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October 21, 2005 08:00 AM UTC

One Down, One to Go for Musgrave

  • 27 Comments
  • by: Colorado Pols

According to the Fort Collins Coloradoan, Republican Bill Kaufman has decided not to challenge incumbent Marilyn Musgrave in a primary in CD-4:

Loveland Republican Bill Kaufman, 56, said Thursday that he won’t run for the local 4th Congressional District in 2006. The former state representative served in the Legislature from 1992 to 2000 and currently is area representative on the Colorado Transportation Commission.

In mid-June, Kaufman told the Coloradoan he was considering challenging Musgrave, a two-term congresswoman and Fort Morgan Republican. But Kaufman’s enthusiasm was dampened in recent months by the thought of having to close his law practice for a grueling campaign. He says the thought of facing Musgrave, an incumbent who has raised $1.1 million this election cycle, didn’t dissuade him.

That’s the good news for Musgrave. The bad news? Republican Eric Eidsness sounds like he’ll run:

The Fort Collins resident and former appointee of President Ronald Reagan said in late August he was seriously considering the race. At the time, Eidsness, 60, said he planned to make a decision in September or October.

Now, he says an announcement could come shortly before Christmas or early next year. “I’m not a party player. I’m not a politician, so I have a lot to learn,” Eidsness said Thursday. “I’m learning.

“I still do plan to run.”

Eidsness probably can’t beat Musgrave in a primary, but he could play a role in this race by at least making the incumbent spent money and energy to defeat him.

Comments

27 thoughts on “One Down, One to Go for Musgrave

  1. Well, here’s my take on Marilyn.

      What Rep. Musgrave sees as the latest battle in her ??culture wars?? is gay marriage.  She explains in the Washington Times  that, ?Marriage and family are the most important institutions in existence. Unfortunately, they have come under attack.  The traditional values Americans hold are being traded for counterfeit marital unions.?  She went on to say, ?It is important to secure this institution and protect it from distortion.?  To this end, Musgrave cosponsored the Federal Marriage Amendment which would have amended the Constitution of the United States with a definition of marriage as the union of one man and one woman.  The amendment would have further provided that issues with regard to marital benefits would be left to state legislatures and not courts.

      Institutions are, of course, fundamental components of a culture.  But, then, the American dream, the American promise provides a place for and tolerance of cultural differences.  The key to the strength and resiliency of the American republic resides in its ability to embrace, indeed to celebrate the differences amongst us all.

      The American experience is, however, littered with the ignoble attempts of the self-righteous to impose upon us all cultural values that belie the essential promise of this nation which is the respect and protection of each person?s right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.

      But, then, we all know that.  Or, do we?

      I believe what concerns me most about Rep. Musgrave?s stance is that multiculturalism in America is apparently not something she celebrates but, rather, something she battles via her culture wars. One need not delve very deeply into Rep. Musgrave?s comments to understand that this small town champion of conservative Christian values has little tolerance for most other facets of multiculturalism ? quite aside from gay marriage.  She is a product of small town America where open highways over flat plains seem to lead ultimately, inevitably to an insularism not only of the mind but of the soul as well.

      My two cents.

  2. This is just plain silly.
    Democrats ran around encouraging Kaufman to run.
    Than he finally wakes up. This other guy will do the same thing. There is no way that a low turnout Republcan primary will be lost by Musgrave. Bush, Cheney and the whole cabinet will campaign for her. Angie Paccione is not a serious contender. Get used to Marilyn as she will be in Congress till she decides to step down.

  3. But, one wonders–in light of the current Plame affair–how long will Bush, Cheney and the whole cabinet actually be viable to do anything except cover their backsides???

  4. I also grew up in flat and open Eastern Colorado, George, and I don’t hate Gays.
    What I DO hate is narrow-minded, dumbass bigots like you.
    Go back to whatever big city you came from if you can’t stand Colorado or Coloradans.  You won’t be missed.

  5. I grew up in Eastern Colorado too, and I also don’t hate gays, but the sad truth is that a good portion of the people who live out there do.  The idea that small town folks are nice and cheery and welcoming to outsiders is a myth, every time I go home to visit the people are more closeminded and bigoted than when I left. They also have a nasty habit of freezing out anyone who doesn’t go to church (I remember several incidents when I was young when friends of mine were called Satan worshippers because they weren’t “saved”) and they don’t really like people with dark skin either, unless they are doing the dirty work in the fields for substandard wages.  City life isn’t close to perfect, but the idea that small towners are super nice people is a load of crap.  They are jerks just like city people, only in different ways.  Paccione doesn’t have a chance in hell of winning the 4D either, by the way, “liberal elitist college-educated city women” don’t play well in the sticks.  If the Dems are smart they’ll go with someone of the McKinley stripe.

  6. McKinley’s singing cowboy schtick would kill him in the 85 percent of the district (by population) that lies within the Larimer-Weld-Boulder metroplex.  And while there are jerks to be found in the city and country alike, I spit on George’s claim that all rural folks are per se bigots.  You see to have turned out all right.  Of course, George could always move to Colorado’s other, ultra tolerant, urban area, Colorado Springs.

  7. I am a product of the small town, open plains phenomenon that George talks about.  Some of us “hicks” happen to be educated and guess what?  We still love Musgrave.  Social issues are a concern of mine but ultimately MM gets my vote  because of her stance on ag issues, and lower taxes (specifically the death tax that undermines farmers every year)

  8. One problem with the Musgrave bunch is that they are so paranoid.  They’ll see this Eidsness guy as some type of major threat, and spend $500,000 and create an ugly primary.  In a way they should feel vulnerable, because they’ve caused so much anymosity within the Republican party, but they should concentrate on fixing that problem, not clubbing a nuisance opponent to death.

  9. Manofthehour, I’ve got two bachelors degrees and one masters and I’m still a hick and proud of it!
    I can’t wait until they offer a Ph.D in Hickology.
    Marilyn is hardly my favorite Repub, but she is calming down, spending less time worrying about gay marriage and more on transportation and economic issues.  She showed real guts voting for CAFTA because there is a beet sugar coop and factory right there in Fort Morgan.  But CAFTa benefitted the district and the country and she came through. Since it only passed by two votes, she could have tied it and killed it by voting no.  Good show, Marilyn.  The Ds should write this one off and put the money in the 7th, where there’s a seat waiting to be taken.

  10. I don’t comment often on this site, although I’ve been a reader and supporter pretty much since the site’s inception.

    I’ve commented on two strings lately, and it’s quite interesting (if not disturbing) to find such vitriol and knee-jerk presumptive non sequitors that permeate the commentary on this site.

    Colorado’s shame was that both Representative Marilyn Musgrave and Senator Wayne Allard, flatlanders both, authored/sponsored the “Marriage Amendment” to the United States Constitution. Thus, to my way of thinking, serving to enforce the perception that Colorado remains the “Hate State.” (James Dobson up in C.Springs only confirms that observation for most.)

    CAFTA, NAFTA. Good for the country? Wow! Sugar beets aside, do ya’ll really understand what these treaties actually accomplish or enable?

    Incidentally, I come from a long line of good and decent folk from Arkansas, Texas, Oklahoma, Iowa; good people that others might have referred to as “hicks;” farmers, ranchers, blue-collar folk that eventually ended-up in Colorado and (while not languishing half their adults lives in academic institutions accumulating sheepskin after sheepskin) respected the promise of higher education and the rewards that would accrue therefrom. And, somewhere along the line, that promise was answered.

    And, while Merle Haggard’s “Okie from Muskogee,” brings a smile to my face, it sure doesn’t compel me to respect Musgrave and Allard who, I’m sure, have Haggard’s sentiments prominently displayed as needlepoint upon the walls of their living rooms.

    Not all flatlanders are rednecks. A whole lot of rednecks are flatlanders. Therefore… Well, I’ll let ya’ll finsih the tautological argument.

    Hint: Musgrave and Allard!

  11. If you’d have spent a little more time on campus, George, you might have learned the difference between a tautology and a syllogism.  A course in formal logic wouldn’t have hurt none neither.

  12. You could also have used an econ 101 course.  Hint, look up David Ricardo’s Law of Comparative Advantage and it will tell you why free trade treaties are far better for the people than the protectionist schemes you support.
    Sorry if I have a better education than you did, but as far as languishing my life, I worked 40 hours a week all the way through.  Some of us want education enough to work for it, and some of us apparently would rather spend our time in bars listening to Merle Haggard and tapping along with our Birkenstocks.  Ghastly thought, that.

  13. God, but ya’ll do illustrate my point.

    Actually, Policesquad, I aced the formal logic ditty at CU and, as a matter of fact, enjoyed it immensely. And, yes, “syllogism” might have worked if that was what I was actually attempting to argue. Duh!

  14. So you really don’t know what a tautology is, do you, Boy George.  Look it up.  It ain’t at all what you thought. If you aced formal logic, you must have taken it from Ward Churchill.

  15. pl. tau?tol?o?gies
    1a. Needless repetition of the same sense in different words; redundancy. b. An instance of such repetition. 2. Logic An empty or vacuous statement composed of simpler statements in a fashion that makes it logically true whether the simpler statements are factually true or false; for example, the statement Either it will rain tomorrow or it will not rain tomorrow.
    You used a false syllogism, Boy George, not a tautology.  Must of cut that formal logic class the day they explained the distinction.  Next time, be careful before you use big words.  They do make an impression, but not necessarily the one you want to make.

  16. No wonder this guy hates Eastern Colorado.  The boys at the feed store in Burlington would come down mighty hard on a dude who misused a simple word like tautology.

  17. That sounds about right for Burlington, PoliceSquad.  They’re still heavily influenced by the Platonic school at that feed store.  Here at the American Legion Hall in Swink, talk focuses more on Wittgenstein and New Thought, though you do get the occasional existentialist.  Don’t think Boy George would be very comfortable in Swink, either, though.  A man who can’t tell a tautology from a false syllogism probably is lousy at chess as well.

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