CO's Conservatives need to stand up to Libertarians on Roads

Personal responsibility is one of the central tenets of conservatism, and it has been foundational thinking for conservatives since the days of Edmund Burke and Russell Kirk. The problem for American conservatives in the twenty-first century is that the GOP and its brand of "Republicanism" has an agenda and ideology, but it's not really what could be called conservative. Nowhere is this disconnect between party and philosophy more apparent than in Colorado, where the state legislature is trying to fill its potholes by filling a serious gap in revenue and budgetary responsibility. As the Denver Post recently opined, Republican "Sen. Kevin Grantham is a statesman standing up for transportation." His bipartisan bill to raise transportation funds by simply asking taxpayers to approve a one-cent/dollar increase in state sales tax for twenty years is the epitome of personal responsibility and legislative leadership. Yet, among the loud and rigidly unproductive Libertarian voices in Colorado, the very idea of even asking taxpayers for the money is being squashed. No one typifies this lack of personal responsibility more than the head think-tanker at the Independence Institute, Jon Caldera. While Caldera recently used a rather absurd analogy about taxes and date rape to assert that the important part of Colorado's constitution is that the government must simply "ask" for the tax revenue rather than just take it, he contradicts his own position by opposing the simple opportunity for Grantham and the legislature to ask taxpayers. It's as if he is violating his standard tenet that only liberals don't trust voters to choose for themselves. Now, Caldera and other "free market libertarians" are crying foul at the very idea that the government ask for money. Instead, Caldera and his echo chamber have floated their own idea of fiscal irresponsibility with a bill that seeks to find transportation funding in an already stripped down state budget. These not-even-conservative thinkers have crafted a bill with the (in their mind clever but actually crass) title "Fix Our Damn Roads. When people like Caldera craft legislative ideas around the idea of revenue and government budgets, you can be certain that the idea of personal responsibility will be tossed aside in exchange for their standard position that no new tax revenue could possibly be necessary or amenable to the people of Colorado. It was conservative thinker Edmund Burke who articulated the most important principal of the government's fiscal responsibility in that "The revenue of the state is the state." Failure to have simply pragmatic discussion of that idea is the reason that Coloradans so rarely find conservative principles in the decisions of their Republican leaders. However, there is hope if people like Sen. Grantham can stave off the Tea Party attacks of his bill and his leadership.

Oh, and for a great tongue-in-cheek response to the silly FODR bill, look no further than the recent editorial from Aurora-Sentinel editor Dave Perry who asks Caldera and people who naively endorse his ideas to "Pay your damn share if you want your damn Colorado roads fixed."