A recent Ken Buck rally at the University of Colorado at Boulder campus drew a student crowd that was 5x bigger than a crowd of students at a Bennet rally that was held the day before.

Ken Buck Rally:



Michael Bennet Rally:

“It is obvious that the Bennet campaign cannot take the youth vote for granted,” said College Republican Vice President Jess Johnson.

CR President Gregory Carlson said, “Every time I talk to my friends and students on campus, they are concerned about the economy.  The unemployment rate for young people is currently 19%, and Senator Bennet’s out of control spending threatens to bankrupt our generation.  No one is happy about the direction of the country, and we have had record turnout at our College Republican events.  I’ve never seen anything like it.”

Ken Buck’s message is resonating with younger voters including those on the CU Boulder Campus.  We think this bodes well for November. The excitement of Michael Bennet’s campaign is meek at best at CU Boulder.

Starting at 2:04:

“[...] look, not only do we have $12 trillion in debt, not only have we mortgaged ourselves to the Chinese, but the tragedy of it is, we have absolutely nothing to show for it, absolutely nothing to show for it. We haven’t invested in our roads, our bridges, our transportation, our ports, anything. What did we do? Well, we cut taxes for the wealthiest Americans and we cost our kids $1.4 trillion. We said ‘we’re gonna cut taxes for the wealthiest Americans, borrow it from the Chinese, and stick our kids with the bill.’ We have spent a trillion dollars on the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, we’ve borrowed all of that money from our kids. Medicare Part D, the seniors’ prescription drug program that Bush advanced–might be a great program but we didn’t pay for it. The bailout that ended the last administration, about $800 billion, not paid for. And then, the piece of it that the President, we own, I own, was the recovery package last year which was roughly $760 billion. All that adds up to $12 trillion, and we’ve got to address it. It’s immoral to leave this to our children [...]”

This quote from the above dialogue was quickly turned into an attack ad against Bennet:

“We have managed to acquire $13 trillion of debt on our balance sheet. In my view we have nothing to show for it.”

Tonight, thousands and thousands of Coloradans came out to caucus for their preferred candidates.  It was only the first step in the long road that will ultimately allow the parties to narrow down their candidate fields for the primary election, but an important one nonetheless.

First of all, we would like to say ‘thank you’ to all of the College Republicans who came up huge at the last minute by overseeing caucus locations!

Now, what can we take away from tonight?  It appears that Ken Buck eked out a VERY narrow victory statewide in the Senate straw poll, pulling in 38%, while Jane Norton also received approximately 38%.  Tom Wiens was selected by 16% of caucus-goers.

For the Governor candidates, front-runner Scott McInnis was able to stave off a win by opponent Dan Maes, receiving 60% of the vote to Maes’ 39%.

It appears that Buck and Maes, both considered huge underdogs, have struck a chord with their more conservative message.  It will be interesting to see how things proceed from here, though you can be sure that none of the major candidates will consider March 16th the “knockout punch” in their respective races.

And just in case you’re wondering, the appointed incumbent Democratic Senator Michael Bennet was actually trounced in the Democratic Senate straw poll, losing by a 51%-42% count to former Speaker of the Colorado House Andrew Romanoff.  Most pundits have criticized Romanoff for an apparent lack of message, and an all-around poorly run campaign.  They have also noted how severely under-funded he is to be challenging an establishment candidate with all the luxurious benefits of incumbency.  However, he was expected to do well (perhaps not as well as he did) in the precinct caucuses because of his widespread, motivated base within the Colorado Democratic party.

The one major thing I would note is that this huge upset win comes in spite of the fact that Bennet has received a full endorsement from Barack Obama, and has been playing up his liberal credentials.  This is especially true on health care reform, an issue with which he has advocated the use of reconciliation to pass legislation that includes a public option.  Perhaps you can call it anti-incumbency, perhaps it means the Colorado Democratic party is shifting to the right, and perhaps it’s Obama’s reverse-Midas-touch.  I’m most inclined toward the latter, but I’ll let you be the judge.

Check out ColoradoCaucus.com for up-to-date results on the Democratic caucus straw poll, or ColoGOP.org for the Republican caucus straw polls.

If you’ve been paying attention to politics, even loosely, for the last year (or even the last month or two), you know the political landscape has become much more friendly to conservatives than it was during the 2008 elections. But if you weren’t aware of the extent to which this is true, you need only watch the latest campaign ad from Blanche Lincoln (D-AR). Remember–she isn’t in the midst of a general election. She is running this ad to appeal to DEMOCRATIC PRIMARY VOTERS.

As President Obama comes to Denver today to rally support for Sen. Michael Bennet at various fundraisers, Jane Norton has released an ad challenging him to balance the budget by the end of his first term.

Transcript:

ANNOUNCER: The President’s coming to Denver and Colorado needs to send him a message.

JANE NORTON: Mr. President, as a candidate you came to Denver and promised to “go through the federal budget…eliminating programs that no longer work…”

You’ve done just the opposite – massive spending and debt.

It’s ruining our economy and it’s wrong.

Mr. President, you should pledge to balance the budget or else decline to seek re-election. That’d be change we could believe in.

I’m Jane Norton. I approved this message. Let’s Stand Up, Colorado.

On her Campaign Blog, she identifies several options to bring America back toward fiscal responsibility and balanced budgets:

* Cut discretionary spending by 20 percent and then freeze it for three years. This shouldn’t be hard to accomplish – all it would require is a return to 2008 levels.
* Use what’s left of the stimulus and TARP money to pay down the debt. It will show the American people you’re serious about fiscal responsibility.
* End your quest for a government healthcare takeover.
* Then cut taxes on small businesses. Ronald Reagan showed that it works. When small businesses can create jobs through a lower tax burden, tax receipts actually go up!
* End earmarks.
* Finally, do what you promised. Go through your budget line by line and eliminate wasteful programs until the federal government is not spending a dime more than it makes.

Senator Evan Bayh (D-IN)

New polls, new information, and new race ratings have come out this morning, previewing the 2010 Senate match-ups. While it is widely believed Republicans have at least a legitimate chance to turn over control of the House, the Senate is another story.

Most Democrats and liberal media types will laugh at the prospect of a Republican majority in the upper chamber for the 2011-2013 session. Just this morning, reports broke that Senator Evan Bayh (D-IN) will be retiring rather than seek reelection. His seat was rated “Lean Republican” in today’s update from The Cook Political Report (see below).

If you look at the math, Republicans need only to win every race labeled “Toss Up”  to bring the Democrat majority down to 51-49.  Technically it would be 49-49-2, but the “Independents” aren’t exactly moderate.  A 50-50 split is still a Democrat-majority because Joe Biden gets to cast a tie-breaking vote.  So it will take two GOP wins in races for seats that are rated “Lean Democrat” or worse.

Solid: These races are not considered competitive and are not likely to become closely contested.
Likely: These seats are not considered competitive at this point but have the potential to become engaged.
Lean: These are considered competitive races but one party has an advantage.
Toss Up: These are the most competitive races; either party has a good chance of winning.

DEMOCRATS | 18 HELD SEATS
SOLID D (7) Inouye (HI) Mikulski (MD) Schumer (NY-A) Wyden (OR) Leahy (VT) Murray (WA) Feingold (WI)	LIKELY D (1) Gillibrand (NY-B)	LEAN D (2) Boxer (CA) CT (Dodd)	TOSS UP (5) Lincoln (AR) Bennet (CO) IL (Burris) Reid (NV) Specter (PA)	LEAN R (1) IN (Bayh)	LIKELY R (0)	SOLID R (2) DE (Kaufman) ND (Dorgan)

REPUBLICANS | 18 HELD SEATS
SOLID D (0)	LIKELY D (0)	LEAN D (0)	TOSS UP (4) KY (Bunning) MO (Bond) NH (Gregg) OH (Voinovich)	LEAN R (0)	LIKELY R (3) FL (LeMieux) Vitter (LA) Burr (NC)	SOLID R (11) Shelby (AL) Murkowski (AK) McCain (AZ) Isakson (GA) Crapo (ID) Grassley (IA) KS (Brownback) Coburn (OK) DeMint (SC) Thune (SD) Bennett (UT)

* = potential retirement

However, a new poll from this morning shows that even a race rated “Solid Democrat” could be won by a particular Republican challenger, if he decided to run.  The Rasmussen Reports poll shows Dino Rossi beating 3-term Senator Patty Murray in Washington.

The Republicans have a decent chance of controlling both houses of Congress one year from now.  It will require good candidate recruitment in places like New York, where Rudy Giuliani has opted out of runs for Governor and Senate, despite holding a sizable lead over Democrat incumbents David Patterson and Kirsten Gilibrand, respectively.

November 2nd is shaping up to be an exciting night.  We know we’re going to make considerable pick-ups in both houses–we just don’t know how many.  But we can be relatively sure that The Anointed Senator Michael Bennet will be relieved of duties, as he trails each of the three leading Republican candidates by anywhere from 4% to 14%.

Campaign for Liberty recently released an ad on behalf of Senate candidate Ken Buck.

Tom Lucero, a Republican vying for the nomination in Colorado CD-4, has produced his first TV ad.