It probably looked like a mathematical no-brainer to Scott McInnis, Republican candidate for governor, when he decided to feed Southeastern Colorado to the Pentagon wolves. He figured he was trading a few thousand lost votes in that sparsely populated corner of the state in exchange for millions of votes in El Paso County and along the 1-70 corridor. He calculated that he could subtract a few ranchers from the vast numbers of job seekers up north and he’d come out ahead. But alas, Scott can’t count.
He should have done his math a little more carefully. It’s not just ranchers in the boondocks who are outraged at the idea of the transferring up to 6.9 million acres of private and state land, the whole southeastern corner of the state, to the federal government. And it’s not just Democrats who are appalled at the idea of hardworking, patriotic Americans being forced to defend their homes and lifestyles against an invasion by their own military. And it’s not just archaeologists who are against turning the cradle of Colorado History, a region loaded with Native American sites, vestiges of the Santa Fe Trail and the ruins of Hispanic settlers and Pioneer cattlemen, into a vast live-fire range. And it’s not just property rights advocates who are up in arms at the prospect of eminent domain ultimately being used to take private property in order to increase the 34% of Colorado currently owned by the federal government by about an additional 10%. And it’s not just environmentalists who are opposed to destroying one of the most biologically diverse regions of our state. http://www.denverpost.com/ci_6160060?source=rss.
Nope, he didn’t do his math.
Even in military-friendly, Republican El Paso County he may have figured wrong. Buddy Gipson, Chairman of the Governmental Affairs and Public Policy Advisory Board of the Colorado Springs Chamber of Commerce has sided with McInnis’s anti-expansion opponent, Josh Penry on the issue, http://www.gazette.com/articles/wednesday-62932-penry-assert.html.
What McInnis failed to calculate is the fact that many Republican primary voters are ideological conservatives who are staunch defenders of private property rights. People who don’t see the federalization of Colorado’s lands and economy as our salvation. True-blue conservatives who know that wealth is produced, not by an over-dependence upon the federal government by building a diverse economy in the private sector.
Scott needs to go back to grammar school and work on his arithmetic.
Right on Doug! Thanks for your continuing support and undying devotion to keeping the land of Southeastern Colorado in the hands of the very best caretakers it could possibly have…..ranchers and current landowners!
Keep up the good fight!!!