This is a very interesting article for people who like politics, essentially describing one viewpoint on how Colorado was lost. I don’t know enough about Colorado politics to have any insightful commentary, but the state, like many other western states, strikes me as having a pretty strong libertarian streak, much of which I’d imagine is incompatible with Brown’s very strong social conservatism. There’s a strong current in the GOP base, and especially in the Tea Party, that if we just run candidates that are conservative enough, we’ll never lose. I’ve never believed that to be true, and Colorado is evidence. You can run candidates that alienate other parts of your coalition, and hand the election to your opponents. That if we just run someone conservative enough is a myth peddled by talk radio hosts that making their livings telling people what they want to hear. The reality is getting to enough votes to win an election is not so simple.
Brown may be correct that the Democrats in Colorado have really stepped in it with the gun issue. I hope he’s correct in that. But for gun rights to be secure in Colorado, or anywhere, over the long term, you have to have a workable governing majority, and sometimes that involves making compromises. That would seem to be something Brown has trouble with.
