October 29, 2009 06:58 PM UTC

Inevitability Requires Consent

• 11 Comments
• by: Colorado Pols

A few days ago, we noted GOP gubernatorial candidate Scott McInnis’ decision to forego debates against his Republican primary opponents. Now, we enjoy the theater of a good nickname as much as the next pundit, and “McChicken” is as clever as any, but most of all McInnis’ decision to avoid debates represents a threat to his major opponent Josh Penry. By locking the feisty Penry out of opportunities to rhetorically best McInnis in front of the cameras, McInnis helps project the sense of ‘inevitability’ that can, if executed properly, end a primary.

But there’s a hitch: inevitability is great, naturally everybody wants it. The thing is, inevitability requires some, well, consensus, doesn’t it? The Denver Post editorial board writes today:

To the dismay of top GOP leaders, the former Republican congressman is steadfastly refusing to debate his primary opponents. “This is probably the most misguided strategy I’ve seen in all my years in this business,” Dick Wadhams, Colorado GOP chairman, told The Post’s Lynn Bartels. [Pols emphasis]

McInnis is trying to avoid an intra- party smear that sticks in the general election, like the “Both Ways Bob” tag that stuck to Bob Beauprez in the 2006 gubernatorial raise. But by ducking debates and confounding party leaders, he may get one anyway. How about Mystifying McInnis?

Republican voters deserve a chance to see McInnis and his GOP opponents, state Sen. Josh Penry and businessman Dan Maes, make their cases in the real-world environment of debates. Voters get plenty of the scripted campaign-style talking points…

McInnis says debating fellow Republicans would only provide ammunition to Democrats. He says that past GOP primary races in Colorado, such as the Beauprez-Marc Holtzman match-up, inflicted wounds too deep to survive. But Beauprez never even debated Holtzman, who failed to make it onto the primary ballot.

“Whatever damage was done, it never came out of a debate,” Beauprez told Bartels, adding that his advice to McInnis would be to “use your enormous amount of experience, seniority and maturity and demonstrate that you really are, as you like to characterize it, the front-runner. Otherwise, it invites lots of people to say, ‘What’s that about?’ “

Like we said before, it falls on Penry to show why McInnis’ presumption isn’t justified–there are plenty of instances where a true frontrunner has nothing to gain by letting some irrelevant gadfly share the spotlight, in fact that situation presents very good reasons not to let them. Sure, this is a bad news day for McInnis, but one or two bad days like this is well worth not awarding Penry bigger press later in debates. And it’s not like Penry can debate without McInnis, because if he shows up on a stage with just Dan Maes, then he looks like he has more in common with Maes than McInnis — which is absolutely not the image he needs.

The question is this: based on everything you know about this race, is McInnis there yet? If he is, the whole idea of treating Penry as irrelevant makes sense. If he’s not, popular backlash could turn McInnis’ assumptions into fatal mistakes.

And, uh, Dick Wadhams sure didn’t hold back on how he feels, did he? After all, Wadhams has a long record of doing everything in his power to ensure that Republicans have primaries that are free from interference. (ahem) Yes, really!