October 09, 2014 10:44 AM UTC

Cory Gardner: The Great Unraveling Continues

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• by: Colorado Pols

The Grand Junction Sentinel's Charles Ashby is the latest Colorado journalist to document the rapid breakdown of GOP U.S. Senate candidate Cory Gardner's message on abortion and contraception policy. In a detailed story today, Ashby recounts the conflict between Gardner's abandonment of the state Personhood abortion bans and his continued sponsorship of the functionally equivalent federal Life at Conception Act–and how Gardner's explanations for this conflict have failed the most basic tests for accuracy:

U.S. Rep. Cory Gardner, the Republican candidate for U.S. Senate, doesn’t see an inconsistency in reversing his support for a statewide personhood ballot measure and his co-sponsorship of a federal Life at Conception Act measure now before Congress…

About a month after he entered the race in February, Gardner announced that he had reversed his support of the state personhood effort, saying he did so because it would lead to outlawing certain forms of contraception.

In a long and sometimes heated discussion about the issue with The Daily Sentinel editorial board, Gardner repeated that stance, saying he supports the use of contraception, including making some available over the counter.

But when asked why he continued to keep his name among the 131 other cosponsors of the Life at Conception Act, he said repeatedly that it wouldn’t have the same impact as a state constitutional amendment even though it would impact the entire nation as opposed to a single state…

The description of Gardner's meeting with the Grand Junction Sentinel editorial board as "heated" is consistent with Gardner's answers to Eli Stokols of FOX 31 when pressed to explain the difference between the Personhood measures and the federal Life at Conception Act. And it's consistent with Gardner's demeanor when questioned by the Denver Post in this week's debate. In both cases, Gardner's canned response that "there is no federal Personhood bill" wasn't accepted by the interviewer–and Gardner had no better answer to offer.

The reason is simple: Gardner can't defend his position.

[President of Planned Parenthood of the Rocky Mountain Region Vicki] Cowart points to another co-sponsor of the act, Republican Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul.

In a recent online plea for donations to the National Pro-Life Alliance, Paul said the act would be used to overturn the landmark 1973 decision, Roe v. Wade, that made abortion legal. [Pols emphasis]

Bottom line: Gardner is asking voters to disregard what the other sponsors of this legislation themselves say it would do. Because Personhood and the Life at Conception Act both contain the same language conferring rights from "the moment of fertilization," the distinction Gardner has tried to make between the two never made sense, and we identified this conflict when Gardner originally disavowed Personhood. It's why the final deadline for Gardner to remove himself from the federal bill, adjournment of the House until after the November elections, was so important.

Gardner made the conscious decision to remain a sponsor of the Life at Conception Act, and to justify that decision by creating a distinction between the two proposals that, as fact-checkers, experts, and other sponsors of the bill agree, does not exist. The growing exasperation from the press as Gardner demands they disregard what they can plainly see is manifesting in extremely damaging stories that no longer make any attempt to spare him from criticism. And this is the key point: Gardner's insistent break with reality on this issue is enough to make it a problem for voters who don't care about abortion.

Because at a certain level, everyone hates being lied to.