Go to the mobile version of this Web site.

Login | Contact Us | Site Map | Paid archives | Electronic edition | Subscription Questions | Extras

Romney to tout McCain at Colo. GOP convention

By Lynn Bartels, Rocky Mountain News (Contact)

Published May 19, 2008 at 9 p.m.

Text size  
Mitt Romney, who lost the Republican nomination to John McCain, is expected in town during the DNC.

Mitt Romney, who lost the Republican nomination to John McCain, is expected in town during the DNC.

More Elections

More stories »

Former presidential candidate Mitt Romney will speak on John McCain's behalf at the Colorado Republican Convention in Broomfield on May 31.

State party Chairman Dick Wadhams believes the turnout for the two-day convention and assembly will rival the Democratic turnout at their state gathering in Colorado Springs this past weekend.

"The Broomfield Event Center holds 7,000 and I've always said we're going to have that many with delegates and guests," Wadhams said.

But he agreed the GOP event won't have nearly the drama as the Democratic affair because McCain has been the presumed nominee since February.

The Democratic candidates, Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama, have battled for months, adding to the tension and excitement inside the World Arena in Colorado Springs on Saturday.

State Democratic Party Chairwoman Pat Waak had estimated about 10,000 Democrats would attend the statewide event, but a number of conventioneers were no-shows Saturday. She said she won't have an accurate attendance figure for a day or two.

"Even then we know we broke records," she said, citing interest in her home county, Weld County.

She said that in previous years Weld County couldn't fill its delegate slots to the state convention. This year, hundreds of Weld County Democrats ran for the 184 delegate positions.

"I know people who were dying to go, but didn't make it," Waak said.

Delegates to the state Democratic convention voted on filling the final slots for delegates to the Democratic National Convention in August at the Pepsi Center.

The party is still counting those ballots to determine who was elected. It could be Wednesday before all winners are known.

Earlier, other delegates were picked by either the national party or elected at their congressional district conventions.

Colorado Democrats are sending 70 delegates and nine alternates to their national convention.

Colorado Republicans will send 46 delegates and 43 alternates to the Republican National Convention in Minneapolis in September.

The GOP state chairman and national committeeman and national committeewoman are automatically delegates to the national convention.

The GOP 6th Congressional District Convention met over the weekend and picked three delegates and three alternates. The 7th District met Monday night and picked the same number of delegates and alternates.

The other delegates and alternates will be picked at the remaining five congressional conventions, which convene later this month, and at the statewide convention.

bartels@RockyMountainNews.com or 303-954-5327

Comments

  • May 20, 2008

    9:22 a.m.

    Suggest removal

    Americans4Liberty writes:

    “The Revolution” is #1

    Dr. Ron Paul’s new book The Revolution: A Manifesto made #1 on The New York Times Bestseller list and #1 on Amazon's Bestseller list!

    In his book, Paul says that his "revolution" is not new: "It is a peaceful continuation," he writes, "of the American Revolution and the principles of our Founding Fathers: liberty, self-government, the Constitution, and a noninterventionist foreign policy. That is what they taught us, and that is what we now defend."

    For those of you who believe in Liberty, the Constitution, and defending our Republic -- vote for Ron Paul at the convention!!

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rBnkIB...

  • May 20, 2008

    5:49 p.m.

    Suggest removal

    charlesn12 writes:

    Ron Paul made number 1 on Amazon.com and is number 1 on the New York Times bestsellers list...check it out at http://www.amazon.com/ The book title: The Revolution: A Manifesto by Ron Paul.

    Excerpts from the book follows:

    Every election season America is presented with a series of false choices. Should we launch preemptive wars against this country or that one? Should every American neighborhood live under this social policy or that one? Should a third of our income be taken away by an income tax or a national sales tax? The shared assumptions behind these questions, on the other hand, are never cast in doubt, or even raised. And anyone who wants to ask different questions or who suggests that the questions as framed exclude attractive, humane alternatives, is ipso facto excluded from mainstream discussion.

    And so every four years we are treated to the same tired, predictable routine: two candidates with few disagreements on fundamentals pretend that they represent dramatically different philosophies of government.

    People seem to think I am speaking of principles foreign to the Republican tradition. But listen to the words of Robert A. Taft, who in the old days of the Republican Party was once its standard-bearer:
    "When I say liberty I do not simply mean what is referred to as "free enterprise." I mean liberty of the individual to think his own thoughts and live his own life as he desires to think and to live; the liberty of the family to decide how they wish to live, what they want to eat for breakfast and for dinner, and how they wish to spend their time; liberty of a man to develop his ideas and get other people to teach those ideas, if he can convince them that they have some value to the world; liberty of every local community to decide how its children shall be educated, how its local services shall be run, and who its local leaders shall be; liberty of a man to choose his own occupation; and liberty of a man to run his own business as he thinks it ought to be run, as long as he does not interfere with the right of other people to do the same thing. "

    As we'll see in a later chapter, Taft was also an opponent of needless wars and of unconstitutional presidential war-making.

    This is the Republican tradition to which I belong.

    End of Excerpt.

    Also check out the Ron Paul Library:
    http://www.ronpaullibrary.org/

    That is all I got to say...check Ron Paul out like I have!

  • May 20, 2008

    6:35 p.m.

    Suggest removal

    charlesn12 writes:

    More Excerpts:
    "The supposedly conservative candidate tells us about "waste" in government, and ticks off $10 million in frivolous pork-barrel projects that outrage him—the inevitable bridge-to-nowhere project, or a study of the effects of celery consumption on arresting memory loss—in order to elicit laughter and applause from partisan audiences. All right, so that's 0.00045 percent of the federal budget dealt with; what does he propose to do with the other 99.99955 percent, in order to return our country to living within its means? Not a word. Those same three or four silly programs will be brought up all campaign long, and that's all we'll hear about where the candidate stands on spending. But conservatives are told that they must support these candidates, and so they do, hoping for the best. And nothing changes.

    Even war doesn't really distinguish the two parties from each other. Hillary Clinton and John Kerry voted for the Iraq war. With the exceptions of Dennis Kucinich and Mike Gravel, even the Democrats who postured as antiwar candidates for the 2008 primary elections are not especially opposed to needless wars. They typically have a laundry list of other military interventions they would support, none of which make any sense, would make our country any safer, or would do a thing to return our country to fiscal sanity. But liberals are told that they must support these candidates, and so they do, hoping for the best. And nothing changes.

    A substantial portion of the conservative movement has become a parody of its former self. Once home to distinguished intellectuals and men of letters, it now tolerates and even encourages anti-intellectualism and jingoism that would have embarrassed earlier generations of conservative thinkers. There are still some good and decent conservative leaders to be found, and a portion of the grass roots has remained uncorrupted by the transformation of conservatism into just another Big Government movement. But Big Government at home and abroad seems to suit many conservative spokesmen just fine. Once in a while they will latch on to phony but conservative-sounding causes like "tax reform"—almost always a shell game in which taxes are shuffled around rather than actually reduced overall—in order to pacify the conservative base, but that's about it.

  • May 20, 2008

    6:36 p.m.

    Suggest removal

    charlesn12 writes:

    When Republicans won a massive off-year election victory in 1994, neoconservative Bill Kristol immediately urged them not to do anything drastic but to wait until the Republicans took the White House in 1996. Well, the Republicans didn't take the White House in 1996, so nothing ever got done. Instead, the Republican leadership urged these freshman congressmen to focus on a toothless, soporific agenda called the Contract with America that was boldly touted as a major overhaul of the federal government. Nothing could have been further from the truth. The Contract with America was typical of what I have just described: no fundamental questions are ever raised, and even supposedly radical and revolutionary measures turn out to be modest and safe. In fact, the Brookings Institution in effect said that if this is what conservatives consider revolutionary, then they have basically conceded defeat.

    Needless to say, I am also unimpressed by the liberal Left. Although they posture as critical thinkers, their confidence in government is inexcusably naive, based as it is on civics—textbook platitudes that bear absolutely zero resemblance to reality. Not even their position on unnecessary wars is consistent—Hillary Clinton and John Kerry both supported the Iraq war, for instance, and the major Democratic candidates in 2008 who claim to be antiwar are generally eager to invade some other country apart from Iraq. Even Howard Dean was all in favor of Bill Clinton's intervention in Bosnia, going so far as to urge the president to take unilateral military action beyond the multilateral activity already taking place. Liberals at the grass roots, on the other hand, have been deeply alienated by the various betrayals by which a movement they once supported has made its peace with the establishment.

    No wonder frustrated Americans have begun referring to our two parties as the Republicrats. And no wonder the news networks would rather focus on $400 haircuts than matters of substance. There are no matters of substance.

  • May 20, 2008

    8:54 p.m.

    Suggest removal

    JackdforRP writes:

    I think it is so sad that no matter what side of the isle you are on, if you were to quiz the Delegates (as well as the rest of the population) on such things as the rule book of this country, the Constitution, most all would fail miserably. Is it any wonder that our country is in so much trouble when the average person thinks our type of government was designed as a Democracy when in reality it is a Constitutional Republic. What's even worse is that the majority of these people likely could not give a reasonable description as to the difference of these two types of governments and why the founders so wisely chose the Republic as apposed to a vile Democracy where 51% of the mob rules. There are many things about our country that voters just don't understand and it is these people that while they may have good intentions, are at the root of our problem because they don't do the research well enough. America has reduced itself to voting for the better of two evils or the one that seems most presidential like it is the Oscars or Emmys.

    Another subject that Americans\Politicians just don't understand is the economy. For instance, if you were to ask these people about the Federal Reserve, the majority of them would tell you that it is Federal when it is not Federal and it has no reserve outside of a printing press. The Federal Reserve which is privately owned by member banks and coincidently came into being the very same year (1913) as our beloved Income Tax. Bit of a coincidence don't you think?

    And the stimulus plan of giving 168 billion for "free" to Americans. Amazing how Americans just don't get it. The government has only three ways to get you that money. It can borrow it, steal it from us and give it back (taxable again of course) like it is doing us a favor or it can do what it likes best to do and that is print it out of thin air. When they print it, all it does is devalue the money that is currently in circulation. For those of you who couldn't possibly miss the rising prices these days, you must understand that it isn't so much that the value of these things has gone up, it is the value of the dollar going down. This is what happens when we as a country have over 700 military bases in 130 countries. For a little enlightenment might I suggest you all get on line and watch America Freedom to Fascism and\or Money Masters. Really, before it is too late. And from now on, start voting for the candidate that will best stick to the countries rule book. After all, the longer it gets ignored, the more the government will go off on it's own tangent and who knows where that will leave us. America missed the boat this time on the best candidate and his name is Ron Paul and if you think I am wrong, you are likely one of those less educated people that are dragging this country down.