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My personal musings about anything that gets on my radar screen--heavily dominated by politics.

2004-12-31

Unambitious State Education Plan

The Democrat chairpersons of the two Education Committees down at the statehouse announced their intentions for the upcoming sessions today.

"We're not looking to throw everything out and start over again," said incoming Senate Education Committee Chairwoman Sue Windels, D-Arvada. "We'll fix anything that doesn't make sense, that isn't fair, that isn't logical."

Hmm. Sounds suspiciously reasonable. What about the House?

"The atmosphere will be different," he said. "We will be treating each other, members of the committee, members of the audience, with respect."

Also, suspiciously reasonable.

Is anybody else starting to see a pattern here?

Consider these statements, which notably completely ignore the CSAP, a test which the education lobby would love to see eliminated. Also consider recent statements about TABOR and other taxes, and with regards to other issues, and you see a systematic effort by the Dems. To do what? you might ask.

To appear reasonable. To claim the center of the road. To capitalize on their gains in the last election by firmly claiming the middle of Colorado politics. Perhaps they learned their lesson of 2002: when the Dem Senate fought with a distincly partisan tinge, they managed to lose power in 2002. So this time around, they're trying to come across in a very different light--and, by the way, in a fashion that they will be able to say draws a stark contrast between them and how the GOP did things.

Does anybody really think the Dems in the statehouse are really center of the road? Not likely, I should think. But as a political strategem it has a lot of merit. I suspect any attempt at a grand liberal piece of legislation will be put out very quietly and run through with little to-do. In the meantime, they position themselves to maintain control of the legislature, and maybe even strengthen their hand for re-gaining the Governor's Mansion in 2006.

That would when they push their serious legislation through. We bloggers have much work to do over the next two years.
Posted by: Michael / 12/31/2004 01:36:00 AM

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