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January 28, 2021 11:40 AM UTC

Two Ostriches Talking Through the Sand

  • 15 Comments
  • by: Jason Salzman

(Promoted by Colorado Pols)

Sen. Paul Lundeen (R).

Right-wing Republicans in Colorado have seen the blue clouds coming for years, slowly engulfing them in a fog of powerlessness.

Now fully engulfed, you’d think they’d see that something has to change.

And they do, but it’s not anything substantive. It’s just their words and stories that must be altered. That’s all.

Get ready to fall on the floor, because that’s where you’ll go when you hear this conversation between KHOW’s Ross Kaminsky and state Sen. Paul Lundeen (R-Monument).

It’s like Lundeen and Kaminsky are two ostriches talking through the sand underground.

“What is it about the voters of Colorado that is causing them to put the Democrats so much in charge?” Kaminsky asked Lundeen on Tuesday. “…Why is it, Paul, that we are suffering through…electing a swarm of locusts to come through and destroy all our crops and seed corn?”

“It’s a question of delayed gratification,” replied Lundeen. “Do I want to strip the seed corn bare? Or do I want to do what the reality of history tells us… the forces of the free market, enlightened self-interest. Those are the proven processes to help. Democrats, communists, socialists, all say, ‘Give it to us now. I’ll eat my seed corn,’ instead of giving everyone an opportunity.”

Free market principles, said Lundeen, is what has lifted humanity.

But much of the state, Kaminsky lamented, isn’t like Lundeen’s district.

Republicans need to “come up with a better way to tell a story” about how “Democrats are ruining your life even though they say they are helping,” said Kaminsky.

Until they can tell that story, Republicans will continue losing, the two agreed.

“We need to figure that out,” said Lundeen, who’s a state senate leader.

“I don’t think the people believe Republicans care,” said Lundeen, “because we get wonky.”

“I do care!” exclaimed Lundeen.

He claimed to have “solutions that are sustainable and help more people.”

“We just need to do a better job connecting with people, one-on-one,” said Lundeen to an approving Kaminsky.

But the radio airwaves were void of specific plans to show people that Republicans care.

Lundeen and Kaminsky forgot to talk about how Republicans will help people. Instead, they laughed about how wonky and principled they are, and how they oppose a bill to mandate safe storage of firearms. And how they need to translate their thoughts into language that the common person will love to hear.

But as GOP pollster David Flaherty has said many times, voters want responsible plans addressing bread-and-butter issues.

Lundeen doesn’t bring up those types of plans on the radio but earnestly says, “It’s about connecting with people. We need to do a better job of that.”

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15 thoughts on “Two Ostriches Talking Through the Sand”

  2. Which free market principles is Representative Lundeen in favor of?

    Would these principles include subsidizing oil and gas but no other form of energy production? Eliminating birth control because personhood? 

    Would he support Ross's libertarian  free market where there is no need for for most laws because consumers and the free market will enforce what people really want and really value. 

    Food safety: cantaloupes from farm A make people sick and die? Don't buy from them if you do not want to get sick or die.

    Protected classes in employment? You don't want to be discriminated against for age, religion, race, sexual identity or anything else? Don't work for or buy from someplace that discriminates.

    Lead free water? Methane free water? Buy it somewhere else.

     

    1. Will there be government regulations requiring full information on the products and that this be truthful and accurate? A truly free market can not operate without such rules. A market without them is called fraud.

  3. This notion of "we Republicans just need to explain it better" is interesting to me.  What "better explanation" is available for responses to an epidemic?  What sort of "better explanation" is going to respond to a suddenly downsized worker?  What better explanation is going to be given to a mother or father forced to choose between a work day and a day supervising a 7 year old?

  4. What the hell are they talking about? Delayed gratification, seed corn? The Republicans, at the state and national level, support policies that allow and encourage the exploitation of resources – land, water, oil, minerals, people – in the immediate term with no regard for the effect this exploitation will have on the future – pollution, climate change, poverty, death, etc. 

    Well regulated markets can harness the advantages of capitalism and protect against the risks – e.g. the tragedy of the commons, externalities.

  5. They'll just have to ( and God knows they will) dream up a new round of bullshit assertions that will have to be refuted daily, with evidence, over a few years time until everyone again rediscovers they're full of shit and have no answers.  Obamacare is a disaster, the Coronavirus is a hoax, and we'll turn into Venezuela just didn't pan out.

  7. Corporate America sold all the Seed Corn ages ago. They hate the idea of money sitting around doing nothing for something sitting in bags waiting for the future. They hate Inventory, and want everything to show up Just-In-time. The Bean Counters got that wasteful Seed Corn off the books a long time ago. About the same time they got rid of those hospital rooms we’ll never need, and those ICU beds that sit empty but can be used in a crisis, and those wasteful extra nurses that were providing care to patients.

  8. I don’t expect a modern Republican to have an actual education, but if you take the entire history of humanity from say when they stopped being nomads and begin to cultivate crops to the present — the period of “free-market principles” is a recent and still radical invention. And since it is very recent and new in terms of the scope of human history, it can hardly be responsible for all of the lifting up of humankind that has occurred through the millennia.

    Or does he perhaps claim that Jesus Christ and his philosophy of love and non-violence was somehow a reverse cause and effect that occurred because Adam Smith would write about free markets 1700 years later and that without Adam Smith then Jesus would never have tried to teach us to love each other?

    In fact, on the grounds of looking at the overall scope of human achievement, it would be far better said that Communal values, of people working together in communities and working for a united group effort and not for individual greed has had far, far more to do with the lifting up of humanity than this recent and very radical idea of free-market principles.

    But, I actually read books and don’t just put them on the shelves for the pretty leather bindings.

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