August 12, 2010 01:33 AM UTC

No Easy Walk Back to the Center for Buck

•  
• by: Colorado Pols

A day after a cutthroat Republican primary that featured both candidates in a race to out-extreme their opponent, what’s the first thing newly-minted nominee Ken Buck needs to do? Start walking back the craziest of his on-record stands, of course! But as the AP’s Kristen Wyatt reports, Democrats and their allies have no plans to make that easy.

Buck vowed “to reach out our hand for the independent and Democratic voters” after a long primary contest in which he played up his no-compromise conservatism and ties to tea party groups.

Activists with both parties moved to forestall opponents’ appeal to Colorado moderates.

A day after Buck defeated former Lt. Gov. Jane Norton in the Republican primary, a group of left-leaning groups launched a “Too Crazy For Colorado” tagline for Buck.

The coalition – dubbed the Campaign for Strong Colorado – included Planned Parenthood and ProgressNow Colorado, and it planned to use comments Buck made in his primary campaign against him. Early ammunition included Buck’s opposition to abortion rights, even in cases of rape and incest, and Buck’s argument for deep cuts to the federal departments of Education and Energy. Buck has called for completely cutting off funding for the U.S. Postal Service and Amtrak.

“How can he represent what Colorado’s all about and say these crazy things?” said Ellen Dumm, executive director of the group.

This is the dangerous moment for “Tea Party”-backed Republicans we’ve been talking about for months, and we see how well this transition is working out for the likes of Sharron Angle in Nevada or Rand Paul in Kentucky. We get how primaries work, and what is always necessary in order to appeal to the activist base: it’s true for Democrats too to a certain extent.

But we submit to you that the extent of “crazy” we’re talking about with Ken Buck–from the ever-expanding list of federal departments he would abolish, to open support for a radical abortion ban, to bad relations with Latinos as Weld County DA, to the shameless embrace of some of the nuttiest things to ever escape the mouth of Tom Tancredo–represents a much more difficult extremist hole to climb out of than the usual base appeasement-to-general election transition. Buck says that dissatisfaction with Washington and “ruling Democrats” will broaden his appeal sufficient to win moderate independents and even some Democrats. Nice idea, until the first general election voter asks, “not even if it’s rape or incest? Seriously?”

Ken Buck’s body of strident public statements in his primary as he battled Jane Norton for the support of the hard right is going to be the front line of this Senate race–Michael Bennet’s short walk to the center, versus a need to completely remake Buck’s image.