June 30, 2009 06:30 PM UTC

If At First You Don't Succeed...

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• by: Colorado Pols

As the Colorado Springs Gazette reports:

Two anti-abortion groups, Colorado Right to Life and Personhood USA, will submit a new “personhood” initiative to the Colorado Legislative Council on Thursday in hopes of getting a measure on the 2010 state ballot.

Colorado voters soundly defeated a similar measure, Amendment 48, in the 2008 election.

But initiative sponsors say things will be different in 2010 because they will be better-funded and better able to articulate their message and will introduce a measure that’s more accurately worded.

“The fact that we got over half a million Coloradans to vote for personhood in 2008 shows us that people care about ensuring that all humans are protected under the law,” said Gualberto Garcia Jones, director of Personhood Colorado, an arm of the national Denver-based organization Personhood USA.

Last year, 73 percent of the vote went against Amendment 48, which was sponsored by Colorado for Equal Rights. Kristi Burton, a 21-year-old student from Peyton, ran the organization.

Compared with its opponent, Colorado for Equal Rights was poorly funded, raising about a third of what the anti-48 group was able to amass.

Jones said that if the initiative gets on the 2010 ballot, funding will be stronger because of the national reach of Personhood USA, formed specifically to help anti-abortion groups throughout the nation get personhood amendments on their state ballots.

Most people agree that Amendment 48 goaded out more inactive voters to vote against it than it helped turn out the Republican vote, to the extent that anybody cared about it at all.

Which is funny because when these abortion/anti-gay/sheep wedding wedge-issue initiatives were originally conceived, their intent was first and moremost to ensure strong conservative turnout at the polls regardless of whether they actually passed. But like so many “culture war” misfires that have marked the GOP’s unsteady footing over the last few years, the falcon can no longer hear the falconer. In fact, the hard-line pro life activists pushing Amendment 48 went so far as to attack top-line Republican candidates who didn’t immediately endorse its nutty provisions.

Democrats, we suspect, would be delighted to accomodate a 2010 redux.