October 30, 2008 05:40 PM UTC

Owens Turns On Fellow "RINO" McInnis

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• by: Colorado Pols

UPDATE: From the Las Vegas Sun, a story about Bob Schaffer’s former roommate Sen. John Ensign, McInnis, and Ensign’s costly picks (like Schaffer) for Senate races all over the country:

Ensign took over as head of the election effort in late 2006. His trouble began as he failed to recruit top-tier candidates to challenge the 11 incumbent Democrats up for reelection. In Arkansas, for example, where a first-term Democratic senator is seeking reelection, Republicans have no candidate.

Ensign has said it was difficult to persuade candidates to run because Republicans are so unpopular…

But Ensign played an uneven role in pushing candidates forward – or, more important, stopping those such as New Mexico Rep. Steve Pearce, who now is seen as too conservative to win statewide.

Former Rep. Scott McInnis, who stepped aside in Colorado so candidate Bob Schaffer could run for the open Republican seat, now says Ensign forced him out of the race in favor of the more conservative candidate, who is trailing in the polls.

“John made it very clear up front that their pick was Bob Schaffer,” McInnis told the Denver Post…

After the election, Ensign is expected to seek his party’s No. 4 job in the Senate, as chairman of the Republican Policy Committee.

Former Senate candidate Scott McInnis’ dramatic pronouncements on the state of the Colorado GOP two days ago–and his assertion that he “would have beat” Democrat Mark Udall–are casting a very long shadow, which we’ll be talking about up to and well beyond next Tuesday. His clearly-stated opinion that the GOP has recruited candidates that are too far right to win, and that the GOP has disastrously neglected the state legislature because of an undue focus on Bob Schaffer’s flagging Senate race, are provoking bitter arguments between the moderate and Jon Caldara wings of the party.

Sources tell us an emerging consensus view in the upper ranks of the Republican Party acknowledges that McInnis is largely correct–that GOP chairman/Schaffer campaign manager Dick Wadhams tried to take on too much personal responsibility, resulting in failures at both of his primary jobs, and that the staunch conservative candidates the base loves are losing traction with the broader electorate in fundamental, irreversible ways.

The problem is not what McInnis said, but when he said it–from the point of view of GOP footsoldiers trying to salvage what they can from an increasingly desperate situation, what McInnis said only increases the likelihood of the ‘bloodbath’ he predicted. It’s therefore almost universally viewed as treasonable, even though objectively he didn’t really make the GOP’s plight any worse. More like pointing out the obvious.

Now, if there’s anybody in Colorado who knows a thing or two about “treason,” it’s former Governor Bill “Referendum C” Owens. But as much as Owens may sympathize with McInnis on principle, the Denver Post reports:

In an e-mail to McInnis obtained by The Denver Post, Owens said McInnis’ comments “are distracting our party during an already difficult year.”

The party’s choice, Bob Schaffer, is trailing Democrat Mark Udall in polls for the seat occupied by Republican Wayne Allard, who did not seek re-election.

McInnis told The Post that he seriously considered a run but Republican leaders in Washington were behind Schaffer.

He said party leaders erred by fielding a staunch conservative when the mood of voters this year appears to favor moderates, such as him.

Owens called McInnis out in the e-mail. The former governor reminded the Western Slope politician of his early support for McInnis’ candidacy and that it was McInnis who “pulled the rug out from under us and our Party, paving the way for an unopposed Schaffer candidacy.”

Note Owens’ choice of words: he’s essentially conceding that the “unopposed Schaffer candidacy” is what McInnis says it is, and only takes issue with the reasons McInnis gave for withdrawing. And, of course, the goddamn horrible timing.

You can see pretty clearly where Owens would like to end up in what’s being forecast by Republicans we know as a “post-bloodbath bloodbath.” He would like to trump McInnis by calling out his “unhelpfulness” when politically expedient to do so now, but ultimately we predict Owens will be arguing McInnis’ centrist case next year.

The real loser in all of this, as will be glaringly obvious to all observers next Wednesday, is Dick Wadhams. It’s evident now that longtime friend Wadhams was pushing for Bob Schaffer behind the scenes all along, a violation of the trust placed in him as party chairman. It was Wadhams who doubled down and assured everyone he could handle both of critical jobs of chairman and Schaffer campaign manager by sheer force of will or a devastating wrestling move or whatever. Now he faces the downside of double-or-nothing. Unless there’s some kind of dramatic gain for the GOP in the Assembly that is not at this point expected, it’s going to be awfully tough to justify his big-ticket salary going into ’09.