President (To Win Colorado) See Full Big Line

(D) Kamala Harris

(R) Donald Trump

80%↑

20%

CO-01 (Denver) See Full Big Line

(D) Diana DeGette*

(R) V. Archuleta

98%

2%

CO-02 (Boulder-ish) See Full Big Line

(D) Joe Neguse*

(R) Marshall Dawson

95%

5%

CO-03 (West & Southern CO) See Full Big Line

(R) Jeff Hurd

(D) Adam Frisch

50%

50%

CO-04 (Northeast-ish Colorado) See Full Big Line

(R) Lauren Boebert

(D) Trisha Calvarese

90%

10%

CO-05 (Colorado Springs) See Full Big Line

(R) Jeff Crank

(D) River Gassen

80%

20%

CO-06 (Aurora) See Full Big Line

(D) Jason Crow*

(R) John Fabbricatore

90%

10%

CO-07 (Jefferson County) See Full Big Line

(D) B. Pettersen

(R) Sergei Matveyuk

90%

10%

CO-08 (Northern Colo.) See Full Big Line

(D) Yadira Caraveo

(R) Gabe Evans

52%↑

48%↓

State Senate Majority See Full Big Line

DEMOCRATS

REPUBLICANS

80%

20%

State House Majority See Full Big Line

DEMOCRATS

REPUBLICANS

95%

5%

Generic selectors
Exact matches only
Search in title
Search in content
Post Type Selectors
August 16, 2016 01:50 PM UTC

Gardner Backs Trump, Backing Coffman Against Wall

  • 31 Comments
  • by: Colorado Pols

UPDATE: Cory Gardner reaffirms he’s all in in a statement today:

gardnertrump

—–

Sen. Cory Gardner says he supports Donald Trump for President
Sen. Cory Gardner says he supports Donald Trump for President

Earlier today we noted that Sen. Cory Gardner (R-Yuma) apparently announced his support of Donald Trump for President over the weekend. Like many Republicans, Gardner had been avoiding questions about his support for Trump — even though he was on record pledging to support the GOP nominee for President — but Megan Schrader of the Colorado Springs Gazette caught Gardner’s admission of support for Trump at the annual El Paso County Republican Party fundraiser on Friday night.

Gardner’s support of Trump is buried deeper than Jimmy Hoffa in Schrader’s story from Friday, which is why this is just now making waves on Tuesday. From the Gazette:

[Darryl] Glenn enthusiastically backed Trump when he addressed the crowd – a sentiment that was echoed by U.S. Sen. Cory Gardner.

“That’s why I’m voting Republican up and down the ticket. A Republican president will make a difference, even a Republican president named Donald Trump,” said Gardner [Pols emphasis], who last year accomplished what Glenn hopes to do this year by unseating one of Colorado’s Democratic senators.

Perhaps Gardner and his staff hoped that they could sweep this under the rug entirely, and they damn near succeeded. Gardner’s admission that he is voting for Trump should have been breaking news, but after lying dormant for a few days, his quote finally got mainstream attention today. This may be hard for Gardner to explain, of course, since he has been so anti-Trump for most of the 2016 election cycle:

Gardner’s public support of Trump creates a new problem for Republican Rep. Mike Coffman (R-Aurora), who has been trying to toe the middle line between concern about Trump and concern about losing Republican voters who love Trump.

Coffman has been taking a lot of heat for his wish wash on Trump, and the negative press he has earned as a result has been pretty rough (not to mention the verbal beatdown he received from former Rep. Tom Tancredo, whom Coffman once called his “hero”).

Rep. Mike Coffman
Rep. Mike Coffman

Last week Coffman’s hometown Aurora Sentinel published a strongly-worded editorial calling on Coffman and other Republicans to condemn Trump with no strings attached, which Coffman didn’t want to do. Coffman’s response to the Sentinel editorial was almost a word-for-word copy of a standard Trump talking point:

“What they forget is that Hillary Clinton is the most corrupt and dishonest politician ever to run for the Presidency.”

In the course of just a few weeks, Coffman has run a TV ad saying that he “doesn’t like Trump very much,” which was followed by several interviews in which Coffman refused to rule out voting for Trump. All of this made Coffman look particularly ridiculous, and his waffling no doubt contributed to a growing narrative about Coffman’s inability to stick with a position on anything.

With Gardner’s public support of Trump, Coffman now has to try to explain his position on Trump all over again — and in new detail. Gardner says he will vote for Trump. Will Coffman still try to refuse to answer that question?

Tweet
Share

Comments

31 thoughts on “Gardner Backs Trump, Backing Coffman Against Wall”

    1. Yeah, you'd really hate that, Zap…wink

      I disagree that Trump will drop out before the election – he may be MIA for debates, have almost no ground game, and will certainly not run a rigorous campaign. But he's committed now  – he has to try to win the election. The GOP had the chance to pick another candidate, and chose to go with the Trump persona.

      1. Ain't breaking no rule, BC  So-clled Godwins law just states the longer an online discussion lasts, the more likely someone is going to refer to Hitler.

  2. Nice to know that Gardner has a bright line between the good Republicans and others. I guess it is typical that he sees "good Republicans" defined by opposition to a Democratic politician. We already have a number of Republican leaders endorsing Clinton and many more saying they can't vote for Trump, and it isn't even Labor Day yet. I expect a number of women, Hispanics and other minorities will be voting for Clinton over Trump – which means they can't be "good Republicans," according to the junior Senator.

    Love the effort to put the 2012 lessons learned (or "autopsy") into effect, Senator Gardner.

    1. I know I'm breaking a rule here but it's beginning to sound like "good Nazis"…. Yeah Hitler talks a lotta hate trash but he can't really mean all of it, it's mostly for effect, you know how he loves to get the crowds going, and he's gonna make Germany great again!

    2. Gardner has nothing but Gardner in mind . . .

      . . . he can say he's supporting Drumpf now without repercussion because he's got nothing on the line this election. 

      Two years from now he'll claim he hated Drumpf and was, and is, personally against everything he stood for — but he's a solid party loyalist, a team player, the Boy Scout you wished your son would grow up to be, the duty-bound soldier you'd be proud to have your daughter marry . . .

      That's how the Sqworm turns, and he knows it.  No one's ever gonna' pin him down with pesky details, like credibility.

       

  3. Gardner is afraid of a teabag rebellion in 4 years if he doesn't endorse Trump. House and Teabaggers could make life pretty tough with his base, uneducated whites

  5. Now, what's missing from this diary is Gardner with Trump Hair. Coffman in Trump Hair is getting a bit frayed around the edges. C'mon Pols, give it  a try, I wanna see it!

  7. SO WONDERFUL that Cory Gardner put himself on record supporting Trump just before the Trump campaign reshuffle. Backing someone as they go for a third campaign structure. Going public with the statement just before Trump takes off the constraints of Paul Manafort to go all in with those who want to "let Trump be Trump."

    It is truly a gift.

  8. Hillary the most corrupt and dishonest politician ever. Who was that Watergate guy? Somebody Nixon, I forget. Also, Abraham Lincoln pushed statehood through for Nevada just in time for the election so he could get their electoral votes. Sorry folks, Honest Abe could play politics with the best of them!

    1. Seriously, they never say why HRC is supposed to be the worst of the worst. While I have not been the biggest fan of either of the Clintons, they seem pretty average to me as far as politicians go in the less than Mother Teresa level ethics dept. 

      I often wonder if the grass roots Republican base voters even know why they're supposed to hate HRC, or Nancy Pelosi for that matter, so much, so bitterly. Why they imagine there has never been anyone more corrupt than HRC running for President. Why they believe whatever crazy thing they hear about her, especially all the alleged murders that law enforcement has completely missed every damn time. By their count she's gotten way with more murders than the characters in the first two seasons of "How to get away with Murder".

      Pretty sure they're perfectly clear on why they're supposed to hate Obama so bitterly, though. GOP ops have been quite clear on that ever since the southern strategy.

      1. It's "that 'ole time" GOPer only-one-true religion thing, coupled with those other inbred GOPer traits (regularly displayed on these pages you read here by our very own Moderatus) of — impeccable and unimpeachable logic and insight . . .

        Follow along, please.  I'll elucidate for those of you not as fast on the uptake as Sarah Palin —

        One.  Because Obama has actually turned out to be a mighty poor antichrist after all — more akin to a door-to-door salesman of inconvenient doom, than the promised one, true Prince of Darkness.

        and, C. since these gotta' gotta' gotta' be "the end times" they all hope and want to believe they're living in,

        well then, ergo Four.  that means HRC absolutely has to be the (next, newest) Worst-Ever-Of-All-Times!!!   The "Whore of Babylon" foretold in their hopey-wishey book of One (or, maybe, Two) Revelation.  

        (Confession: I haven't yet actually heard anyone apply that term to Clinton.  Yet.  But, believe me, Beeelieeeeve me, we will, BEEELIEEEEVE me!)

        ( Klingenschmitt still on hiatus?  Shopping for another at manse in Aspen?) . . . 

        . . . either that, or B. they've just been getting mightily scammed and fleeced by their pious religious leaders and stalwart political idols all these years??? . . .  

        . . . Nah,  Just messin' with you righty-whities.   

        . . . Six. Six. Six. Hillary's Beelzebub (and we liberals all know it)!!!! 

      2. I often wonder if the grass roots Republican base voters even know why they're supposed to hate HRC, or Nancy Pelosi for that matter, so much, so bitterly.  

        I honestly don't think they do, BC. There seems to be a point with that type of person where they get to an "OK, that suits me, so don't tell me any more" mindset. They don't want to think hard enough to overcome their prejudices.

        Yesterday, I overheard a young worker for a sub-trade on a project of mine say to his journeyman, " …yeah, when those damned environmentalists shut down the coal mines"..

        I engaged the young man while we worked there and informed him of the truth, but he didn't want to hear it. He is from Hotchkiss, CO and has family members who work in the mines in Gunnison and Delta counties. He has been so inundated with the notion that environmentalists did this to his family, he cannot hear through his rage. Environmentalists would love to have that much power, but, of course, they don't.

        For our readers who may yet not know this, I want to tell you why the coal mines are shutting down….it is the price of natural gas and the continuing competition from renewables….There are a number of contributors here who have much more info at their fingertips,… Michael, PK, mama, ardy, etc…but I recall the city of Washington DC now getting electricity from wind in Pennsylvania instead of coal-fired power because it is cheaper.

        Natural gas power generation increased 19% in 2015 alone. Go here for the truth…

        http://www.eia.gov/todayinenergy/detail.cfm?id=26312

         

        1. It's a clean secret that Pawnee power plant in Brush is going to be using some wind power from planned large scale wind plants in eastern Colorado near Pawnee Buttes.

          Yesterday, I saw a train carrying dozens of wind turbine blades north to the Pawnee grasslands, which now have as many fracking tanks as prairie dog burrows.

          Why is it a "clean" secret? Because coal has become inextricably wedded to conservative ideology. It's almost a religious maxim that the Clean Power Plan "hurts jobs". But economic forces are inexorably driving change. Vestas CEO said that demand for wind technicians is up 20% since last year – 88,000 jobs in the country. And these jobs start at $25 an hour.

          So, to recap: my 100% coal-fired ancient power plant that created a generation of asthmatic adolescents in the area, is soon going to be getting a portion of its energy from wind turbines. Those same adolescents can get jobs in clean energy without leaving their beloved communities or slaving away in the Cargill or JBS meat plants. Just don't tell the Fossilonians. They don't want to be confused by facts.

          1. Just as economics and geology are the real driving force behind the demise of dinosaur poop as a 21st-century energy supply, demographics will be the death knell of the Fossilonian agenda.  What's going on today is the equivalent of a fire sale (pardon the pun) of their inventory while cheaper, clean, job-creating, (infinite) power supplies enter the marketplace. 

            Who wants an Etch-A-Sketch when you can have an iPad?

          2. This is my recent letter in the Sentinel, on that point…a bit further west than the Pawnee.

            State should lead in new energy economy

            The North Fork Valley is at a crossroads with the decline of the coal industry. But economies change, and the energy and power industries are going through some of the largest transformations they have ever faced. Some may be inclined to point fingers, but in fact there are global forces at work that are bigger than a president or a policy.

            Western Colorado needs to look to the future, not hope to recreate a time that is passing. Rather than look backward or cast aspersions, the better approach is to embrace opportunity and to make Colorado the leader in developing and modeling a new energy economy.

            We have the intelligence, ingenuity, expertise, and work ethic to be that leader. And we are blessed with a bounty of resources, not just coal, oil and gas. The North Fork alone likely has over 50 megawatts of developable local power sources. Those include tremendous small- and medium-scale hydro opportunities on irrigation canals and ditches, 300-plus days of sunshine, and innovative energy sources like coal mine methane capture and conversion, which currently is just vented, even decades after a mine is shuttered, into the atmosphere where it is a potent greenhouse gas.

            Utilizing these alternative energy resources would create jobs, keep revenue in our local economy that is now being sent to Denver-based Tri State, and would reduce our contribution to the pollution driving climate change. It would help us move toward true energy independence and strengthen our national security. That’s why instead of seeing policies like the president’s Clean Power Plan as a burden, I see it as opportunity. Economies change. It is how we respond to those changes that most determines our future.

            PETE KOLBENSCHLAG
            Paonia

            These GOP-pols like Ray Scott need to quite trading on misery and fear and get the hell out of the way.  There is a clean power revolution coming to this nation and at this point those nay-sayers are nothing but impediments (well compensated for their dirty deeds I am sure).   

Leave a Comment

Recent Comments


Posts about

Donald Trump
SEE MORE

Posts about

Rep. Lauren Boebert
SEE MORE

Posts about

Rep. Yadira Caraveo
SEE MORE

Posts about

Colorado House
SEE MORE

Posts about

Colorado Senate
SEE MORE

176 readers online now

Newsletter

Subscribe to our monthly newsletter to stay in the loop with regular updates!