Tuesday, August 10, 2010

Message from U.S. Senator John Cornyn, NRSC Chairman

With Republicans’ nomination of Weld County District Attorney Ken Buck today, I am confident that Colorado’s Senate seat provides our party with a momentous pick-up opportunity this November.

As a District Attorney, Ken Buck has worked with taxpayers to develop strategies for preventing crime in communities, with a special focus on protecting the elderly and addressing destructive behavior such as drunk driving and drug abuse. While maintaining a tough stance on crime in Weld County, Ken Buck has helped more than 1,100 troubled kids and their families by creating a community center dedicated to getting juvenile offenders’ lives back on track.

Coloradans know that they can count on Ken Buck to bring this same dedicated, problem-solving work ethic to Washington, where he will fight for critical checks-and-balances and commonsense fiscal policies in order to put more money back in taxpayers’ pockets. He opposes the Democrats’ deeply unpopular health spending bill, their job-killing cap-and-trade energy tax, and their threat to slam Americans with the largest tax hike in history that looms just 143 days away.

Recent polls show Ken Buck beating his liberal Democrat opponent, appointed U.S. Senator Michael Bennet, in the General Election – and for good reason. After a costly and brutal battle marked by “sheer nastiness and personal ill will,” Senator Bennet championed his party’s liberal agenda and out-of-control spending agenda and sought help from President Barack Obama and his party leaders in Washington in order to eke out a victory.

Despite trying to cast himself as a political “outsider,” Senator Bennet eagerly toed the party line and embraced the policies that helped drive our national debt past a record $13 trillion during his brief appointment to the U.S. Senate. He voted to raise the national debt ceiling to $14.29 trillion, helped ram the Democrats’ massive $787 billion stimulus debacle into law, and declared that he would sacrifice his job in order to pass ObamaCare, which 62 percent of Coloradans want repealed. Bennet not only provided the critical 60th vote for his party’s costly health spending bill, but he went further and favored a more extreme version that would place government bureaucrats between Coloradans and their doctors.

As the Democrats struggle to retain this seat, The Hill noted that Senator Bennet still faces an “uphill battle” as he tries to sell his radical views to mainstream Colorado voters who are already fed up with the status quo in Washington. And while there’s no doubt that Bennet will now attempt to distance himself from his party leaders in Washington, his liberal record in support of wasteful spending and bigger government bureaucracy speaks for itself.

Coloradans deserve an independent-minded leader with a fresh perspective who will fight for their best interests – not another rubberstamp for President Obama. And that’s why I am confident that voters will elect Ken Buck as their next U.S. Senator this November.