November 01, 2014 09:00 AM UTC

The Colorado Republicans' 'People-Like-Me' Problem

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• by: Jason Salzman

(Promoted by Colorado Pols)

In exit polling after the 2012 election, voters said they backed President Barack Obama over Mitt Romney because they thought Obama cared more about "people like me."

Republicans in Colorado apparently didn't learn anything, because they've made the same mistake again this year, failing to show that they care for regular people.

The proof goes beyond nominating a gubernatorial candidate, Bob Beauprez, who once said that 47 percent of Americans are "perfectly happy" to be dependent on government.

In August, Beauprez said Colorado is too far "inland" to house destitute child migrants, fleeing from gangs and other horrors in Central American countries, as they wait for their deportation hearings here in America. In effect, Beauprez said, let other states worry about these poor children.

How can someone with so little compassion for these kids, on our midst, possibly care about regular people? It's mean, period. Voters say they want their leaders to care. Beauprez made the comments on a conservative talk-radio show, where they were received with loud praise. No one was there, of course, to represent the children.

Respect for young immigrants doesn't rank high on senatorial candidate Cory Gardner's compassion meter either. He now says he favors offering work visas for undocumented immigrants, but he opposes offering in-state tuition for undocumented students who know only Colorado as their home, having been brought here illegally as children.

This type of heartlessness spells doom for the GOP at the ballot box, as Republicans have warned themselves about.

Days after the last election, writing in The Denver Post, big-wig Republicans Josh Penry and Rob Witwer offered this advice to fellow Republicans in Colorado:

"We've forgotten that politics is a game of addition, not subtraction. And here's some more math: 50,000 Latino kids turn 18 every month in this country," Penry and Witwer wrote. "These kids grow up in households where parents work hard and attend church on Sunday. These are American values. But yes, some of these kids — through no fault of their own — were not born American citizens."

Yet, Gardner says the border must be secured to an unspecified degree before tiny steps, like in-state tuition for undocumented students, are implemented for immigrants.

What's more, Gardner continues to co-sponsor a federal abortion-ban bill that would prevent rape victims from having the choice of abortion.  Gardner says the bill simply states that life begins at conception and would have no impact, but fact checkers conclude otherwise.

No matter how strongly you oppose abortion, even for respectable and honorable religious reasons, a hard-line stance like this is disconnected dominant cultural norms and, in a political context, from common-sense compassion.

It understandably creates the perception for most people that a politician like Gardner doesn't support "people like me," especially if you're a woman.

With Beauprez and Gardner at the top of the Republican ticket, you're witnessing a repeat of the 2012 election, where voters came around to thinking that Obama cared more about them than Romney did.

That's obviously a huge problem for Republicans, and given their actual factual positions on these issues, I don't have much compassion for them. Who would?