(How many times did we tell you Tipton’s “cut the government in half” pledge was going to come back to haunt him? We’re surprised it took this long – promoted by Colorado Pols)
“We had Scott Tipton from our district stand in our studio while he was campaigning, and…he said he would go to Washington DC and, night and day, night and day, that he would fight to cut the government in half,” said co-host Cari Hermacinski Oct. 18 on her syndicated Cari and Rob Show. “He would cut it down by 50 percent. And what has he done, every time it’s come down to cast a difficult vote? He goes with [House Speaker] John Boehner. He goes with the leadership.”
Tipton isn’t standing in Hermacinki’s studio any longer.
“I sent him an email,” Hermacinski’s co-host Rob Douglas told listeners on the same day. “I said, come on the show. We’re going to hold open any time slot you want. I don’t care who’s on air; we’ll bump them, put you on so you can explain to the people of Colorado and this nation why we sent you to Washington, why you are spending more than Nancy Pelosi.”
But, they told their radio audience, no word from Tipton.
“We have not heard back from Congressman Tipton or any member of his staff, his chief of staff, his press secretary, his scheduler, and Scott Tipton himself,” Douglas told his listeners. “I have his personal email address. I’ve emailed them all, not a peep back.”
“We warned our audience that there would be chameleons and charlatans amongst those the Liberty Movement sent to Washington in 2010. Unfortunately, Scott Tipton proved our point,” Douglas wrote response an email. “The bottom line is that we believe Congressman Tipton violated his pledge to voters in the 3rd Congressional District of Colorado that he would go to Washington and work to place the country on a more sustainable fiscal path and therefore is not worthy of support from true fiscal conservatives.”
On the air Oct. 18, Douglas pointed out repeatedly that Treasury Department figures show that there have been no spending cuts at the federal level since Republicans took control of the U.S. House. He said Tipton and House Republicans had chances, through votes on government-funding bills and the debt ceiling limit, to change this.
“There have been votes where Tipton did not stand with the true fiscal conservatives in Congress and instead aligned himself with Speaker Boehner and establishment Republicans who played a major role in creating our nation’s fiscal crisis during the Bush administration,” Douglas wrote to me.
As a result, Douglas promised his audience Oct. 18 that he will not be voting for Tipton.
“At the end of the day,” he said, “we all control one vote. The show is about the whole country. But we can only vote where we can vote. Scott Tipton will never get my vote again.”
Asked how the audience of his show, which airs on 10 stations in Colorado and Utah, including KFKA in Greeley and KRDO in Colorado Springs, reacted to this stand against Tipton, Douglas wrote me, “Indications are that many in our audience agree with our view.”
But Douglas wrote that he has no plans to back a candidate that might challenge Tipton next year.
During his last few appearances on the Cari and Rob Show, which originates in Steamboat Springs, Tipton faced the kind of hard questioning you rarely hear when conservatives interview conservatives or, for that matter, when liberals interview liberals.
In April, under tough questioning from both Douglas and Hermacinski, Tipton acknowledged that he had lost trust in House Speaker John Boehner. And he promised to return to the radio show to explain why Boehner had agreed to a budget compromise shaving just $352 million from the federal budget instead of a promised $100 billion.
Douglas complemented on the April show Tipton for answering questions on his radio show, saying on the air after Tipton hung up:
“I gotta hand this to Scott Tipton. He has come on this program every time we asked him to come on.”
As far as I know, Tipton never returned to the show to explain why Boehner didn’t cut $100 billion. But questioned by a Washington DC reporter, Tipton’x office later issued a clarification regarding his commenis on the radio, stating that he was, in fact, confident in Boehner’s leadership, even though he didn’t actually say he trusted Boehner.
Tipton returned to the Cari and Rob Show in May, and again was subject to intense questioning. Douglas grilled Tipton about whether his daughter, a government-relations officer for Broadnet, used the Congressman’s name as she tried to drum up congressional business for firms that use technology licensed by Broadnet, which is owned by Tipton’s nephew.
At the time, Douglas told the Colorado Independent that Tipton’s answers were “Clintonian.”
Tipton apparently hasn’t appeared on the Cari and Rob show since then, marking the end of a relationship with the hosts that, as Tipton entered office, promised to be close and illuminating.
“He said he was happy to be the canary in the coal mine for the Cari and Rob Show,” Douglas said on air Oct. 18. “He would be a representative in Congress who would explain what the Republicans were doing.”
Douglas continued: “Why is Congressman Scott Tipton, why is Speaker of the House John Boehner, Eric Cantor, Paul Ryan, why are the Republicans lying to the American people, lying to the Republican Party, lying to the men and women who break their backs every day in this country to send their hard-earned money to Washington to have it wasted publicly, have it wasted secretly…to have it wasted, while these fat cats enrich their families, enrich their wallets, and do not do what they took a pledge to do?”
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They are politicians, right?
They’re Republicans.
Reality is liberal.
Really, math class is tough. So don’t get me started.
K Street.
The MSM has totally failed to hold Tipton accountable to his campaign pledges. I don’t think this cut the gov’t in half shit has been mentioned once.
So it’s good that the right wing talk show hosts are doing it. The difference is they actually WANT him to cut the gov’t in half, but a pledge is a pledge.
Why won’t the Sentinel or the Chieftain ask him?
is too busy undermining the free market system. It’s been beating up the Public Trustee every day over his decision to move his public notices to a less expensive newspaper.
I was thinking maybe Gary Harmon needs to pull Tipton’s cock out of his throat, but your explanation works too.
they are mutually exclusive? Are they?
…reads like something that could be applauded for at either an Occupy protest or a Tea Party gathering
Perhaps America is agreeing something?
Both see that Washington has forgotten the vast majority of people in this country.
Frustration over the likes of Jon Corzine (and his ilk).
Speaker 1 – Why no Occupy Washington demonstrations and tent cities?
Speaker 2 – Because OWS synmpathisers know that first we have to influence the influencers and it ‘ain’t’us.
Table of four all agreed.
I’ve been hoping the two would someday realize their common interest is far greater than their differences.
I am cautiously optimistic. If they get their shit together …watch out neo- feudalism…you’re fucked.
is that OWS wants to curtail corporate power and have fair taxation. The Tea Party wants no such thing but many of its followers think it does. The TP was started because of a rant on the floor of the NYSE by a financial reporter. Hello? It’s just so intuitively obvious that he was a fake from the beginning it’s not worth arguing about. And the first big org into support of the Tea Party? One headed by another Texan crony of DeLay.
Hopefully, but not likely, Tea Partiers will see that those hippies at OWS have much more in common with them. But that would require setting aside biases, maybe even recognizing they were wrong. If nothing else, study the Great Depression. There are still Republicans out there who argue vehemently that FDR was on the wrong path.
No, the Tea Party and its members will be pulled, kicking and screaming, into prosperity and this century.
Those radio hosts would be very upset if a pirate radio station started operating on their signal. They would demand that the FEC take action. Folks, that’s the government. A radio show couldn’t operate without government regulation.
the media is always liberal so of course they’re going after Tippy.
Is this a station in GJ?
originates out of Steamboat.
At least that’s where the call-in phone number comes back to.
Would you be talking about Cari and Rob if they were not going after a Republican? Of course not. Jason, you should not wonder why you are considered partisan. You are as partisan as I am, the difference is I admit it in my nickname!
Jason ever claim not to be partisan somewhere, or are you just making shit up again?
is indicative of your partisanship?
If a couple of tea party lunatics had shit all over a Democrat, it would be “dog bites man.”
The fact that they shit all over Tipton, who has said anything and everything to court the tea party (note I didn’t say “done,” as Tipton so far hasn’t done shit) is a man-bites-dog story.
Why the guy shows up here and says you should primary Obama, John Kennedy or whatshisname, you “shit all over” him. Double standard much?
Somebody wants to primary Obama, let him or her take his or her best shot.
Use your imagination somewhere else besides what I post.
I’m progressive for sure but not a partisan Dem. For example, I voted for Ralph Nader in 2000, which set up Your Man. Case closed.
But yes, I write from a progressive perspective.
I think a lot of those tea partiers were taken for a ride. Just read an article in Newsweek: Fiscal conservatives with a taste for pork. Eric Cantor and a bunch of others get exposed for the business-as-usual, money-sucking, two-timing jerks they really are.
Can’t say I’m not enjoying it. But really, folks, did you expect anything else? Austerity: It’s fine for thee but not for me!
is that, frustrated, the tea baggers stays home on election day, especially if Romney is the GOP nominee.