August 16, 2010 10:52 PM UTC

The Great Buck Backpedal: 17th Amendment Actually Okay!

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• by: Colorado Pols

Talking Points Memo:

Colorado Republican Senate nominee Ken Buck, who upset establishment favorite Jane Norton in last week’s primary, last year expressed support for repealing the 17th Amendment, which allows for the direct election of Senators by popular vote…

Video recently unearthed by The Huffington Post shows Buck responding to a question at a campaign event last year by saying that the 17th Amendment “has taken us down the wrong path.”

“I don’t know that we get [repeal] tomorrow, but I think we get there in the very near future when people understand just what a horrendous effect the 17th Amendment has been on the federal government’s spending.”

Friday, Buck clarified his past statement to The Huffington Post: “It is not a position I still hold and it wasn’t a position I held a day later when I called back the guy who asked the question and talked to him about the issue and reflected more on it.”

The wholesale reversals are coming fast and furious now: Ken Buck abandoned his prior view that Social Security is a “horrible policy” that the private sector should be in charge of practically the day after his primary victory. This weekend, it was the wacky 17th Amendment stuff. Buck’s opposition to women’s reproductive choice, even in cases of rape or incest, is sure to follow soon–and somewhere in there he’ll want to soften that whole ‘Obama is worse than nuclear war’ thing.

And that’s nothing close to a full list–it’s an awful lot to walk back, isn’t it?