Littwin: Dude, where's the Republican Party?

By Mike Littwin, Rocky Mountain News (Contact)

Published May 23, 2006 at midnight

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Marc Holtzman can apparently take a punch. Actually, I'm thinking he can take a stake to the heart.

If you missed the state Republican assembly - and I know I did - you still may have heard that Holtzman was hammered - 72 percent to 28 percent - by Bob Beauprez in the gubernatorial race. That's not a beating. That's assault and battery.

And yet, somehow, it's Beauprez's side that comes out looking bloody.

Holtzman can thank state Republican chairman Bob Martinez, who never meant to go anywhere near Holtzman's corner.

It was Martinez - the supposedly neutral state chair - who begged Holtzman privately to quit the governor's race. And then, as if that weren't sufficiently humiliating, he begged him publicly to quit the governor's race.

Holtzman turned him down flat both times.

I wish I could have heard the conversation.

"But Marc, you're killing us, dude. What about the party?"

Well, what about the party?

The party is a shambles. The party holds an assembly, and the talk is of a shoving match that week between staffers, and the headline from the day itself is about delegates having to wait countless hours to vote.

Across the country, things are, of course, even worse.

In Pennsylvania, more than a dozen Republican state legislators were beaten in primary elections by conservative challengers.

In Nebraska, the legendary coach and congressman Tom Osborne was beaten in a Republican gubernatorial primary.

In Washington, the president just announced we've "turned the corner" in Iraq. He really said that. I did a Nexis search and it turns out Iraq has turned so many corners that it might as well be at the Indy 500 qualifying.

It's that kind of circular logic that explains why Bush's approval ratings are stuck just above 30 percent, close to the Jimmy Carter level during the Iranian hostage crisis, approaching Nixonian levels during the Woodstein crisis.

Remarkably, Bush has 2 1/2 years to go - that's a long time to keep your fingers crossed - and he's desperately trying to hold on to the House. It's the House, of course, that Beauprez is abandoning and where polls have generic Democrats leading generic Republicans by more than 10 percentage points.

Of course, real Democrats may not fare as well as generics - see: William Jefferson under "money in freezer." But if the Democrats can't win the House this time, despite the gerrymandering favoring incumbents from both parties, they should consider disbanding. Bring back the Whigs or the Federalists or - I know - the Know Nothings.

Holtzman says he isn't going anywhere. And however you deconstruct that thought, it's bad news for Martinez and Beauprez and Bill Owens and Pete Coors and Bruce Benson and whoever else represents the establishment these days - the same group, as Holtzman points out, that lost a U.S. Senate seat and a U.S. House seat and both houses of the state legislature in the last election.

Here's a campaign slogan: 'How could I possibly do worse?'

"This is the worst year, in my memory, to be running as a candidate from Washington, D.C.," Holtzman was telling me. "If there ever was a time for a fresh face, and someone not tied to the Republican order, it's now."

Holtzman is running as a fresh-faced insurgent - the rare insurgent with a bottomless checkbook and with friends running 527 campaigns from as far away as London.

His poor showing at the assembly means he has to petition his way onto the ballot for the Aug. 8 primary. And just when he should have to be explaining why he isn't going to quit the race, there was Martinez to give him a ready explanation:

He wouldn't quit because the party bosses are trying to make him quit. So, there.

And, in any case, why would he? There's nothing anyone can offer him. There's no one to step forward - say, Holtzman's ex-best friend Bill Owens - to tell him he must quit for the good of the party.

I was talking to local political analyst Eric Sondermann, who made just that point.

Holtzman, he said, "isn't building bridges; he's burning them."

This is his shot - his only shot. Not that it means he'll win. I'd be stunned if he won. But I'd also be stunned if he jumped off a bridge.

And if Holtzman has nothing to lose, Beauprez has everything to lose.

That's where the story really gets interesting. In any other year, Beauprez would be the perfect Republican candidate for Colorado, the conservative with the human face. It's the Bill Owens model, a model that's suddenly looking like the loneliest car on the lot.

As Sondermann says, "Beauprez is the poster child for the Republican establishment . . . when mainstream Republicans are pretty much being discredited."

Holtzman is running to the right, pushing Beauprez into an expensive primary run, where the issues will be taxes and immigration and any other divisive topic that comes to mind - and the race will be to see who can talk and act tougher. What more could the Democrats ask for?

That's not how Holtzman sees it. His hero, after all, is Ronald Reagan, who, you'll remember, ran against Jerry Ford in '76 in the primary and might well have put Jimmy Carter over the top.

All I know is that somewhere - and I'd have to check the itinerary to see which Rotary breakfast he's attending today - Bill Ritter is smiling.

littwinm@rockymountainnews.com

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