"Colorado Model" Making Media Waves.

In a recent Weekly Standard article, Fred Barnes outlined "The Colorado Model."

The Democratic surge in Colorado reflects the national trend, but it involves a great deal more. There's something unique going on in Colorado that, if copied in other states, has the potential to produce sweeping Democratic gains nationwide. That something is the "Colorado Model," and it's certain to be a major topic of discussion when Democrats convene in Denver in the last week of August for their national convention.

While the Colorado Model isn't a secret, it hasn't drawn much national attention either. Democrats, for now anyway, seem wary of touting it. One reason for their reticence is that it depends partly on wealthy liberals' spending tons of money not only on "independent expenditures" to attack Republican office-seekers but also to create a vast infrastructure of liberal organizations that produces an anti-Republican, anti-conservative echo chamber in politics and the media.

Liberal reaction in Colorado has been mixed. Colorado Pols is a daily read for us here at Mile High Delphi. Colorado Pols is dominated by liberals, but it is still the best place to get the "inside baseball" gossip on Colorado politics.

...total spending (hard and soft) on campaigns in Colorado leans our way for 2004 and 2006. Not by a huge amount, but thanks to a ton of small donors -- and above all Jared, Tim, Pat, and Rutt -- we actually have outspent them. -Boulder Dem

Reading through the posts on Colorado Pols, it is easy to see that the liberal prognosticoti see that the main reason that they have won in Colorado is because they are right, not because they are logistically better prepared now than in the early part of the decade.

The conservatives fail to reconize that a great swath of the unaffiliated voters in Colorado have turned into reliable democratic voters. They can ignore these voters at their own peril.

Here at MHD we have seen the "Colorado Model" for years. However, we don't believe that it is as simple as the "Gang of Four" or that the GOP was too conservative. Amendment 27, passed in 2002, critically wounded the ability of the GOP to fundraise. Until the GOP learns to compete under the rules of 27, the Colorado Model will continue.