December 29, 2010 07:07 PM UTC

Top Stories of 2010 #8: Jane Norton's "War on Islam"

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• by: Colorado Pols

By June of this year, it was clear things were not going the way that onetime GOP Senate frontrunner Jane Norton had intended. In the fall of 2009, Norton’s entry into the Senate race was briefly seen as salvation for Republicans, then choosing between several longshot bids–including “Tea Party” favorite and Weld Country DA Ken Buck.

That is, until the Republican base got wind of it.

Norton’s relations with the GOP base, and the “Tea Party” in particular, never got off the ground. Norton was immediately flagged by conservatives as a “RINO” for her support as Lt. Gov. under Bill Owens for 2005’s Referendum C, the TABOR time-out measure that split the party along ideological vs. pragmatic lines. Later, Norton’s silly claims to have “cut spending” while working for the state were feasted upon by her Republican opponents and liberal groups alike.

Norton tried desperately to frame herself on the “Tea Party” side of issues relevant to the GOP primary, but it always took on the air of contrivance–she fumbled through answers to loaded questions about President Barack Obama and the Democratic agenda, firing off inarticulate bromides such as “the rights of terrorists are more important in this Administration than the lives of American citizens”–the proof, of course, being health care reform.

None of it was working. Buck was holding on.

So in mid-June, Norton’s campaign rolled out with fanfare a new web homepage with a new theme–a dark, militaristic background with lots of soldier clip-art, and a new video (above) laying out Norton’s “position” on winning the war on terror. When we first saw this video, we were shocked by its brazen employment of jet engine noises to invoke the 9/11 terrorist attacks, and headlines that criticized Obama for affirming that the war against terrorism is not a “war on Islam.”

As it turned out, the “shock” over this ad quickly gave way to contempt. Although it was meant to drag the GOP base back into Norton’s orbit, it didn’t help: too many still viewed it as contrived, and even many Republicans who gave the theme of this video honest consideration came away appalled. After all, it was President George W. Bush who first declared, and insisted throughout his presidency, that the war on terror was not a “war on Islam” or anything like it. We’ve often wondered whether Norton’s brother-in-law and campaign advisor Charlie Black, a top D.C. lobbyist with many clients in the Muslim world, knew about this ad and approved. If he did, that kind of seems to us to be something those clients might want to know about.

As for Norton, this move was a late gasp of a campaign that, for all its early aura of inevitability, was never able to make a connection with the primary voters she needed to win–and not through a lack of trying. It is bad decisions, this being just one, that complicate for us what some people think is an easy question: would Norton have beat Michael Bennet had she won the primary?

The answer is possibly–but she, like Buck, had some problems.