense that up-to-now irrelevant candidate Dan Maes (quite possibly headed for the Big Line after all) is doing everything he can do to capitalize on right-wing disaffection with McInnis. And it helps us understand why McInnis is willing to jeopardize his credibility with business and other responsible stakeholders by hedging on those over-the-top anti-government ballot initiatives championed by the “Tea Party” set.

It would be different, we suppose, if McInnis wasn’t actively seeking the support of the “Tea Party,” an effort that produced the Wall Street Journal story and misleading Fox News interview that so greatly upset them to begin with. It might actually be something Democrats would not want to discuss under different circumstances, since he could hypothetically come out looking more ‘moderate’ after ‘battling’ his ‘right flank.’

But McInnis is not ‘battling’ the “Tea Partiers,” he’s trying to co-opt them into a backdrop for his campaign–which, especially if the attempt fails, could leave him with fewer friends on any side.