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May 28, 2014 10:31 AM UTC

Draft-Dodging Bob Beauprez Scores Big Name Veteran Support

  • 26 Comments
  • by: Colorado Pols
Bob Beauprez (R).
Bob Beauprez (R).

FOX 31's Eli Stokols reports, the Bob Beauprez endorsement train continues to pick up improbable speed:

A former Veterans Administration Secretary heads a list of Colorado veterans who are supporting GOP gubernatorial candidate Bob Beauprez, the candidate’s campaign plans to announce Wednesday morning.

Jim Nicholson, a Vietnam veteran and former RNC Chairman who served as V.A. Secretary under President George W. Bush, tops a list of nearly 50 former servicemen and women making up what Beauprez’s campaign is calling its “Veterans Team.”

…Unlike two of his primary opponents, Beauprez did not serve in the military, but he was a member of the House Committee for Veterans’ Affairs while in Congress.

On the campaign trail in 2006, Beauprez was stung by controversy over his service record, in which he apparently claimed a medical exemption to avoid the draft after majoring in physical education in college. Beauprez also took heat from veterans for appearing in a flight suit (photos right, below) at several occasions, including the Rocky Mountain EAA Regional Fly-In and–somewhat more defensibly–during a joyride at Buckley Air Force Base in an F-16. As the Rocky Mountain News reported at the time:

BEAUPREZ​

“On the one hand, Bob Beauprez was healthy enough to letter in two sports in high school and major in physical education in college,” says Jim Hudson, who served in Vietnam and currently is active in Colorado Veterans for America. 

“On the other hand,” Hudson continues, “Bob Beauprez says he wasn’t healthy enough to serve our country when his draft number came up after college because of an ulcer he had shortly before this picture was taken.”

The photo, from Boulder’s Fairview High yearbook, shows the congressman in a three-point stance with the caption, “2 yr. letterman.”

The return of Beauprez to Colorado's political scene as a gubernatorial candidate seemed like a joke at first (okay, it's still kind of funny), but as his list of high-profile endorsements grows, and with his principal opponents' campaigns failing to ignite, it's increasingly possible that Beauprez will again win the Republican gubernatorial nomination. Once that happens, we think there is enough material, some we've already discussed in this space and lots more, to absolutely slaughter Beauprez in a general-election matchup against incumbent Democratic Gov. John Hickenlooper.

In fact, there seems to be a real disconnect between the Republicans flocking to Beauprez today…and reality.

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26 thoughts on “Draft-Dodging Bob Beauprez Scores Big Name Veteran Support”

  2. Coloradopols is right on target. Some segments of the Republican Party believe Mr. Beauprez can rescue the party from another disastrous gubernatorial campaign because they want to believe he can present the voters with an image as a conservative business person who looks at the world through pragmatic lenses. There is one very big problem with their belief. Mr. Beauprez is anything but that. As Coloradpols has pointed out many times, once the public gets wind of the absolutely whacko statements Mr. Beauprez has made over the past eight years since his thrashing by Gov. Ritter his campaign will nose dive to defeat. Mr. Beauprez has been manufacturing and loading the Democrats ammunition wagons for eight years and continues to do so. He has given them more than enough to rip him to pieces in a general election campaign. If the Republican establishment looks at Mr. Beauprez as their savior, God help the Republican Party in this state.

  3. "Draft-dodging" – hmmm…coming from a progressive site, that seems to be a bit out of place  Wasn't draft-dodging celebrated among the left? 

      1. Excellent, Short,Sweet, and to the point. Probably something the shyster cannot comprehend. IIRC that particular form of overall is referred to among those who wear it as a work uniform as a poopy suit which fits BWB quite nicely. I'm struck by the resemblace, minus the codpiece and parachute harness, to the Shrub swaggering out of that COD to deliver a speech in front of the mission accomplished banner.

    2. You'd be correct if that was the point but it isn't. In 2006, Mr. Beauprez published photos of himself in a flight suit hoping voters would assume he had been a military pilot even though he never served. I was in the service and it offends those of us who wore the uniform to have someone else try and fool us that they did.

      1. I should have added:  Beauprez didn't get it in 2006 and he still doesn't eight years later. The Republicans will be absolutely foolish to nominate him for governor.

    3. My husband the swift boat vet has no problem with those who dodged the draft because they opposed the war or even with those who plain didn't want to go. Basically he joined the Navy to avoid getting drafted into the Army. As a poor widow's son he didn't have all the chances for deferments that Schmuck, I mean Dick, Cheney had. Same difference. He only has a problem with craven chicken hawks, those who were cheerleaders for the war as long as they didn't have to go, talk tough on aggressive foreign policy now and love to bask in the reflected glory of the military from the safety of their sheltered lives while screwing vets.

      Like most things it's more complicated than a Support the Troops bumper sticker. But you've thrown in with the party that seeks to reduce everything to that level. And it works very well with their ignorant base and with deniers like you, who ought to be smart enough to know better.

      1. BC- I can sympathize with your husband. I've a friend who enlisted hoping for the blue water navy but ended up in the brown water navy instead. Their boat took a B-40 rocket and my friend is now under the care of the VA.Us regular gravel agitaters called the swift boat boys floating infantry.

    1. Thats the patch for the 4th chickenhawk brigade with the honorary "some gave none" inscription.  Only a select few without a shred of dignity wear it.

  6. First there was the thread on the Shirtless Sheriff and now Both Ways in a uniform.  It's like watching a re-make of the Village People.

  8. Scott Gessler honorably served his country as a member of the 12th Special Forces Group, U.S. Army.

    Once again, Gessler is the real deal, and Beauprez is a fraud.

    1. Yes, you've gotta give Gessler that! He has the veteran chops that both Beauprez and Tancredo sorely lack.

      Here's Tancredo's version of Beauprez's Green Flight Suit (well, that, or the USS Ronald Reagan gimme cap he always wears):

      2. TAncredo got out of the draft by claiming an emotional problem.  

        My sense is that  republicans did not serve when they were draft eligible and so posing as a patriotic without actually having had to serve is not necessarily a "turnoff" to the those members of the republican base. 

    2. Moddy- not that you'd know but the real tough guys, the Rangers andthe lurps, tended to call the berets Green beanies and glorified schoolteachers.BWB is a fraud in every way. Gessler's little better .If Gessler was really a beanie where are his jump wings? All the beanies were jump qualified.

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