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June 22, 2022

529: Don't Be Fooled - Colorado Governor Jared Polis is No Moderate or Libertarian (ANALYSIS)

Gov. Jared Polis (D-Colorado) has often been cited by libertarians as being "one of the most libertarian governors in the country". But does his governance in Colorado actually hold up to his supposed libertarian bona fides?

Gov. Jared Polis (D-Colorado) has often been cited by libertarians as being "one of the most libertarian governors in the country". A personal friend of former Libertarian Congressman Justin Amash and frequent guest on various libertarian outlets (like Reason), Polis has filtered with Libertarians for years. 

 

But does his governance in Colorado actually hold up to his supposed libertarian bona fides?

 

Today, we dig through an article written by Joshua Sharf (Newsweek) who gives his not-so-rosy take on Gov. Polis' supposed libertarian leanings. 

 

"In the last month or so, the Colorado governor's publicity people have been busy. Polis has written an op-ed in the Washington Post defending charter schools. Libertarian journalist Nick Gillespie recorded a glowing podcast profile for Reason. There was a holiday weekend puff piece in The Hill. And this Monday, the Wall Street Journal praised Polis for standing up to the climate lobby.

 

All of these pieces have one aim: to make the progressive Democratic governor look as though he's not all that progressive—indeed, maybe he's a moderate or even a liberal with libertarian leanings, who'll keep the government off your back. I frequently hear out-of-state conservatives, hopeful for someone to pull the Democrats back from their current woke insanity, offer this description as their impression of Polis.

 

Those of us who've seen his governance here in Colorado up close and personal know better."

 

Article Discussed on Today's Episode: https://www.newsweek.com/dont-fooledcolorado-governor-jared-polis-no-moderate-opinion-1715804

 

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Transcript

Brian Nichols  0:04  
focusing on winning arguments. We're teaching the basic fundamentals of sales and marketing and how we can use them to win in the world of politics, teaching you how to meet people where they're at on the issues they care about. Welcome to The Brian Nichols Show. Well, Happy Wednesday. They're both Friday here on The Brian Nichols Show. And thank you for joining us on of course, another fundamental episode I am

as always your humble host. And as we do in need, we're gonna be talking about the libertarian democratic Euro Governor Jared Polis. Well, that might not be the take of one particular article we're going to be reading today from Newsweek but before we get there, why don't I go ahead and give a shout out to today's sponsor. At this point, you should know him and I I pray you love him as well on the California from the expat money show and the host of the expat money Summit, taking place November 7 through November 11 2020 to five days 30 expert speakers join us for this free virtual summit and Brian Nichols show.com, forward slash expat and also you can sign up for a week and I promise you will reap the benefits for generations. And by the way, make sure you go ahead and subscribe to the expat money podcast between now and then get all learned McHale will make sure he catches you up on the world of expatriation. So you're all set for the expat money summit again, taking place there the seventh through the 11th of November had the Brian Nichols show.com forward slash expat and get your free tickets today. All right, folks. So we've we talked about him here on the program in the past, and that is Governor Jared Polis of Colorado. And we've talked about him for a number of reasons, mainly being well, we've heard him be, quote, a libertarian darling. And we've heard this time and again, Justin Amash was a big fan of him when they were together in Congress. And we also I know, just heard recently, Nick Gillespie, he had Jared Polis there on the reason interview, which if you have not had the chance to go subscribe. Great, great interview series that Nick Gillespie does over adda at reason. But really quick, I want to go and check out this article that was written over at Newsweek because, believe it or not, there are some folks who are not a fan of Jared Paulsen and rather think that he is is actually a lot more radical and not moderate in the slightest when you compare him to the way that he's been characterized, or at least he's made himself out to be. So this is an article over from Newsweek, it's called, don't be fooled. Go Colorado Governor Jared Polis is no moderate. I'll go ahead and read this. And by the way, for our audio listener, if you want to go ahead and follow along, over on YouTube at the Brian Nichols show.com, the YouTube version of this episode will be right there, you can go ahead and see what we're seeing. But I'll go ahead and read it here for you. But yes, they say, and by the way, this is so pertinent because we've seen the conversation about well, will Joe Biden make it? And the I guess the answer has become more and more apparent, probably not in terms of whether he can run or if he can just make it through his term. And also, he'll be like, What 90 100 By the time that his term would actually end if he were to win in 2024. So this article starts off with Jared Polis, he's running for president, you'll deny it and he has denied but in the last month or so, the Colorado governor's publicity people have been busy palace has written an op ed in The Washington Post defending charter schools, libertarian journals, Nick Gillespie, Hey, there he is recorded the glowing podcast profile for reason. There was a holiday weekend puff piece in The Hill and this Monday, the Wall Street Journal praised Collins for standing up to the Climate Lobby. All of these pieces have one aim to make the progressive Democratic governor look as though he's not all that progressive. Indeed, maybe he's a moderate or even a liberal with libertarian leanings, who will keep the government off your back. I frequently hear out of state conservatives hopeful for someone to pull the Democrats back from their current walk and sanity offer this description as their impression of powerless. Those of us though, who have seen his governance here in Colorado, up close and personal know better. All right. Consider policy support for charter schools. He comes by that honestly and is featured on the Democrats for education reform page as a champion of school reform. But the delegates who put pause on the primary ballot for governor in 2018, told the State Chapter of dF D F er to stop using the word Democrats in their name, effectively booting the organization out of the party. Since then, policy has done little to nothing to ruffle the feathers of the teachers unions or welcome the group back to the state party. Reason may ask whether policy is quote the most libertarian governor in America. But libertarianism doesn't mean standing aside and letting municipalities do your dirty work for you. Palace lead Denver Mayor Michael Hancock Lita Corona, spire lead on Coronavirus, Coronavirus, lockdowns and mass before imposing a statewide lockdown himself. Palace also signed a bill allowing cities and counties to enact stricter but not looser gun regulations in the state imposes and there's nothing nothing particularly libertarian about opening the door to public employee unions in a traditionally non union state like Colorado. I'll pause right there. Mmm hmm. I'm a little torn on that one. Honestly because if we're if we're being fair um, so let's let's take this first. First bit here right now, this is the understanding that nobody here is a fan of the Coronavirus lockdowns, we have been against these mandates from the very onset, but to say that it's not libertarian, for him to let the localities make these decisions. I mean, it's it's something I think we'd actually prefer to see, because we've seen the alternative, right? We've seen what happens when you have a governor who will do the exact opposite. In this case, let's look at the blue states. I mean, Cuomo up in New York, who I mean, we forget he was one of the champions for lock downs. Whitmer, up in in Michigan, Murphy, New Jersey, Wolf, Pennsylvania, you've Newson in California, all these blue governors, they they locked their states down. And they did so by using the bully pulpit of the governorship. So, frankly, I mean, yeah, he brings up the the imposing the statewide lockdown himself the policy did it. Yeah, that that focus on that, but don't I wouldn't focus so much on the fact that he was he didn't do anything to stop those local mayors from doing that. I think we would rather see that be the process versus the vice versa, which again, we saw take place in those blue states. The other thing that they brought up was policy signing the bill that allowing cities and counties to enact stricter but not looser gun, your gun regulations, then the state i, I hear the complaint about the not looser and trust me, I'm pro two A's they come I firmly believe in the right to bear arms, especially with the way the world is going right now. But again, I think we do want more of this autonomy back to these localities. So from a to a standpoint, yeah, not exactly a conservative or pro Second Amendment argument. But from a libertarian, maybe maybe more Federalist it maybe that's the approach. I would rather take yours. This is more of a Federalist approach that I would rather see. I think a lot of us would rather see too and not sure the libertarian critique is really worth it here. And the particularly nothing about libertarian about opening the door to public employee unions in a traditionally non union state like Colorado fair. Yeah, public unions don't like those in general because it just creates a system where you have unions literally going against the taxpayers, which, okay, that doesn't seem weird or anything. So let's continue to that reading. This article here. Asked for standing up for the Climate Lobby. I'm sorry, up to the Climate Lobby. Paulus is the Climate Lobby fighting words. The Journal editorial board praises him in vetoing a new requirement to include electric vehicle charging points in new residential buildings. But in the same session Palace signed a bill requiring updated municipal building codes that have added up to $70,000 to the cost of new homes and towns where they have been implemented. And he did this in a state with one of the most unaffordable metropolitan areas for housing in the entire country. Yeah, definitely. That's a absolutely spot on critique. For all the talks in the Hill have not telling people what to do palaces a champion at telling people what to do. In addition to his home in Boulder, he owns vacation houses in rural Weld County, but a neighbor put up a fracking well and Palace bankrolled a statewide initiative imposing a 2000 foot setback for new drilling. And when voters decisively rejected that initiative at the polls, he worked with the legislature to pass similar legislation anyways. So what's the Presidential play for someone who doesn't even show up on the predicted roster of potential 2024 Democratic nominees, but Palace hopes to be reelected as governor by a comfortable margin which would make him an outlier in this fall's expected democratic bloodbath and it will be a bloodbath, with progressives doing well in Democratic primaries, they will be obvious scapegoats. There's still the matter of the incumbent president primary a sitting president running for reelection has traditionally been route to disaster either for the challenger. If the challenger is weak, or for the party if the challenger is strong. Joe Biden has reportedly been telling people he'll run a gun and God help us and God help him but as that's my commentary, by the way, but speculation about possible alternatives grows the party powers that the powers that be are given the green light for alternatives to step forward. Policies comfortable re election, if all goes according to plan in the Republican year in a state that continues to trend towards blue dominance would combine with a non threatening persona and a general impression that he has some libertarian or even conservative leanings. That makes him very interesting to them. Democrats desperately looking for a viable general election candidate. Republicans should take a little comfort in the fact that policy doesn't yet have much of a national profile. He was one of the original architects of the color Have a blueprint that turned the state from solid red to increasingly solid blue starting in 2004. He's a clever politician, mostly letting others advance the progressive agenda occasionally pushing back at the edges, but always from the left to give the impression of being a centrist. Increasingly, 2024 is looking like a Republican year, and even the potential for a realignment that produces a durable Republican majority. However, there are ways conservatives can blow this generation opportunity, that the truth one is by playing along with the dangerous mythology out defined by their opponents. And that's what the quick wins. So I'm not really great ending I guess that article, but I think the astounding argument and position there is yeah, there are a lot of red flags about Jared Polis. I think this goes to both, I guess, on the left, and maybe this is a lesson to me as well, on the right, we have to pay attention to who it is that we align ourselves with, especially when they might I say might not they definitely will use the libertarian sentiment. That is, it's indicative in just the way that we Americans approach life, it seems. I mean, we have this libertarian underlying theme that just guides us. And it's really down to the idea of not hurting people and not taking their stuff. So I think there is a definite, definite appeal for someone like Jared Polis, and then the main question, obviously becomes, will will the Democrats embrace Him? And we've seen more and more so over the past few years, the Democrats have started to embrace more of those loud voices from the progressive left, more and more so to the point that now they are leading the narrative, they are leading the messaging in many cases for what not only the the agenda wouldn't be or should be for the Democrats. But what it actually is ended up being. And we're seeing this right now with the Biden administration, with a lot of the far left folks who've been putting in positions of power there. So, you know, will Jared Palace be embraced by Democrats? I mean, you've seen St. St. Democrats who are looking at what's happening right now and saying, you know, hey, we need to slow down. But then to this article's point, is that necessarily the best thing for Republicans because it might be a situation or not just Republicans too, but libertarians, because he will bring the persona of this libertarian small l libertarian, democratic self to of the electorate, and will voters buy that? And is it accurate? That's the other question, too. So I'll leave you there with that folks, a shorter episode for today. I thought it was interesting, because we yeah, we hear about Governor policy all the time, because he is, as Nick Gillespie said, the most liberal or one of the most libertarian leaning governors in America, and I challenged that a little bit. And by that I mean a lot of it. However, with that being said, there definitely has been a growing, you know, warm feeling, it seems from some folks in this small l Liberty camp towards Governor Paulus. Again, going back to the beginning. Yeah, I think it goes neutral with Justin Amash, being in Congress and working with him hand in hand on a lot of issues. And him looking at him as an ally. And that's fair. But is he necessarily someone that is our target market? In some areas? Yes. But in a lot of areas, I would say probably not. So it is important for us, I think, to also acknowledge who we are speaking to. Another thing that happened recently, I'm not sure if you guys pay attention to this, but the New Jersey gym owner, I forget his name off the top of my head, but he he was the one who fought back during the entire pandemic, keeping his gym open. He was going to run for Governor and Governor for Congress as a Republican lost in the primary and now he has switched his affiliation to libertarian and now he's he's joined the Libertarian Party. And I think he's still considering running or he is still running. But either way we're seeing I think that is the person who wants to be more to it's not the person who is in this squishy centrist moderate, weird kind of like they want to be small l libertarian, but they still want to have a little bit of that wokeness and progressive bio along with them. I think we need to get a say I think I firmly believe we need to get away from that being the person we're targeting, and instead target more of your average person, your gym owner, right your business owner, your average person, that's who we should be speaking to. So with that being said, I do want to end today's episode with a special shout out to another one of our awesome sponsors and that is eagles. Now Eagles has been here from the very very beginning and I cannot thank them enough for being just consistently awesome sponsor, but also a consistently awesome product I've been using evals I'm holding up right now for the YouTube washer, they can see the evils freeze gel. I've been using that literally daily the past few weeks from my back, but also they have a lot of other great products from topicals to ingestibles. And I again for anybody who's weirded out by the idea of CBD guys, CBD it's all healthy, no high so that you don't have to worry about anything there had the Brian Nichols show.com forward slash evals 15% off at checkout, please, if you're interested in evals I promise you you will not regret the one time just go one time. That's all it takes to experience the evils difference for yourself. Start your better future tomorrow. What does my expression start? You're better tomorrow today? Yeah, something like that. But either way evils go go check them out. Brian Nichols. show.com. Forward slash evals. Yeah, you can tell I'm tired. It's been a day, folks. And when that being said, I think the wrap things there if you enjoyed this shorter episode, please do me a favor. Go ahead and give it a share. And when you do give yours truly a tag at being nickels, liberty, otherwise, we have a great guest coming up for you tomorrow. I'm going to keep that hidden behind the scenes. But otherwise oh, by the way, did you check out yesterday's episode? So yesterday we had Ted. Oh, my goodness, Ted's name just escaped me. He just sat her down in was a senator down in Colorado, Ted Harvey. There we go. Sorry, who joined us and he is also the chairman of the US is a committee to defeat the President was the committee to defend the president, stop joe.com. I'll include that video over here. So if you're here on YouTube, make sure you go ahead and click that check that video out. And also, if you're here over on the audio version of the podcast, just click the artwork. It'll bring you right to Brian Nichols show.com where you can find today's episode, you can find the video version of the program and the entire transcript of today's episode. But with that being said, it's Brian Nichols signing off. You're

on The Brian Nichols Show. We'll see you tomorrow

Unknown Speaker  16:27  
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