May 25, 2010 12:41 AM UTC

Caldara's Anti-"Obamacare" Initiative Sputtering

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• by: Colorado Pols

According to the newly reanimated conservative news site Face the State, former New York Gov. George Pataki was in town last week, among other things promoting the Independence Institute’s ballot initiative seeking to nullify federal health reform legislation that passed this year:

Pataki was in Denver Wednesday as a part of a nationwide push to collect 1 million signatures in support of repealing the federal healthcare bill passed this spring. The effort, dubbed RevereAmerica.org, is backed in Colorado by the libertarian Independence Institute which is promoting a ballot initiative to exempt Colorado from the new federal law…

Face the State’s report neatly glosses over the fact that Jon Caldara’s initiative is well short of the number of signatures needed to make the ballot. According to the Denver Daily News Thursday, Caldara had only collected about 10,000 signatures, kind of laughably short of the 76,000+ needed–Caldara has an explanation for that too, of course, and he’s suing to overturn state petition gathering laws that restrict for-profit collection of signatures.

We’d love to hear Caldara explain how those anti-petition fraud laws didn’t stop other initiatives from making the ballot this year. As for Pataki, the word is this “Revere America” stuff is actually Pataki putting out feelers for a 2012 presidential bid–a bid that even his fellow New Yorkers oppose by over 70%. None of which serves to make it much of a news story, which is why you didn’t see much about this Pataki/Caldara “rally” except at venues like Face the State.

But as always, we thank Brad Jones for blowing smoke up our kazoo.