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February 16, 2013 01:06 PM UTC

Dave Williams Post-Mortem: Slow, Painful Change and Another Weird Owen Hill Letter

  • 58 Comments
  • by: ProgressiveCowgirl

Violently anti-gay and weirdly pro-sex offender El Paso County Chair candidate Dave Williams (part one, part two, part three) lost his race one week ago today. Williams earned 41% of central committee members' votes, to opponent Jeff Hays' 59%. When even conservative talk radio started calling for Williams to step aside because of his inability to fairly represent gay Republicans, it became obvious that change is in the air even in the most conservative parts of the GOP. "You can't win elections with just wealthy, white, evangelical Christian, heterosexual males" is sinking in. Even more importantly, the people who simply believe there's nothing conservative about bullying gays–people like Jason Worley and Ken Clark–are getting their voices heard.

But change won't be easy. It'll be slow, painful, and over the dead careers of many of today's Republican legislators. Take, for example, freshman Senator Owen Hill, who, when he isn't "signing" letters as a representative of a nonexistent Senate district, is apparently given to using rhetoric like "He's half-Hispanic, therefore we'll get Hispanic votes!" to endorse Dave Williams. Hill, who joined with Representative Lambert to nominate Williams at the El Paso County GOP assembly, sent a bizarre letter (after the jump) on behalf of Williams. (Whether or not he wrote or signed it, I'll leave to the reader's discretion, but he certainly attached his name.)

"Dave Williams is half-Hispanic himself and is our best spokesman to win over Hispanic families who should be voting Republican…" 

 

The staggering entitlement to Hispanic votes is exactly what keeps Hispanics voting Democratic… even when Democrats do, as they've done the past four years, a not-so-great job of representing them. (I expect better results from the next four.) But the point is, if you want Hispanic families' votes, you don't get them just by appointing a smarmy half-Hispanic kid to tell them they should be voting Republican, and they've just been deluded into voting for Democrats because no half-Hispanic twentysomething had previously come along to show them the error of their ways. Let's review: Saying the same old anti-minority things while being a person of color is not change. Saying new things is.

It's also kind of amusing how Hill brags here about running his own campaign… did he, if Dudley Brown is (allegedly) writing his letters? 

Republicans, congratulations on not electing Dave Williams. I don't know Hays, but I hope he'll be a better leader than Dave would have been, and I hope nobody boos the next gay veteran to speak at your state assembly. Now, please turn your minds to another, closely related problem: You've got a bunch of these guys in elected office representing your party. Hill is a freshman–he won't be termed out anytime soon. He can probably keep winning, considering the demographics of his district (in which he may or may not have actually resided at the time he filed to run — more on that later). For how many years do you want that "conservative brand" he talks about here represented by a guy who thinks the way you get minority votes is not by evolving policy, but by appointing sorta-minority Republicans to tell minorities, "Here's why you should be voting for Republicans?"

Hill warns of "complete Democrat control of Colorado for Decades to come." Looks like he's one of those who'll ensure it.

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58 thoughts on “Dave Williams Post-Mortem: Slow, Painful Change and Another Weird Owen Hill Letter”

  2. PCG, don't you think you might have a slight double standard here? Wasn't one of the big selling points of Obama that he would be the first Afridan American president?  And wasn't one of the big selling points of his first Supreme Court Justice – Sotomayor  – that she would be the first Hispanic Supreme Court Justice?  Yet I do not recall you writing that either of those were pandering. 
     

      1. Gray, 
        I was one of the people who were sharply critical of Dave Williams originally-  in fact, I'm very sure that PCG learned about him via my facebook page. 

        Dave's "different" views on the combo of homosexuals and sex-offenders is not what I am arguing about here.  I'm just pointing out that PCG is making the Owen Hill letter out to be a bigger deal than it is.  

  4. While I'm not going to tell you that it was a good thing that Sen. Hill endorsed Mr. Williams, the fact that this deserves a whole news post is just silly. 

  5. Because trolling is generally using inflammatory language or posting tangential points for the specific purpose of inflaming others.  Last I checked you are the guy using inflammatory language.

    2. You post tangentially all the time (see some jews don't like Obama does not equal Obama's policies lead to nazism as tangential and inflammatory.)  And you didn't say why my definition is wrong, so fuck you again.  Note that I only use inflammatory language when one supplies stupid shit in their responses. 

      You can't argure worth a damn.

       

      1. DaftPunk – you miss the idea between an analogy/contrast and a tangent.  

        And you again are using inflammatory language.  

        What does this make you?  A troll maybe? 😉 

        1. Troll or not, you're only response always seems to be some variation of  the  "Johnny did it too, mom" defense,  a very silly defense in that it's an up front admission that whatever it is you're seeking to defend can't be defended on its own merits but is simply no worse than what somebody else has done. If that 's the best you can do you have no one but yourself to blame if you are displeased with the degree of respect your arguments receive.

           

  8. "I know you are but what am I."

    Ouch!

    Since you're too clueless to know the difference between trolling and bullying, here's a clue.

    Hill is not proposing that Republicans adopt policies more in line with what Latinos (not all of whom are Hispanic, but you knew that) favor, but to put a nice ethnic face on them in a cynical attempt to win votes, since those brown people look no further than a candidate's ethnicity to make up their minds.

    This line of thinking is despicable, and you create a false equivalence by suggesting that Dems do the same thing, which is emotionally disturbing to people who have no such thoughts.

    Democrats have been proponents of policies minorities favor for decades, and the time to see some of their own in positions of power has been long overdue; better to have a minority in that position than a white person who thinks he knows where they're coming from.

    Thus you have created an emotionally provocative false equivalence.

    Perhaps you don't think you're trolling, just doing the cutesy wink-wink button pushing that conservatives like to do when they're among friends who know where they're coming from.  Breaking news: Pols ain't that.  This could explain what I perceive to be a tangent being intended as an analogy, but you're misunderstanding the audience, so we have no clue where you're coming from.  You need to flesh out your arguments better.

    If you want to be a smart-aleck, it helps to first be smart.

    1. Again DaftPunk, trolling is generally viewed as repeatedly using inflammatory language/personal attacks and/or repeatedly having tangential points in an effort to take a thread of topic. 

      I haven't been doing that.  However, you have – which means it is you who are falling within the generally viewed meaning of the term.  Normally, I wouldn't say anything about it, however given that you have repeatedly resorted to saying such "winning" phrases as "fuck you, troll" I think "projection" is a valid interpretation of your behavior. 

      As for your sole substantive point, you basically have said the GOP has been trying to astroturf the vote to gin up poll support.  Well, do you contend that the Dems don't do the same?  Do you think Sotamayor's being hispanic was a factor that Obama didn't consider in nominating her?  Or did you think that the Dems didn't target Miguel Estrada several years back based on the fact that he was hispanic?  

      I think the (lady?) doth protest too much. 

              1. Re: DP anti-union editorial, I specified which words made it over the top while conceding your substantive points that could make the bill objectionable but didn't require such purple prose.  You ignored the words I specifically objected two (twice)  and responded about  my (imagined) point of view.  I pointed out (politely) that I considered this trollish behavior.

                There are none so dumb as those who can't learn.

                1. DaftPunk – you complained at at 12:12 p.m. on that date about the use of "fundamental nonsense" and "disaster". 

                  http://coloradopols.com/diary/37685/thou-doth-protest-too-much-dean-singleton#comment-507060

                  Earlier that very same morning I anticipated your problems withose words and at 5:24 a.m. of the same date I posted the following:
                  http://coloradopols.com/diary/37658/breaking-dean-singleton-still-hates-unions#comment-507029

                  4) "disaster" – used in this sentence: "What is surprising is that Gov. John Hickenlooper hasn't stepped up to stop this disaster before it gets made worse."
                  You are on slightly stronger ground with this one.  However, using the word disaster in a single instance hardly makes the editorial "overboard."

                  5) "fundamental nonsense" – used in this sentence "Hickenlooper, who likes to talk about "eliminating the fundamental nonsense of government," has an opportunity here to stop this fundamental nonsense before it gets worse.""
                   

                  In other words, your underlying critique was ridiculously shallow.  In response to your comment I posted this:

                  http://coloradopols.com/diary/37685/thou-doth-protest-too-much-dean-singleton#comment-507174
                   

                  "DaftPunk,
                  Actually, you didn't adress anything on point.  The editorial went to home rule considerations.  You may not care about that.  That's fine – nobody says you have to like home rule.  However, the Denver Post apparently does.  And the fact that they disagree with you hardly makes their Op-Ed "beneath their standards."

                   

                   

                  In response to that you said "Fuck off Troll"
                  http://coloradopols.com/diary/37685/thou-doth-protest-too-much-dean-singleton#comment-507208

                  Hardly a winning argument.  Go play again some other time. 
                   

                  1. You anticipated my argument?

                    You're a mind reader too?  You do have an inflated sense of self.

                    It's pretty pathetic to say that you responded to my direct question by citing something in a different thread that I never saw.  If my critique was "ridiculously shallow" why did you anticpate it and feel it worth any pre-emptive response?

                    How hard would it have been to cite your previously written pertinent comment?  Not very.  Instead you decide you were going to imagine what I was thinking and make a comment about that.  I never expressed any opinion about home rule, but you got your panties in a knot about the thoughts you projected on me.  In fact I wrote: "The problem with the piece was not its point of view."

                    You could have responded to what I wrote, instead of to your imaginary opinion of my emotions and viewpoints, the appropriate response to which is "fuck off troll!"

                     

                    1. DaftPunk,
                      Again you are missing it – you raised a weak argument (one of many you raise) that was easily rebutted.  And you have a tendency when somebody does not rebut each and every of your weak points to immediately shout "Troll!, Troll!, Troll!"

                      And you wonder why, when you go personal, that I don't really take your comments all that seriously?  

                      If you want me to read and consider your comments like they are serious, start acting like a serious actor. 

              2. Whatever, Elliot. The "list" is already easily accessed in past exchanges between us right here in the recent past.  One nice thing about being my age is that I'm long past having to do homework assignments and certainly not for the likes of you, darlin.. Look it up yourself. Bye.

              3. And when are you going to quit jerking peoples' chains and get to the work I assigned you?

                As though you thought you'd just do an end around.

                Give me republican plans, as specific as possible on entitlement reform. I know damned well you remember.

                I thought you would take some time, but now here I find you've been back and forth on this thread, baiting, offering nothing, jerking around.

                Get me that assignment, and quit worrying about Bluecat.

                  1. (and, btw, I don't take "homework" assignments from people who I think it is appropriate to drag my 16 month old daughter into discussions like you did last time we had a discussion)

                  2. And you finish prior assignments before moving on to further trolling.

                    Get it done, and quit screwing around, wasing peoples' time.

                    I expect that report on redleg plans for entitlement cuts in the morning.

                    Get to it.

                    1. Dude – you are calling me a troll after you dragged MY 16 MONTH OLD DAUGHTER into a discussion?  Seriously? 

                      Do you have no shame? 

                    1. There's no "reply" ability under Elliot's last post,

                      I have to reply under Bluecat.

                      Elliott, it wasn't me that dragged your daughter into any conversation, at any time.

                      I'm not "ratting" anybody. But if you'll research back, you'll see it wasn't me.

                      I'm thinking you're changing the subject to falsely accusing me of something to get me off your ass.

                      If you actually think it was me, you're guilty of not paying attention, to half assed focusing, to not reading available material, then going off half cocked because you don't know what the fuck you're talking about.

                      2 bad options, again, for young Elliot. And if this is your method as a lawyer, God help your client.

                      Get your shit together if you're going to post.

                      And get me that report on redleg theft of entitlements I assigned you to.

                      Quit fucking around with your pissy bullshit and get busy.

                      Now.

          2. Environmentalism is like a religion

            I gave characteristics of both, which you didn't address, instead you wanted to talk about how Jedi is a religon, trivializing the effort and thought I put into having an actual conversation about the subject at hand.  You'd prefer to be a smart aleck, but you're not qualified

            That's the first of many examples, and I'm not going to comb the archives to give you the rest.

            Estrada was not opposed because he was a latino and it's despicable of you to suggest racism was behind it.  He was opposed because of his arch-conservative ideology.  Janice Rogers-Brown was another of that bunch of Bush judicial appointees who made it through thanks to the gang of however many Salazar was a part of, and her record since has borne out the reason for the Dem's opposition, and it had nothing to do with the fact that she is black.

            Your notion that Dems are brownwashing their anti-minority policies like Republicans would like to do to gain votes is absurd: Why? To get more than 90% or 75% of the black and latino votes respectively?

            I repeat: Are you really this stupid, or are you pretending?

                2. DaftPunk, again you are wrong. As I pointed in out in that thread (from recollection), the idea of what is a religion is inherently difficult to place limits on.  You got upset when I pointed out it could easily apply to people who call themselves Church of the Jedi or something similar.  

                  I'm not going to rehash the entire argument, but the point is that what I was raising is a legitimate point of view.  Your response to such a view was to go off on endless tangents and then to make character attacks when I disagreed with you and got bored of responding to each of them (again from recollection). 

                  I'm sorry, but when you have tactics like that I'm not really going to take what you write all that seriously and I'm not going to make it my life's mission to respond to each of your points.  

                  And no – my not taking what you write all that seriously has nothing to do with your point of view (which I'm sure is quite similar to PCG whose writing I take seriously because I respect her).  Instead it has to do with the fact that you act like a jerk.  

                  1. Your recollection is wrong.

                    You're side-track into Jedi was the first response to anything regarding what constitutes religion,and it trivialized what I wrote about what people who have actual religious beliefs (as opposed to SciFi fanboys) think religion is.  The colloquy you recall was with Aristotle.

                    It wasn't the first thing on that page that trivialized what I wrote.  That thread was your first back and forth of any substance on this website.  You wanted to make an abstract economic argument about profitable transactions "absent externalities", and I pointed out that the environment is an externality conservatives love to ignore.

                    You responded that my concerns were trivial and to stay on point.  You then wrote "We went over this at Northwestern 10 years ago."  Your tone was that of an exasperated professor teaching a class of unruly high-schoolers.

                    Then, when I took issue with the comparison to Jedi as a religion you gave me a link to Jedireligion.com or whatever in my reply that this was a silly comparison.

                    Your entire tone in that thread was one of someone who was entirely too impressed with himself and didn't have to seriously engage with his underlings on matters of substance.  I attempted to engage you in a substantive way and was met with cutesy, too-clever-by-half, dismissive responses. It was the first time I told you to "fuck off, troll."

                    What you reap is what you sew.

                    1. DaftPunk,
                      There were multiple points in that thread.  One such point had to do with what is a religion.  You disagreed with my point of view, which is fine.  What isn't fine is you've become accostomed to going personal (including dragging my 16 month old toddler into discussions).  
                       

                    2. Your point of view was "If Jedi can be a religion, so can environmentalism", and that was the first time what religion is was addressed on that thread.

                      Jedi can't be a religion, not to anyone with any respect for what that word really means, and when I pointed that out you did not engage subtantively, but repiled with a one-liner: http://www.jedichurch.org/  That's not disagreement, that's flip smart-alecyness.

                    3. And you again miss my point.  It was not that I disagreed with your point of view.  People can be agreeable in their disagreement if they treat other opinions with respect. You flippantly trivialize serious discussions.

                      We're both acting like assholes.  Only one of us realizes it.

                    4. DaftPunk,
                      Now that Rocco has correctly pointed it out that it was you (and not him) that dragged my 16 month old daughter into a discussion, you don't really have much of a leg to stand on when calling somebody an "asshole" 

                    5. It's posts like this that make me question your reading comprehension skills. Note "behaving like."  I acknowledge my behavior.  It's a choice. You apparantly can't help yourself.  I have to be nice to stupid people all day at work.  On the internet, with an anonymous handle, I don't have to.  To me "DaftPunk" means (besides best techno outfit ever) "crazy ass motherfucker who doesn't give a shit."  I don't start off nasty, but I don't tolerate bullshit either.  Yeah, I'm behaving like an asshole to you, because you deserve it, for all the reasons outlined above, ad nauseum.

                      I never denied making fun of your daughter's name.  Does she read Pols?  Did I hurt her feelings?  It's not about her, it's about you. Whether she's 16 months old, or 20 years from now when she's a fully fledged adult, you'll still be a fucking twatwaffle for saddling her with the name of a heroine from a ponderous tome of grade B fiction designed to validate feelings of resentment of the well-off toward the less fortunate.  If you're lucky she won't hate you for it.

  9.  

    DaftPunk
    You said

    "Estrada was not opposed because he was a latino and it's despicable of you to suggest racism was behind it.

    However, that is hardly clear: 

    One Nov. 7, 2001, memo from staff to Sen. Richard Durbin, R-Ill [sic Durbin is actually a Dem]., suggested that the "groups" would help stall the nomination of Miguel Estrada (search), a Bush nominee to the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals. The memo called him "dangerous," in part because he "has a minimal paper trail, he is Latino and the White House seems to be grooming him for a Supreme Court appointment."

    http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,111286,00.html#ixzz2LJWDe3QW

    Note that the above article had a typo – Durbin is a Dem, not GOP. 

    1. Nice try, troll. Attempting to label me a snitch fails every time. And never mind anybody else.

      you have time to surf, you certainly have time to get your assignment on paul ryan's plans to gut Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security.

      You brought that up in the first place.

      Do the work, asshole.

        1. Never mind that. Quit changing the subject.

          If you have time to post this whiny nonsense, you have time to complete assigned work.

          Or are you prepared to admit, as a "libertarian" whatever that is, you share ryan's ayn randian view that the social safety net should be ended?

          I mean if you're namin' your kid after a rand character, that's pretty telling about what you think.

          Remember though, ayn rand spent the last few years of her life on Social Security. Just like you will, just like everybody does.

          But I'm with DaftPunk on that one. Naming a child after a rand character is wierd.

          I'll go one farther It's creepy. And DaftPunk''s correct. Your daughter is going to ask you what you were you thinking when you dropped that name.

    1. Actually no.

      Again, since you're only picking up bits and pieces of posts (not good for a lawyer), there was no "dragging" of anyone int the conversation.

      It's not about anyone but you.

      You, and only you, are responsible for naming the poor child after a Rand character. It's not her fault. It's yours'. She isn't odd, you are. She's only a victim of your idiocy. She has to explain that name for the rest of her life, not you.

      It's not about her. It's about you.

      Now, do you advocate, as does ryan, and as did rand, the abolishment of the social safety net, even though rand used it while demonizing it, and while ryan went to college on it, is now demonizing it and for ending it?

      You can't hide behind a child's name forever, using your daughter as a human shield is wrong. Time to come out proudly for your libertine views.

      We await.

  11. Not hiding behind my daughter.  Just pointing out that you have joined DaftPunk in terms of her dragging her into a discussion.  Hope you feel proud of yourself.

    /sarcasm

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