You no longer have to wonder what Sen. Cory Gardner would have to do to prompt the editorial board of the Denver Post to finally admit that endorsing then-candidate Gardner for U.S. Senate against Democratic incumbent Mark Udall in 2014 was a serious mistake.
The Post did that yesterday.
The paper bestowed on Gardner a rare and humiliating newspaper un-endorsement. The Post editorial justified the slight because Gardner decided to back President Donald Trump’s make-believe crisis at the Mexican border.
The Trump Administration invented the faux-emergency so the president can force the government to pay for the useless border wall that Mexico won’t, as promised. The scheme is a make-believe solution to a make-believe problem.
Gardner decided yesterday not to join the last remaining 12 Senate Republicans willing to put country before Trump’s lurid Party of One and rebuke the fake national emergency ploy. The decision came after he had decided he might help stop the president from violating decency and the Constitution, and then deciding he was undecided.
The Daring Dozen in the Senate agreed with Democrats that neither this president nor any other has the power to make stuff up to try and extract from the U.S. Treasury — or the Chinese loan sharks who actually own the paper to this country — what the Congress refuses to provide.
Smilin’ Cory, Colorado’s most famous tractor salesman and the Senate’s most affable used-car salesman, made sounds a couple of weeks ago that he, too, was in favor of Congress slamming on the fake-emergency brake. Like so many times since he was elected to the Senate, he said one thing and voted another way, changing his mind, or having someone change it for him.
It turned out yesterday the boss in the pit told Cory “no,” when he tried to strike a deal to join the Senate Daring Dozen. So he voted with the likes of other stellar moral rocks in the Senate, such as Lindsey Graham, Ted Cruz and Mitch McConnell.
Afterward, Gardner released this Tweet:
“There is a crisis at the border,” Gardner wrote. “and Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer have prevented a solution. As a result, the President has declared a national immigration emergency, legal authority which he clearly has under the 1976 law, a law invoked 56 times by every previous President since Jimmy Carter. Between October and February, border patrol apprehensions were up nearly 100 percent and since 2012, border patrol methamphetamine seizures are up 280 percent. It should never have come to this, but in the absence of Congressional action, the President did what Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer refused to do.”
On this I agree. It should never have come to this.
The Sentinel, and a few papers in the state warned Colorado voters about Smilin’ Cory and his used-car specials back in 2014.
“… Congressman Gardner is not a credible candidate for the Senate seat. His campaign has been decimated by deceits and distractions. …Gardner clearly seeks to hide and manipulate his political past and future agenda…It’s political bait-and-switch at its worse, and Colorado voters can easily see through it.”
Denver Post opinion-page editors, however, did not. The Gardner endorsement was an immediate black eye. I still know dozens of former Post readers who abandoned the paper solely for that move. The current op-ed team at the Post have taken a new tact.
They agree that it isn’t a matter of opinion as to whether there is or isn’t a national emergency at the Mexican border, it’s a matter of fact. And the facts clearly show, there is no crisis.
It’s no partisan observation that Trump and his administration are profound and prolific liars. And it’s indisputable that Gardner’s collar is now being yanked by Trump. That’s bad for Colorado, and it’s bad for the nation.
It was a foolish move. Gardner, has hitched his political lifeboat to the S.S. Trumptanic. It has increasingly led to his political undoing, according to a growing majority of Colorado voter opinion polls.
After lying about his supposedly neutral stance on abortion rights. After lying about his supposedly neutral stance on Obamacare. After lying about a litany of ways he promised Colorado voters that he was a political moderate, Gardner lied one too many times and got gonged by the Post. If Gardner is what passes as a Republican moderate, Colorado voters have no choice but to shop for elected officials elsewhere. Gardner, alarmingly endorsed Trump for re-election recently, prompting most of Colorado to ask, “who is this guy?”
Now we all know that Gardner lacked the temerity and moral compass to protect Colorado from those would use and abuse the Senate for their own purposes. Who knew, at the time, that Colorado’s biggest threat would be the commander in chief?
Now we know.
We’re stuck with Gardner for two years, unless he has the courage to admit he ran a fraudulent campaign in 2014 and has sold his political and moral soul to the corruption in the White House, then step down, and return to selling tractors and smiles in Yuma.
Nope.
It’s unfathomable why Gardner would throw away any hope of re-election with the stunt he pulled yesterday, seeing what happened even to the likes of former Congressman Mike Coffman. Coffman got washed away in an anti-Trump wave in November without having near the Trumpsonite baggage Gardner has accumulated.
You can only imagine that it was the promise of the veep slot when Pence takes the White House after Trump’s impeachment and resignation. Or maybe it was simply the palpable fear Trump and his tribe of Republican bandits hold over Gardner and other “moderate” cowards.
It revealed, however, a politician who quickly chooses the expedient thing rather than the right thing.
While politicians like Cruz and McConnell can make a career out of that kind of behavior in their southern confines, Colorado voters won’t tolerate it. It’s relieving to know that the ed board at the Post won’t either.
Follow @EditorDavePerry on Twitter and Facebook or reach him at 303-750-7555 or dperry@SentinelColorado.com