Gun owners angry over the betrayal of Colorado State Senator John Morse turned in twice the number of signatures needed to force a recall election after he led the fight to pass Colorado's draconian new gun control legislation that took effect this spring. Now the battle's on, and Morse will be forced to defend his seat. A loss for Morse will send a message to other gun-banners in the legislature who come from districts with large numbers of shooters. However this fight will be long and expensive, and both sides are clamoring from money from all across the country.
I have to point out that this never needed to happen in the first place.
Morse only won by some 400 votes in 2010, with 1300 other votes going to a not-going-to-win Libertarian; in effect, those votes were never even cast in the actual race.
2010 election results:
John Morse (D) 13,866
Owen Hill (R) 13,526
Douglas W. Randall (L) 1,320
Had 1320 people used their heads and cast votes that made sense, Morse would never have been there to screw gun owners in 2012.
Likewise, Another State Senator, Evie Hudak, only won her race in November because the Libertarians gave 6.7% of the vote to some guy who wasn't even competitive, allowing Hudak to top the Republican in the race by one percentage point.
"November 6, 2012 General election candidates:
Democratic Party Evie Hudak: 35,664
Republican Party Lang Sias: 35,080
Libertarian Party Lloyd A. Sweeny: 5,104
(Thanks, Libertarians!)
Sadly, a similar effort to recall Hudak appears to have failed, so she's there to stay, courtesy of her anti-gun Democrat base and the Libertarian Party.
Votes have consequences, people. Voting is important. And when you cast a ballot in a close two-person race and throw it away on some third person who has absolutely no chance just because you want to make some sort of "statement", you basically refuse to vote. It's as if you just decided not to stand up and stop the bad guy.
So Colorado got saddled with bad laws because too many people decided not to bother opposing the anti-gunners, and now the rest of the state has to pay for that apathy/arrogance/stupidity. I wish the Colorado gun owners well with their recall against Morse, but I have to point out for the record that it didn't have to come to this in the first place. Even half of those 1,320 silly Libertarians could have prevented this two years beforehand, but they chose not to.
Yep, elections DO have consequences, sadly we usually don't find out until it's too late...
ReplyDeleteHard to blame Coloradans, when Americans did the same thing in 2008 and then doubled down on STOOPID again in 2012.
ReplyDelete(But I get, and agree with, your point)
Sorry, I disagree. The Republican Part has steadily marched left for many years. The party spends more time drifting Left trying to convince Democrats to vote for Republicans. Conservatives have less of a voice than ever. Hense the rise of the Tea Party and the Libertarians. Rather than embrace its conservative roots it nominates Massachusetts liberals and uses the strategy that it's the lesser of two evils. Rather than embrace its conservative roots and have candidates worth voting for, the GOP strategy is "Don't waste your vote on a third party that can't win." The losses in Colorado is not the fault of fickle voters but a whiny, limp wristed, and effete GOP that won't stand up to Democrats or for conservatives.
ReplyDelete@ Tom: We agree on the GOP's failings and their deserved blame for trying to woo those on the left while excluding true conservatives, but I think that the solution lies in taking back the GOP by electing conservative tea-party candidates in primaries wherever possible, not sitting out races or tossing votes to some guy who might see 6% of the vote on a really good day. I despise the way that the GOP is going too, but we can't just let the other side win out of spite. We did that in 2012 and passed on our last chance to fire Obama, repudiate his agenda, define his legacy as a failure and stop Obamacare. We gave all that up just because Romney wasn't perfect.
ReplyDeleteI still believe that the only way to take the GOP back is the same way that we lost it--by making sure that our people grow in numbers as opposed to so-called "moderates" until we're the majority in that party again. Splitting the vote just gives the other side the game and we all get hosed worse. There's a time to fight internally within the GOP and that's the primary. We need to work harder and win more of those fights to save America but win or lose at that level, we still need to make sure that come what may, liberal Democrats do not ever win the general races like these two in Colorado did and like Barack Obama did.
People believing in hard work and independence from the government are a dying minority. The shit show in 2016 will be worse I'm afraid. I'm not sure we're capable of electing any serious government reform. Re-electing Obama I think has more to do with the country embracing a nanny government than conservatives refusing to vote for Romney. I think the culture war is lost and nobody cares what the government does as long as they get a big refund from over paying the IRS. Sign me, No Hope and No Change.
ReplyDelete@ Tom: Sadly, I think you're right on that mark. And if we let our public servants legalize all of the illegals--most of whom also favor a big nanny-state, benefit-giving government--then it'll be all over for this country forever. That's why we need to stop this stuff now, at the ballot box, before our only alternative becomes a shooting war.
ReplyDelete