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July 31, 2017 03:56 PM UTC

Ken Buck Says the Republican Party is Dead

  • 10 Comments
  • by: Colorado Pols
Rep. Ken Buck to the rescue!

Congressman Ken Buck (R-Greeley) authored a pretty interesting Op-Ed in the Denver Post over the weekend in which he asserts that the Republican Party — of which he is a member — has destroyed itself:

The Republican Party is dead.

At one time, the blood of the people coursed through its veins, enlivening the party with their values and virtues, their goals and dreams. The party became its own energizing force, compelling people to sacrifice for a higher moral purpose.

But today’s Republican Party abandoned these people. It no longer represents their values. It no longer has a vision for a better America. And no one is stepping up to provide that vision…

…After eight years of assuring that unified Republican government would allow for conservative policy, our Republican Congress has accomplished little, except for passing a spending bill that shackles the aspirations of future generations with crippling debt.

Egads! The Republican Party is dead? To whom shall conservatives turn for guidance in these troubled times? Who will drag the Republican Party further to the right, where it (apparently) belongs?

We’re guessing Ken Buck is the answer to this question:

More than anything else, we need a vision, someone who has a message and a plan to unify this country. Instead, we’ve assembled a “b-team” of messengers who distract the nation with frivolities.

But Coloradans do not care about the frivolous. We care about the meaningful. We have a vision for the meaningful. If we can pass a balanced budget amendment, a responsible spending bill, and reforms of our health care system, of our tax system, of our entitlement system, and of our immigration system, then we can begin to fulfill the one-time destiny of this party, a destiny to offer hope and prosperity to the people of this great nation.

The Republican Party may well be dead, for many of the reasons Buck lists in this Op-Ed. Of course, it certainly doesn’t help that people like Buck are willing to throw the elephant in the lake in order to get the credit for diving in to save it from drowning.

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10 thoughts on “Ken Buck Says the Republican Party is Dead”

  1. I went to Ken Buck's town hall in Sterling yesterday. I just got the video uploaded (see below). Buck is a good communicator. He lies, gets his facts wrong, spins stuff, leaves important information out, but he doesn't get flustered when confronted, and overall handled himself well with a crowd that was at least 50% Democratic and progressive. I'd call the overall tone of the meeting "polite but firm" , for all parties involved.

    So yes, Buck could spin himself as a moderate or an alternative to the dead elephant in the room. He's still one of the most conservative members of Congress. People running against him need to confront him on policy and votes. He's not stupid or undisciplined – he's not going to curse anyone out or get into a sex or money scandal. He'll be a challenge.

     

    Colorado CD4 Representative Ken Buck had a town hall in Sterling, Colorado on July 29, 2017. About 50 people attended, more or less evenly divided between local Republican, Democratic, and unaffiliated/ Independent voters.

    There are several times during this meeting in which Rep. Buck did not tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth.

    For example, at 22:59, during a renewable energy discussion , Buck said that he’s against mandates, not renewable energy, even though Colorado now gets 24% of its electricity from wind and solar, and wind turbine jobs are the fastest growing job category in the country. http://dpo.st/2vgbTJA. He was unable to justify his statement that renewable energy is hurting Coloradans and costing them money.

    At 30:00 Buck says he’s against unfunded mandates in education, but doesn’t commit to fund them.

    At 39:00, Buck lies about how much ACA coverage cost in 2014. (ACA = $1800, wife’s plan =$108 – but not mentioning that Fed Gov subsidizes all congressmembers health at 90%, so his cost would have been $180/mo).

    At 40:00 Rep. Buck says he wants to drive down costs of premiums & deductibles, but neglects to mention that the AHCA bill would have driven those way up for consumers.

    At 49:45 , he says we encourage people to be healthier and drive down health care costs that way (but the bill he supported would have eliminated ACA’s preventative medicine coverage).

    Buck told a LIE again at 51:13 when he said that the GOP congress “never attempted to repeal and replace” Obamacare. The GOP Congress voted over 50 times to “repeal the ACA, and Buck personally voted 3X since he was elected in 2014 to repeal the ACA.

    Again, at 53: when Buck is asked what can be done about the lack of civility in DC, he blames the media for publicizing sensational stories, not a Republican administration which refuses to work across the aisle, nor a President who models terrible and uncivil behavior.

  2. The party is dead, long live the party!

    Yeah, Ken, and so's Freddy Krueger . . . 

    . . . aprops of this Administration's "American Dreams Week” . . . 

    . . . and also the face of the "new" Republican Party. ("Now in cheetosvision! . . .")

    1. No, Arvadonian. Buck has almost 100K in his Republican campaign fund.  And if the Republican Party is "dead", his campaign fund still gave $10K to the NRCC just last May.

      No, I'd say this is just Buck trying to position himself as a "different kind of Republican", maverick-y, etc. Anything to hold the trumpstench at bay.

      In his town halls, he's full of "Washington is broken", "Rs and Ds both are disfunctional" kinds of rhetoric. It plays pretty well in eastern CO. But he doesn't have any intention of not slurping from the R trough.

  5. If Buck is referring to providing any meaningful measures to govern responsibly and improve the lives of ordinary citizens then yeah the Republican Party is dead.  They have lived off of Reagan's legacy for decades without evolving into anything useful.  Their contributions have been in the form of developing new ways to lie and cheat.  When was the last time you remember hearing a Republican proposal and thinking to yourself 'That makes sense.  I wouldn't mind seeing it come to fruition to help the American people'.  The 'Skinny Repeal' was the nadir of Republican thought.  It was totally bankrupt and would have been a disaster if Ryan had rushed it through to a vote.  They suck at governing and the nation is the poorer because of it.

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