{"id":2450401,"date":"2019-10-26T22:16:00","date_gmt":"2019-10-27T04:16:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.aspentimes.com\/news\/mike-littwin-cory-gardner-makes-his-declaration-of-complete-and-utter-dependence\/"},"modified":"2019-10-26T22:16:00","modified_gmt":"2019-10-27T04:16:00","slug":"mike-littwin-cory-gardner-makes-his-declaration-of-complete-and-utter-dependence","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/local-news\/mike-littwin-cory-gardner-makes-his-declaration-of-complete-and-utter-dependence\/","title":{"rendered":"Mike Littwin: Cory Gardner makes his declaration of complete and utter dependence"},"content":{"rendered":"
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These are words I rarely use in this order, but Cory Gardner\u2019s latest political move has really surprised me. If you haven\u2019t heard, Gardner has caved as one of the last seven or eight Senate Republican holdouts on Lindsey Graham\u2019s phony-baloney resolution condemning the way that Democrats are running the House impeachment inquiry.<\/p>\n

I know that doesn\u2019t sound particularly surprising, but it is, as I\u2019ll soon explain.<\/p>\n

First, you might want to note that Democrats are running the impeachment inquiry in pretty much the same way that Graham helped run the Clinton impeachment, but we\u2019ll leave that for another day. This resolution has nothing to do with the House process \u2014 which Gardner calls a \u201ccircus\u201d \u2014 and everything to do with Donald Trump\u2019s feelings. As I write this, there are three hurt-feeling holdouts \u2014 Susan Collins, Lisa Murkowski and Mitt Romney. Don\u2019t you miss John McCain?<\/p>\n

The resolution is meaningless, of course, except to Trump, who insisted that Senate Republicans do something to show their unwavering support for him. This was no problem for Lickspittle Lindsey, as Washington Post columnist Dana Milbank has aptly dubbed him. It\u2019s just the latest in a series of shameful Graham acts of sycophancy. When Trump abandoned the Kurds in northern Syria, Graham, in a momentary lapse back into the old Lindsey, vowed that he would be Trump\u2019s worst nightmare. But when Trump called Graham in to the White House to remind him who\u2019s boss \u2014 literally \u2014 \u201cworst nightmare\u201d suddenly turned into \u201cpredictable hypocrisy.\u201d<\/p>\n

And so it goes.<\/p>\n

The resolution is just another diversionary tactic \u2014 like the House Republican sit-in, featuring Doug Lamborn in a cameo role as Chick-Fil-A delivery boy \u2014 to try to make us briefly turn away from the runaway train that is the impeachment inquiry. In the latest news \u2014 real, not fake, news \u2014 former NSC chief John Bolton is reportedly negotiating with House Democrats for a date in which he could be deposed. This would, in fact, be Trump\u2019s worst nightmare.<\/p>\n

For all of Bolton\u2019s flaws, I don\u2019t think groveling is one of them. And if his testimony would be a nightmare for Trump, it wouldn\u2019t be much better, I\u2019m guessing, for Rudy Giuliani and Mike Pompeo. Personally, I want to see Bolton publicly testify some day just to hear him confirm, as The New York Times reported, Fiona Hill\u2019s assertion that Bolton told her \u2014only half-kiddingly \u2014 that he didn\u2019t want to be part of any \u201cdrug deal\u201d that Gordon Sondland and Mick Mulvaney were cooking up.<\/p>\n

In any case, when I heard the news that Gardner hadn\u2019t signed on to Lickspittle\u2019s ploy, I may have jumped to a too-hasty conclusion. I tweeted that we know from experienceexactly how it would all play out. Gardner would say that he\u2019s studying the matter and has not yet decided how he\u2019ll vote. And then when the resolution came to the floor, he would cave and vote for it.<\/p>\n

And then, of course, he\u2019d run for cover before any reporter could ask him why he pretended once again not to have known from the beginning exactly how he intended to vote. And he\u2019ll not only refuse to return my calls. He won\u2019t return Kyle Clark\u2019s calls. Or Joe St. George\u2019s calls. Or, well, you get the idea.<\/p>\n

There was a second option I\u2019d considered. If only 44 or 46 Republicans and no Democrats signed on, then the resolution would never come to a vote, which is, of course, Gardner\u2019s best-case scenario. The problem, though, is that a no-vote would be a major setback for Trump. And it would mean that Gardner would be one of those blamed for the setback. You need 60 votes to pass the resolution, so it\u2019s just so much public relations anyway. But for Gardner, it\u2019s all of a piece in his decision to stick with Trump no matter how far underwater Trump takes him in his re-election bid.<\/p>\n

What we know \u2014 as much as we know anything \u2014 is that Gardner desperately doesn\u2019t want to discuss any of this. He was nationally humiliated when the video of a group of Colorado reporters interviewing him went viral. The reporters, starting with St. George, asked Gardner repeatedly whether it was appropriate for the president to ask a foreign leader to investigate a political rival. And repeatedly Gardner dodged the question.<\/p>\n

We\u2019ve seen Gardner play this game before. But we\u2019ve never seen it go national before. And we\u2019ve never seen anything like it as potential fodder for Democratic ads against Gardner in the 2020 Senate race.<\/p>\n

A few days ago, political analyst Eric Sondermann, a centrist\u2019s centrist, wrote a piece for ColoradoPolitics saying it was time for Gardner to get off the political tightrope and call out Trump for what he is.<\/p>\n

Sondermann wrote: \u201cThese are not normal times, Cory. A year out from the election, you have a choice to make. Do you spend the year trying to stay aloft on the high wire, coherence be damned, and hope to somehow survive against increasing political odds in increasingly difficult political terrain? Or do you take this as an opportunity for liberation; a personal declaration of independence; and a chance to speak your truth and let the chips fall?\u201d<\/p>\n

I knew Gardner was never going to declare independence. But now we know he\u2019s not even going to pretend that he might.<\/p>\n

Mike Littwin runs Sundays in The Aspen Times. A former columnist for the Rocky Mountain News and Denver Post, he currently writes for ColoradoIndependent.com.<\/p>\n

via:: The Aspen Times<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

These are words I rarely use in this order, but Cory Gardner\u2019s latest political move has really surprised me. If you haven\u2019t heard, Gardner has caved as one of the last seven or eight Senate Republican holdouts on Lindsey Graham\u2019s phony-baloney resolution condemning the way that Democrats are running the House impeachment inquiry. I know […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[49],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2450401","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","category-local-news"],"acf":[],"publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-08-19 11:34:18","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"distributor_meta":false,"distributor_terms":false,"distributor_media":false,"distributor_original_site_name":"KSPN The Valley's Quality Rock","distributor_original_site_url":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn","push-errors":false,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2450401","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2450401"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2450401\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2450401"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2450401"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kspn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2450401"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}