Colorado Governor John Hickenlooper is routinely sold as a pro-business, centrist Democrat, a real regular guy governor who, it now seems, has bigger political ambitions.
But he’s always been a liberal, comfortable with the Denver-Boulder corridor while holding much of rural Coloradans in contempt.
First, he joined forces with another petty tyrant, New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg, to foist upon Colorado by way of a Democrat-led state assembly heavily lobbied by Bloomberg’s monied fronts, onerous, unenforceable, and unconstitutional gun control laws. That is, he sold out Colorado, a pro-2nd Amendment southwestern state, to become a darling of the east coast liberal establishment — forgetting, as did many of the state reps and state senators on the Democratic side of the aisle, that he is accountable to the people of Colorado, not to those he hopes will support him for higher national office somewhere down the road.
And now, citing the laws of “other states” and indeed foreign countries, Hickenlooper has determined to grant a reprieve — not a pardon or clemency, mind, but a reprieve — to a convicted murderer who’d been sentenced to death by a Colorado jury. That is, he’s punted the issue on to his successor, hoping to avoid the taint of being in power during an execution, playing to national Democrats while once again treating the people of Colorado he supposedly represents as backward-thinking hicks who have created bad laws that he can’t be bothered to follow. Closure for the families? Deferring sentencing to the duly empaneled jurors and the courts? Remaining true to his oath of office? Posh.
That shit’s for chumps.
Like Bloomberg and Obama and many in the contemporary liberal fascist ruling class, Hickenlooper sees himself more as a king or a dictator than as a governor to the people of Colorado, and that’s because there are only some people of Colorado who rate, those being the liberal sophisticates whom he believes mirror the make-up of the national Democrat stable of key supporters and not the rural hicks clinging to their guns and their religion and their outmoded views on retributive justice.
The law is what it is here, Hickenlooper is saying, but that doesn’t compel him to follow it, because elsewhere, in other states and in the bien pensant capitols of old Europe, are different laws that Hickenlooper prefers — and Hickenlooper, like most statists, believes himself bigger than the subjects he’s deigned to rule over, more wise than their quaint laws allow, and certainly better prepared to lead than the mewling masses who at the end of the day shake dirt off their boots and eat a plate of Hamburger Helper.
They are useful only when it comes time to vote, at which point “Hick” will don his flannels and his blue jeans and ladle out the folksy charm, mixing blue collar messaging in with the keys to cosmopolitanism he believes the rural trash so long to find favor with. Voting for him makes them independent thinkers, you see, and for a Democrat, they’ll say, he seems pretty down to earth and lunch-bucket savvy.
He is a construct, and it’s one that the Democrats constantly push: at the local level, Dems are sold as fiscally conservative and on social issues are often told to remain consonant with the local mores in order to get elected. After which, they can do as they please, as Hickenlooper has now done twice in two high profile instances.
There are no “centrist liberals.” The blue dog Democrats long ago joined the TEA Party and are being blasted now as racist conservatives, leaving behind the label, which is being filled by pretenders and managed candidates like Hickenlooper who have their eyes on bigger prizes outside a dust-covered cow town.
They are who we thought they were. And there’s hardly a Good Man among them.
(h/t JohnInFirestone)
Bloomberg’s monied fronts
Wealthier than Soros, BTW.
And you little people thought you had a chance…
Of course there are, silly! The GOP is chockablock with centrist liberals.
“Moderate” is to “liberal” as “moderate” is to “Muslim” — which is to say, an oxymoron.
Y’know what who you never hear about? The really-smart oxies. I mean, Bell Curve and all, they’ve got to exist. But no, the entire species is tainted by the idiots in their midst that get all the press.
OT: Why it’s impossible that a few rogue underlings at IRS sat on those cases without their superiors being hip to it.
VP slot in the Liz Warren 2016 presidential run?
ox y moron n. A person whose oxycontin abuse has caused him to support President Barack Milhous Omerta.
Worse than oxycontin, it’s oxytocin, the bonding hormone.
Ha!
Just seen elsewhere, an expression of gratitude: “As Rommel said, ‘tanks.'”
The Framers could not be reached for comment. Their works could.
“ox y moron ”
Bull and Idiot?
That’s as good a characterization of the relationship between the little god-king and his low-information voter base as I can imagine.
Is it possible to take up and examine seriously but one of Hickenlooper’s propositions or assertions in his decree? He claims among other things that he is himself serious. So we might return the favor.
So which proposition? I’d propose this one: “If the State of Colorado is going to undertake the responsibility of executing a human being, the system must operate flawlessly.”
And propose as well that in all seriousness, such a proposition is absurd on its face.
“So we might return the favor. ”
And apply it to every endeavor of governance?
Sauce, gander, some assembly required.
A reminder: Dunlap opened fire in a Chuck E. Cheese.
I’d like to know how Hickenlooper (and Bloomberg) can square their anti-gun stance with their apparent sympathy for the scum who commit multiple murders with an eeeeevil gun. Oh wait, they want to execute (i.e. destroy) all of the evil guns and then issue wrist slaps to people like Dunlap (and Holmes, too?)
Gun laws only disarm those who obey laws.
I am increasingly suspicious that gun-grabbers know this, and see it as a feature, not a bug.
Why shouldn’t one class of criminals shelter another?
“If the State of Colorado is going to undertake the responsibility of executing a human being, the system must operate flawlessly.”
* If the State of Colorado is going to undertake the responsibility of depriving its citizens of their means of self-defense, the system must operate flawlessly.
* If the State of Colorado is going to undertake the responsibility of seizing the assets of its citizens, the system must operate flawlessly.
* If the State of Colorado is going to undertake the responsibility of providing health care, the system must operate flawlessly.
This could be fun!
Is anyone else listening to Bumbles? Is there a pony in there?
Likely enough horse manure for several.