February 20, 2009 06:09 PM UTC

Marostica Makes Nice, Sort Of

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• by: Colorado Pols

As the Colorado Springs Gazette reports:

Having called a pair of GOP bigwigs “losers” and “has-beens” after being pressured to drop a budget bill, Republican state lawmaker Don Marostica remained defiant Thursday.

Marostica, a state representative from Loveland who sits on the powerful Joint Budget Committee, said that he was pressured by House Minority Leader Mike May, R-Parker, to withdraw his name from a bill he is co-sponsoring that would repeal a law limiting state spending.

Marostica blamed the pressure on Independence Institute President Jon Caldara and former state treasurer Mark Hillman, and said Thursday, “When I was called into the principal’s office yesterday, it was, ‘We’ve got some outside influences that want you to not take this through.’

“I just felt like, ‘Who’s running our government here? Are we running it, or is somebody else running it?'”

House Republicans called his comments “regrettable,” and May said that Marostica “needs to repair the damage with the caucus, so they have the trust to have him over there.”

May said the bill, also sponsored by Sen. John Morse, D-Colorado Springs, “isn’t worth a damn,” and predicted that every other Republican in the state Legislature will vote against the measure…

The Rocky Mountain News reports that Marostica, after a trip to the woodshed, apologized to “has-been losers” Mark Hillman and Jon Caldara, and will not be booted off the Joint Budget Committee for his unrepentant heresy. Dick Wadhams Minority Leader Mike May evidently decided that the political consequences of doing so would be too great, as the instant negative reaction yesterday to rumors he would have Marostica removed confirmed.

So where does this leave Republicans? Well, they’re not needed to pass the repeal of Arveschoug-Bird, so it’s going to pass no matter how much they bludgeon their dissenters. Having watched Sen. Al White get bullied and ultimately succumb to pressure from Wadhams and Senate Minority Leader Josh Penry to remove himself as Senate sponsor of the bill–while defiantly continuing to support it–we can’t really see how this episode will do anything besides further erode unity, in a caucus where clear fracture lines between pragmatic and dogmatic are starting to appear everywhere.